• Nobby
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/18/2005 10:06AM - in reply to Bob Wildes
      • Nobby
      • Bob:

        Right on! I'm in LA with Lorraine Moller. I showed this thread to her, got a few interesting comments. I'll join back in later. Just couldn't resist to jump in and say "right on!" to Bob.
    • salkowskim
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/18/2005 2:18PM - in reply to Bob Wildes
      • salkowskim
      • Speaking of anaerobic and speed work, I know that Nobby and others have covered a typical week during the Lydiard Hill phase, and also a week of the anaerobic and conditioning phases for an 800 runner. I would be interested to hear Nobby's and others thoughts on what the anaerobic and conditioning phases should look like for a marathoner. Nobby, didn't you mention coaching a corporate marathon team in Japan? What did these weeks look like for your athletes? Glenn had some good thoughts on this he shared with me in an email, but I'm wondering if he wouldn't mind sharing them with others here. I'm trying to figure out the benefits versus the risks of anaerobic work (i.e. pulling the PH levels down and perhaps dragging endurance down with it prematurely). In short, is the schedule in "Running to the Top" for marathoners during these two phases still the way to go, or would substituting some of the shorter faster efforts with more tempo or marathon paces be beneficial...or some of both? Perhaps Lydiard's "time trials" during these phases are meant to incorporate marathon pace and/or tempo?

        Thanks again for all the great info on this thread, and if this post gets it back up to page one...that would be fine with me.
    • Skuj
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/18/2005 9:07PM - in reply to Skuj
      • Skuj
      • Strange! I keep getting banned for a few hours at a time! WTF? Usually realize it after long winded essays.
    • Tinman
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/18/2005 10:34PM - in reply to Orville Atkins
      • Tinman
      • Orville:

        Good stuff! Please share more training details from that time frame...and any more Bruce Kidd stories. Thanks. Tinman
    • saf
      • RE: LYDIARD OR DANIELS? 10/19/2005 7:11AM - in reply to Nobby
      • saf
      • I'm really interested in what your saying about the method not working with loops and uneven numbers of eyelets. I will be testing this lacing method for my dissertation. Do you have any infomation in print you could direct me to? the fact that it is used must give it some foundation in scientific research - and the fact NIKE sponsored the tour also gives it credibility.
        any info would be great
        thanks
    • Hill Segment
      • RE: LYDIARD OR DANIELS? 10/19/2005 2:23PM - in reply to HRE
      • Hill Segment
      • I was wondering if you keep your mileage around where you were hitting during the conditioning phase when you transition into the hill phase?
    • HRE
      • RE: LYDIARD OR DANIELS? 10/19/2005 2:40PM - in reply to Hill Segment
      • HRE
      • Pretty much, yes. Perhaps the mileage would be slightly less, but not much. Ron Daws pointed out in his book that one of the hill sessions Arthur prescribed covered 14 miles when you added in the downhill runs and the warm-ups and warm-downs. So you wouldn't be giving away too many miles. But you wouldn't add miles either.
    • Hotlanta Master
      • RE: LYDIARD OR DANIELS? 10/19/2005 7:28PM - in reply to HRE
      • Hotlanta Master
      • I have found the need to drop mileage a little during the hill phase - something like 10-15 miles less per week. The hill sessions really take the spring out of my legs and I need a pretty easy day to recover. My hill sessions with warm-up and cool-down get up to 11-12 miles.

        Keep in mind that I am 41. A younger (or better) runner might recover fast enough to keep up 100+ mile weeks while doing 3 tough hill workouts, but not me.
    • Nobby
      • RE: LYDIARD OR DANIELS? 10/20/2005 6:13AM - in reply to saf
      • Nobby
      • saf:

        Nike turned us down a couple of times. ASICS supported us. I will send you the Lydiard lacing system chart.

        HRE:

        Thanks for clarifying the tour supporter.
    • Nobby
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/20/2005 6:28AM - in reply to salkowskim
      • Nobby
      • I served a Japanese professinoal running team as a coach (that spoiled me...) under the influence of the late Kiyoshi Nakamura who trained Seko. Most of Japanese training pattern is influenced by the Lydiard principle though when you look at the day-to-day training they don't look anything like the schedule you see in the Lydiard books. This is a prime example of how understanding principle and applying it can be very different from just following the provided schedule.

        In mind opinion, Japanese are not particularly good at understanding of anaerobic training; this, however, probably favored them in marathoning. They don't do much repeats/intervals at all. They do repeat 1000m but they may not be strictly classified as "anaerobic" training.

        For marathoning, as far as the pattern is concerened, I personally like the original schedule from "Run to the Top". This one has plenty of long runs at high effort. The key, however, is to incorporate as much recovery days in between instead of just blinding follow the schedule.

