In those days most of us did intervals for days on end and also tossed in some decent volume as well and I can't recall injuries being more of a problem than they are now. Not sure if you're commenting on Snell's schedule or Halberg's, but a lot of the reps are not at anything close to killer speeds so it doesn't seem so amazing that they generally stayed healthy.
Mo'pak, that's great. Thanks!
It would have been interesting to see this training in Lydiard's books, instead of what he actually put in them.
Isn't the training representative of Lydiard's "sharpening/competition phases". In the schedules in the books, these phases have a lot of interval workouts each week. It is before these phases that the scehdules have the steady aerobic mileage and hill phases that many tend to associate with 'Lydiard training'.
revisionist history wrote:
It would have been interesting to see this training in Lydiard's books, instead of what he actually put in them.
You may have read this here before, but Lydiard did not want to put schedules in the books. The publishers insisted and so he came up with samples of what seemed representative of what his guys did.
I'm with you, it would be great to have samples of each of his guys did but Arthur didn't want people blindly mimicing schedules thinking this was what they HAD to do. Of course they did anyway.
Fred Savage wrote:
This is sick. His weekly schedule is pretty much doing intervals (or occasional 3 mile tempo) for 5 days in a row, 22 mile long run on Waiatarua, then a "rest day" of one hour easy (probably about 10 miles at his easy pace). If you add in the five miles every morning he's still got to be around 80 mpw. How many of us could do that kind of volume with that intensity without getting injured?
Sadly, Lydiard will only be known for 100 miles per week, but he was much more than that.
Arthur was a master of peaking his runners. He should be known for his "periodization"....not his 100 miles per week.
In his 3rd & final periodization there were a lot of 3 mile tempos, and his most overlooked gem....the mile of "fifties".
You won't see many 20 X 400 either.
His "coaching" genius was Barry Magee; not Snell or Halberg.
revisionist history wrote:
It would have been interesting to see this training in Lydiard's books, instead of what he actually put in them.
It was written in this fashion in the original publications.
As HRE mentions, this period of training was a period of time prior to and during the early competition phase of training.
What led up to it....3 months of aerobic training and 6 weeks of hill training....was just as, if not more, important to Lydiard. Two of the most common misconceptions regarding Lydiard would be the aerobic sessions as being LSD and the hill training which some forget about completely.
As to whether he published this type of information, in the book "Run, Run, Run" which was edited by Fred Wilt, the schedules are there. I think they were also included in "Run to the Top" and in a pamphlet type which was titled "Arthur Lydiard's Running Training Schedules". For some reason, years later, Lydiard did not include the sharpening phase demonstrated as quite as severe as what was put out there early.
As HRE mentions, this period of training was a period of time prior to and during the early competition phase of training.
What led up to it....3 months of aerobic training and 6 weeks of hill training....was just as, if not more, important to Lydiard. Two of the most common misconceptions regarding Lydiard would be the aerobic sessions as being LSD and the hill training which some forget about completely.
As to whether he published this type of information, in the book "Run, Run, Run" which was edited by Fred Wilt, the schedules are there. I think they were also included in "Run to the Top" and in a pamphlet type which was titled "Arthur Lydiard's Running Training Schedules". For some reason, years later, Lydiard did not include the sharpening phase demonstrated as quite as severe as what was put out there early.
HRE wrote:
revisionist history wrote:It would have been interesting to see this training in Lydiard's books, instead of what he actually put in them.
You may have read this here before, but Lydiard did not want to put schedules in the books. The publishers insisted and so he came up with samples of what seemed representative of what his guys did.
I'm with you, it would be great to have samples of each of his guys did but Arthur didn't want people blindly mimicing schedules thinking this was what they HAD to do. Of course they did anyway.
When I asked Fred Foot why the training schedules he had given to Fred Wilt for Bruce Kidd were so fast he said that they were those for next year. I take training schedules with a grain of salt unless they were taken directly from a training log and had been recorded on the day the workout was completed.
I saw that 1964 Tokyo 800 meter race. My team mate Bill Crothers was second. Our Club did mostly intervals too with some hills in the spring and fall. Bill thought of himself as a sprinter, especially before he started training under Coach Foot. That Snell/Crothers Olympic race seems to be an example of strength verses speed. Bill ran a distance of 10 miles once in his life and had monthly mileage of 40 miles or less but he ran 21.8 for 220, 46.2 for 440 and only 4:02.4 for a mile. To beat Crothers, Snell had to be at his peak.
What's even more amazing for me is that he was 5'10" and >170lbs with 16" calves and size 13 feet (supposedly).There is this quote from Snell when he set the mile world record (3:54.4) that is just fascinating, considering that at the time, he hadn't even broken 4 minutes for the mile yet: "I found myself running in complete freedom from restraint," he told Gilmour. "I was holding nothing back and I don't think I've ever felt such a glorious feeling of strength and speed without strain as I did during that final exhilarating 300 yards. I knew I must be well within four minutes as I raced the last curve, I straightened, heard for the first time the rising roar of the crowd and kept on driving. Still, there was no conscious effort and I flew through the tape in full free flight.."Yeah, apparently, you don't need drugs to set a mile world record 7 seconds better than your previous best and have it seem effortless.
