Mucus:
I actually like that workout! Japanese do a lot of what we call "build-up" which is basically exactly what you described without recovery. If you check out Seko or Inubushi's workout at Hodgie-san's website, you'll see that they do a quite a bit of it. Seko, or I should say the Nakamura school, would do time trial followed by a very brief rest followed straight by the same distance of "build-up". We don't necessarily predetermine the time but we'll start quite slowly (especially right after the time trial) and, as you warm-up, you'll know that you'll start to run fast. Nobody, including the coach, tell them to start running but you'll know that there is a point where you start to run faster. The key is to stop the workout right before you go all out--you finish workout feeling you can go even faster (up-swing). Great workout but I don't see anybody doing that in the US.
Nakamura was very big on finishing workout with up-swing. Just like Lydiard would say "knowing you could have done longer, faster..." In other words, rarely do you finish the workout completely spent (sometimes do).
When it comes down to it, it's not the matter of how you do it or what you do. You can do it 20X400, you can do it 3X1500, you can do it 400-brief recovery-200 and repeat like Ovett did, or 300-jog across the field-200 then 5 minutes recovery like Quax did or you can do it 14X200 build-up... There is a time to develop anaerobic capacity to maximum however you do it, there is a time to work on pace judgement, you can do them at the same time, or you may have no choice but combine. The Lydiard method is not running 100 miles a week; not doing some special hill training; not doing 50/50...but knowing what type of exercise would give your body (and mind) what kind of effect and when to do it so, in the scheme of over-all program, you can peak on the day that you require. What to do and how you do it is quite secondary. You can run 80 miles a week and that's Lydiard (as Kim Stevenson did), you can do it like Seko and Nakamura swears that they did Lydiard. Quax never quite did hill training as laid out by Arthur but he totally claims he did Lydiard. Sakaguchi's training is quite different when you look at the day-to-day schedule but he says they do Lydiard. So just call it Lydiard when you're successful so you'll give the system credit!