Lydiard.....emperors clothes?

Thanks for your reply...

I was serious about giving your previous post compliments. Well written ideas and opinions for sure.

I like pacing guidelines for a couple of reasons. Say you feel good one day and hammer a long run. The run feels good and you are "in the zone". Maybe that day it was fine but leaves your next several days to sore to hit ones workout paces. A more moderate pace would have been called for. Also, psychologically I like to see improvements in my workouts over say 2-3 weeks. By hammering a workout when you feel really good you may not see that steady improvement as you cannot replicate that time.

Also, from an ex-phys standpoint......doing intervals about V02 max (intervals to quick based on HR) tends to cut the workout sessions short or call for more rest inbetween intervals. I don't want to get started on HR training ( I don't do it) but I think pacing guidelines do have their place as long as one is not a slave to them.

Enjoy your post

Congrats on your foundations send-off. Good website you

started I enjoyed seeing it.

The crust of my post was trying to point out the difference in coaches who follow the Lydiard system. Specifically, accomplished coaches like Westmore at Colorado and others who have significant differences in their coaching method.

I would further say that this does not mean that they coach individual runners differently (every coach should vary the system as individuals can differ in their response to training). Rather, many followers of Lydiard piece together their general plans by running hills, 3/4 effort, aerobic, anaerobic and such as differing paces, intensities and such.

People have interpretted him differently as we interpret art, religion, music...etc...differently. Having never met the man and mainly going by his books he strikes me as having very specific ideas in mind when he uses these terms. I for one can read say a Jack Daniel's and feel I'm closer to understanding his ideas easier than Lydiards. It seems I'm not alone by looking at "Lydiard Coaches" and how much they disagree.

From the post her Nobby, yourself and others who have worked with him seem to be "all on the same page" so I guess it is my problem and not his ;)

I'd probably need to be coached by one of his students to really get it. As Nobby pointed out in a previous post his writing style can lead to confusion.

Regards and thank you for your replys

Disclaimer: I'm writing this quickly before work so sorry about my many typos

You've just summed up my feeling better than I could.

I'm a science guy........I like numbers.

And totally agree that nobody can take anything away from Lydiard and I would never try to (if I did I would just get laughed off this board anyways.....pisano who???)

Thanks for the reply

So.......seems like pace was not important.

If one were to comment on pace...pace wasn't important at first as in your example guys who could run 5:30 pace marathon running 7 minute pace for long runs. As they got in peak shape it came down to 30 seconds slower than marathon pace.

Was this at all reproducible? That is roughly (I know he preached that pace was not important but please humor me)his runners worked their long run pace down to 30 seconds slower than marathon pace when they got in good shape?

Pisano, there was some good posts from Keith Livingstone on the Australian Coolrunning site a few months ago. Keith was a 29m 10k runner who trained with Arthur.

It may be true that many in the Lydiard camp are artistic, but not me. I feel very comfortable reading Lydiard's books and posts about him from those who knew him like, Kim Stephenson,Nobby, Glenn McCarthy, Hotlanta Master, HRE and many others.

I haven't found an artistic bone in my body yet. I'm a bean counter. Definitely a numbers man.

One thing that always made sense to me was Lydiard's statement that no coach in the world could ever give a runner precise instructions on anaerobic/interval training.

For example, suppose you told your runner to do 20-400's in 65 seconds or so and you see that they become ragged after the 17th. That is the time to stop as the whole idea is to get the adaptation in the cells, which Lydiard referred to as getting the PH levels pulled down.

Pisano:

Here's what I think is a problem. All those numbers are nothing but the after-the-fact. They may or may not shoot for those times. As you get stronger, the times (pace) should, and in most cases would, come down. But if you try to squeeze those times, then you'll get in trouble. Training should be done according to what you need at the time and should reflect in the final result which is the race performance.

Here's an example; I saw Reiko Tosa doing 5k time trial 4 days before Boston. Her time was something like 20 seconds slower than her usual time trial performance--in fact, she was a bit down about it. Yet she posted her second best time over tough Boston course. She needed to "shake it out" with that 5k time trial--her actual time was secondary. Furthermore, if she was feeling great and posted PR for that time trial, there might be a chance that she shot over her edge and woudn't perform as well in the actual race.

Too many people are worried about their "performance" for the workouts. They don't seem to understand that they are training (doing those workouts) to race well. If you perform at your BEST by training very slow (compared to other people), so be it. Why knock yourself more to match the workout formula for others only to perform poorly in the actual race? But that's what so many people do.