Fred Savage wrote:
This is sick. His weekly schedule is pretty much doing intervals (or occasional 3 mile tempo) for 5 days in a row, 22 mile long run on Waiatarua, then a "rest day" of one hour easy (probably about 10 miles at his easy pace). If you add in the five miles every morning he's still got to be around 80 mpw. How many of us could do that kind of volume with that intensity without getting injured?
Forgot this gem (after his mile WR / 7 sec PR): Years later, Snell admitted to Jim Denison that his WR time had “shocked” him. Surprisingly, he went on to say that he was not altogether pleased with his effort: “It was unfortunate that I wasn’t more conscious of working hard and pushing the pace in that race because I think I could have run even faster. I had way too much energy left at the finish.”
kanny wrote:
Forgot this gem (after his mile WR / 7 sec PR): Years later, Snell admitted to Jim Denison that his WR time had “shocked” him. Surprisingly, he went on to say that he was not altogether pleased with his effort: “It was unfortunate that I wasn’t more conscious of working hard and pushing the pace in that race because I think I could have run even faster. I had way too much energy left at the finish.”
snell and the mile was a disaster in terms of getting it vaguely right, apart from championships where he was obviously ready. good on coach and athlete.
on the other hand, you have a 144 guy on grass, and capable of running cross country which means a 350 mile is a lock.
today, this would never happen, he'd have a 329 in monaco off the 144 grass and aerobic training.
Seriously running 22miles a day after doing 20 x 440s, wow.
Joe Binks wrote:
Taken from Lydiard’s training diaries just after the Games ended.
October
1st - 2 hour run - strong and even
2nd - 4 times 440
3rd - 6 times 880 - half effort - av 2m5s
4th - 1 mile - 4m2s
5th - 10 times 220 stride outs
6th - Sprint training over 150yds
7th - 800mts fast - 1.47.1
So basically, the idea that 'no more than 1/3 of your weekly mileage in your long run' was invented after Lydiard?
HRE wrote:
In those days most of us did intervals for days on end and also tossed in some decent volume as well and I can't recall injuries being more of a problem than they are now. Not sure if you're commenting on Snell's schedule or Halberg's, but a lot of the reps are not at anything close to killer speeds so it doesn't seem so amazing that they generally stayed healthy.
Mo'pak, that's great. Thanks!
True. And often after years of such training you might see a real breakthrough run even from a 'less' talented runner. Injuries do happen whenever you are pushing that hard but simply something to be endured. Only later did it occur to me that it helped us mentally accept the pain and push it down a notch.
I may not understand what you're saying correctly, I'm not sure I've even heard of that "invention," but I think you're referring to the length of the two hour run listed here relative to the volume for the rest of the week(?) If so, remember that Lydiard's guys did different amounts and kinds of running at different times of the year. But the long run, 90-150 minutes was pretty much ALWAYS included. And they were all well adapted for doing it because they had the base phase where they developed the endurance for such runs. That endurance didn't just go away. So if they moved into a phase where they were maybe just running a few miles on the other days they were capable of doing long runs which were in the mix to prevent loss of aerobic conditioning too quickly.
The other thing worth mentioning here is that when you read the schedules that Arthur published you are only reading what was done in the main session. He rarely mentioned the "supplemental runs." But Barry Magee told me that when they were in the interval or racing coordination phases they kept doing those runs even though the runs don't show up in print. He told me that he, Magee, usually ran for about an hour in the morning when he was in those phases. That's what Barry did so I can't speak for Snell. But Barry used the word "they" when he told me this so while I can't say definitely if Snell was doing anything like that when he was on this schedule, it's likely that there was more mileage involved than is showing here.
And if that's not what you're referring to, well, never mind.
Coevett wrote:
So basically, the idea that 'no more than 1/3 of your weekly mileage in your long run' was invented after Lydiard?
That's a bunch of nonsense Americans invented. Lydiard long run was based off of time due to get the body to be burning fuel more efficiently and to convert fast twitch muscle fibers to take a more slow twitch form.
might be wejo wrote:
Dude ran 1:44.3
on grass. Grass.
Might be ~1:42.8 on today’s mondo carpets
yyy wrote:
given the crappy shoes and tracks at the time, his
winning times are equivalent to 1:42 and 3:32, respectively.
Thanks for sharing!
He was WR holder at 800m, 880yd, 1000m, and Mile (twice). He was Olympic champ three times.
With the same "benefits" that those in the '90s enjoyed, he would have run 1:41.xx / 2:12.xx / 3:27.xx / 3:44yd / 4:48 2k.
Every middle-distance WR-holder and Olympic champion from the last 60 years would have if they had the right drug benefits that they had in the 1990s and beyond. That is why the 1000m, 1500m, Mile, 2k, 3k and 2M WRs have not been beaten in 20 years. It is not because the runners from 1997-99 just happened to be the best in the history of the world.
“August
10th - 20 times 220 Av 27.45
11th - 3 miles - 14.47.6
12th - 660 - 1m27s 100yds 11s times 2”
Wow that is a lot of hard running, days in a row.