        It is necessary, at least beneficial, to develop anaerobic capacity to maximum even for marathons. How you develop it is up to you. It will probably be more beneficial for marathon runners to have something like 10 mile steady state than shorter leg-speed type of intervals.
    • ronin
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/20/2005 6:41AM - in reply to Nobby
      • ronin
      • This last response of Nobby had inspired me to post again (even though I am following this thread meticulously) after a long layoff.
        Let's suppose I'am through with my conditioning phase, and now I am in the 6 weeks long hill conditioning/anaerobic introduction phase. How can I keep my (now) very good Anaerobic threshold, when no tempo-type pace is done? I mean, if you stay out from threshold runs for 6 weeks, it will for sure show up on your state of preparedness. Isn't it true? That's one of the important traits of Daniel's system- T pace is being done even in the late peaking phase.
        What is your stance on effect on LT for 5k-10k runners in this 2nd phase?
    • Nobby
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/20/2005 6:59AM - in reply to Skuj
      • Nobby
      • In the principle of the Lydiard method, you will develop different aspect of running; i.e.; aerobic, anaerobic, pure speed, etc.; separately and only blend them together when it's necessary at the right moment. What you do today is not necessarily the reflection of what you CAN do; but rather what affects your actual performace tomorrow. I'm sure some of you might argue the scientific validity of some of Lydiard's comments such as "it only takes 4 to 5 weeks to develop your anaerobic capacity to maximum"; I don't even know if there has been legitimate scientific study done on such subject and I can't answer that though, as far as I'm concerned, his coaching runners based on this principle hurt none of them perform the way they did.

        What I have a hard time accepting when people say that you have to train the way you race (speed, anaerobic, etc) is that it, sounds to me, is based on the principle that "racing every week, it not every day, is the best way to train for racing." What's better than running 800m in 1:44 than running 800m in 1:44 everyday (or every week or whatever) because you are doing exactly what you want to do for the race!? Well, good luck! You don't try to run the marathon distance every week to prepare for the marathon, do you (well, some people do!)?

        Do you really need to work on the speed you're expected to run in the actual race year-round? Does that mean a marathon runner would not need to run faster than the marathon race speed? Would 800m be the longest you need to run to prepare for 800m race? Okay, I'm exaggerating; but isn't this the principle that some people base their training "theory" on? In the Lydiard method, you look at different parts of physiological and mechanical aspects of "performance" separately and develop them separately; and blend them all together in a timely fashion so you can peak on the day(s) that you want to perform at your best. You may lose a race or two in March (some people argue you need to have the race speed year-round); but you will be at your top speed in July when you want to be at your top speed.
    • Glenn McCarthy
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/20/2005 7:08AM - in reply to ronin
      • Glenn McCarthy
      • ronin,

        I find that the benefits of the hill phase of training far surpasses any pure anaerobic work. The runners I work with usually come out of 4 weeks of hill work running at about a 2-3% improvement in running efficiency. For a 40 minute 10 km runner, that is about a minute. But it is not just present in races, it improves efficiency in all forms of running, so there is a 2-3% improvement in all training routines. The end result is the ability to turn that 2-3% into an even higher rate of improvement when the anaerobic work and sharpening follows.

        To me anaerobic work is applied as you head into your peak anaerobic racing (800-10,000) racing period. Hills are scheduled well ahead of that phase so you can assimilate the benefits of the routines and make them part of your "routine" running. At least that is the way I approach it with the runners I work with.

        Glenn
    • HRE
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/20/2005 7:17AM - in reply to ronin
      • HRE
      • This is a question that sort of straddles diffferent approaches and is hard to answer. At least I think so, maybe Nobby, Hotlanta, or Kim can do better than I will.
        You have to remember that when Arthur put together those original schedules he didn't think about anaerobic thresholds and tempo runs. He never even knew what those things were. His approach to building a base was simply to tell you to run as fast as you could without getting out of breath at various distances. What followed from that was that you could run faster that way for an hour than you could for two hours as a rule. But the question you're asking never figured into his original thinking. You worked on your base then you worked on your hills but kept in the long run and some of the hill sessions had you covering a good number of miles. So the answer to your question, using the original model as a template is that you didn't worry about it. It's time to get on to other things.
        Originally, you might do four or five hill sessions a week when you got to the hill phase. But by time I was getting advice from Arthur, which would have been 1998-99, he was advising (at least to me) two hill sessions a week. At that stage he was telling me to do a weekly time trial as well. I know the time trial thing has been discussed here, but essentially, the trials are not "racing" efforts, but fast, controlled runs. If you do those during your hillwork, you're probably doing the same sort of thing as you'd do with tempo runs.
    • oasis
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/20/2005 7:24AM - in reply to Glenn McCarthy
      • oasis
      • Glenn, what type of workouts do you use for your runners in the anaerobic and speed phases during cross country season.
    • Glenn McCarthy
      • RE: A Lydiard Thread 10/20/2005 8:55AM - in reply to HRE
      • Glenn McCarthy
      • Oasis,

        I follow Arthur's lead on this. He said "anaerobic work is like eye-wash. It does not matter what you do as long as you achieve the results of working the ability to run anaerobically". That said, in Colorado most HS progams race only on Friday or Saturday each week. That race is one anaerobic workout. Then I use two others, one which is usually where the work part is over a distance that force the runner to be running at current 5 km effort for 2 1/2 to 6 minutes (about a 1/2 mile to a mile), with about 2 mintues recovery between each covering 3 miles of "work", then a second workout which is much less structured. This workout is set at distances that the runners run their target pace for Regionals or state (if we anticipate they will make it that far) with equal amounts of rest (run 1 km in 4 minutes, recover for 4 minutes of jogging). The number of repeats is dependent on how the runner's form looks in the 2nd 3rd of each repeat. When their form is starting to fail, that is the last repeat, even if it is only 1. Then they can finish their 45 minutes to an hour at a jog. Weekends are always a long run (90, 105, 120 minutes in rotation) and a 10 to 13 mile run at a steady strong effort for the stronger runners, less distance but similar time for those who cannot handle the work.

        Glenn