When I first encountered Arthur's stuff, I found a line that he'd written saying that once you got to the hundred mile week you'd subsequently run that distance, "A week faster." It stuck in my mind because I knew it was a reference to running your distances faster progressively. So I tried it. If I'd done a 15 mile course in, say 1:53 the previous time, I bloody well thought I had to do at least 1:52 something the next time and 1:51 something the time after that. I did this with all my runs for a bit more than two weeks and could barely walk.

At that point I decided that you had to be some sort of running animal to benefit from Lydiard training. I wasn't, so I junked it and just went back to what I considered LSD training with modest attention paid to some faster running.

I stopped looking at times on any course other than a perfunctory glance at the clock on occasion as I headed out the door. After a couple years of doing that those 1:51 fifteen milers were going in 1:30-1:40. Again, that was never a goal. The races got faster as well. That was the goal, but the distance runs were at pretty much the same effort as they were when they took 1:50-2:00.

There definitely are "numbers" people in the sport. Bob Wildes is one of them. I've seen some of his logs and I'd have a very hard time being as precise as he is without getting myself into real trouble. I'd be racing my training constantly. But Bob doesn't seem compelled to attain any specific times as he does those precisely measured and timed runs. He merely notes what the numbers are and that works just fine. If you're a numbers guy you could do the same. Where you could have trouble is if you're like me and NEED to see improvement pretty quickly and will hammer yourself to get that improvement rather than letting it flow. And it may not be necessary to have that improvement in your training times.

Nobby or Kim will jump on this, but one of them, I think it was Nobby, told me that Bill Baillie always said that he never really got much faster than 7:00 pace or so on his long runs all through his career. So not everyone's pace naturally drops.

HRE:

I was gonna jump in but you've already covered it. Yes, I tried, as you did, to run a little bit faster each week and that nearly killed me too (that damn Arthur; how the heck he expect us to start out at 6:00 pace and progressively improve down to 5:55, 5:50 and so on!?). It was always an issue in my head until I sat down with Bill Baillie and told him my story. He simply said, matter-of-factly, "Well, it didn't work with me that way!" Was he a failure because he couldn't progress that way? Well, I guess he never won gold medal like Snell or Halberg did! But world records for 20,000m and an hour run as well as finishing 6th in the Olympics and winning NZ championship title in every distance from 800m up to 6 miles including cross country (didn't he, Kim?) ain't too shabby either.

mopak,

Any clues as to where one would find those posts? I spent some time looking at Coolrunning Australia and found some interesting things, but none of the posts you mention.

Lydiard preaches lots of running. His methods are hardly rocket science, yet so many other coaches want to make the simple art of running complex.

Do lots of miles, some fast, some slow. Then watch the results come.

Only one problem - no coach can remove the threat of injury, no matter how good they are.

Bob wrote, "For example, suppose you told your runner to do 20-400's in 65 seconds or so and you see that they become ragged after the 17th. That is the time to stop as the whole idea is to get the adaptation in the cells, which Lydiard referred to as getting the PH levels pulled down."

When I tell my Greater Boston athletes that we are going to run a certain length interval they ask, "How many?" They think I am being a wise-ass control freak when I reply, "One at a time."

Then I have to go into the spiel about "provoking the training response," then stopping before the "concentration camp" response.

Nobby, I agree from my experience that a runner should not eat during long training runs to "provoke the carbo storage response." But I wonder if anyone ever performed an experiment that might disprove that idea.

Tom

Tom:

I think that would be a question for Tinman...???

HRE find Keith's profile (he posts under his full name)and you'll be able to bring up his recent posts. I think there was some great stuff in one about threshold training. Sorry haven't time to try and search myself. Keith manages to explain Lydiard as well as anyone I've read or heard.

mopak wrote:

HRE find Keith's profile (he posts under his full name)and you'll be able to bring up his recent posts. I think there was some great stuff in one about threshold training. Sorry haven't time to try and search myself. Keith manages to explain Lydiard as well as anyone I've read or heard.

I (and I'm sure a lot of others)would appreciate it if anyone who finds this could provide a link.

Thanks!!!

Was this the thread?

"Threshold training during base building phase?"

http://www.coolrunning.com.au/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic

;f=33;t=000448#000005

Won't let me list the full address.

Keith's member number is 7166 for those who want to look up his recent posts to find the thread.

Interesting read.

I tried too hyena no luck, but some very informative posting by Mr. Livingston.