LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

Kim,

If Daniels has one doing 7:00 as her "easy" pace, what kind of pace would go into your weekly schedule (except for Wednesday, which would be quicker)?

I have just one problem with the Lydiardists on this thread, which is that you guys just don't realize how hard runners have to train to get anywhere near their potential.

The Africans are much faster runners because they train harder. The Lydiardists constantly attempt to downplay the role and importance of intensity in training in their attempst to assert that their training ideas are better than others.

Lots of Americans could break 27 minutes for 10000m if they actually trained for it. Let me put it this way, if you can comfortably do 12x400 in 60 seconds with 60 seconds recovery, then why not aim for 10x1000m in 2.40 with 60 seconds recovery? Why are sessions like this considered to be too hard for young Americans?

wellnow,

You cannot put the cart before the horse. How many runners from any country can do the workout you propose? How often do they do it? You cannot have a runner who cannot run under 4:10 for the mile do a workout like that. You need to progress. You have to have runners run where they are today and maximize that. That is true for ANY systematic approach to training. You stress and recover. All Lydiard's system is, is a system that has proven to get results. Anyone can point to one workout and say "do this and you will run well". It takes time and training to maximize any runner. Lydiardism is just that, there are no short cuts.

Glenn

Glenn, what are you talking about, putting the cart before the horse?

The example I gave is of a runner who has comfortably run 12x400 in 60

He has the potential to run under 27, but because he is coached by a small minded man who is fearful of African domination, genetics blah blah blah..... he will never get anywhere near his true potential.

That is the problem with the Lydiardists on this thread:

lack of ambition.

I'm glad Nic Bideau doesn't think that way.

wellnow wrote:

I'm glad Nic Bideau doesn't think that way.

I have NO idea where you're coming from. Are you saying us Lydiardites (or whatever you want to call us) lack ambition when in fact we always look into fulfilling potnetial of the athlete in 5, 6, 7-year long term principles while most American runners and coaches look at quick fix and high school regional and state meet at best? And we go out and tell people to run 100 miles a week and we get criticized it's too much??? If you think you can go out and run 12X400 in 60 seconds with 60 seconds jog recovery and train to break 27 minutes for 10k, go ahead and do it. No one will stop you. We just don't believe that's the way to go about.

You do realize, however, that Nic Beideau is Lydiardite and doing Lydiard type program all along and he's the advisory board for Lydiard Foundation?

And for the record, becuase sometimes it seems some peolpe get upset or "hurt" with this tone of mine, I'm not "blowing up"; I'm simply stating my opinion as I'm sure others would.

Wellnow,

Have you read any of the Lydiard books or information that is widely available?

You must be missing some information. The Lydiard type of training is based on basic physiological fact.

When you get down to peaking for a race and you have sufficient base and properly went through the hill phase etc, the intensity really looks daunting, if you ask me.

He just does not prescribe anaerobic work while you are conditioning (with long miles at the top of your aerobic capacity). BECAUSE anaerobic work at the wrong time can bring down your cardio development. This does not mean the 10 milers and 22 milers are easy easy miles, they are quite steady/hard.

So what this bulls..t about lack of ambition?

Take a person from ANY country and have them run to school and back several miles and or walk very fast to school and back, then to friend's places and have them play soccer and do chores on foot every day, for their entire existance. Let's say they grow up at elevation...maybe...maybe not. Now their weight is low throughout their life with fantastic natural diet.

Then imagine this same person turns out to love running and loves competing....over their first 15-20 years of life he/she have built a big heart, capillary bed development and muscular development for ....wait for it....running.

Then recruit them, train them, watch them fly.

Or let's take an American kid who gets a ride to school everyday after eating pop tarts or fibreless, refined carb/sugary breakfast. Have them very slowly ride a bike to their friend's, stopping at 7/11 for a slurpee and snickers.

They take out the garbage and maybe vacuum their room. The kid grows up with a coefficient of video control reflex and opposable thumbs, conditioned well enough to fight a small war from an armchair.

Have this kid run for the bus...one block...

This person will HATE the idea of running - it hurts.

You cannot take a runner with no or moderate conditioning and throw them into endless speed work and expect them to run as well as they could if they followed the physiogical path that Lydiard so simply lays out.

Any runner who has run well, has whether they recognize it or not, developed a well conditioned cardio system first.

On purpose or by lifestyle.

That schedule was an "overview" of a typical week. Sometimes it was done to the letter others not.

As for pace of the runs. I would not have had a clue.

We discussed it at times and settled on 7 min miles. But when you are out in the dark on a very hilly country dirt road, no lights in VERY cold temps you are not thinking about pace.

But has been said before. The more we did those runs the easier they became and the quicker we did them. It was the time on our feet that counted.

At that time I ran that schedule I lived in a "House of runners" so we did much of that work together. All of us had jobs so no one was "Fresh" ready to run because they had had an easy day of work.

Wednesdays were always fun and pace varied according to who felt good and was ready to push the pace at times and also (Most of the time) who had the best dirty joke (usually picked up at work) that had us laughing so much we would be doubled over so the story teller would take off.

Some of the famous names in our Running History had this habit of telling jokes as we got to the tough part of a big hill. The punch line usually came as you were gasping for breath. Needless to say you did get not to the top before them.

Jack Foster was a classic at that.

Some of us carried that tradition on (and still do !)

Nowdays with my own young athletes I quite often say we are doing a run at "my pace". What that is I would not have clue. But I am 58 they are 16 -17. But I have never had a complaint. If I feel I am holding them back I let go the reins but always we finish at 'my pace".

I am talking our longer runs here, not faster work.

Hope this helps.

Runit; Interesting comment on the hills of the East side of the Hudson River. I have run that area albeit 30 years ago and absolutely loved it. If I ever came back I would be a starter for a run.

However, and don't take this as an insult but when we Kiwis talk hills we are talking hills that can be MILES long and steep. I lived in the Waitakere Hills that Arthur made famous. Where my parents lived the only flat area was the half mile part of the road outside their house, the rest was hills.

A 10 mile run could be measured in thousands of feet climbed (and descended).

Other parts of NZ have hills that make the Waitakere's feel like a flat run.

Where I live now I have 2 Hill runs that are a 20 minute run from my house that are 4 miles long and climb at least 1000ft in the process. One has a road called (Obviously !!) Hill Road !!.

Jack Foster ran both on a reasonably regular basis.

BTW : I love New York. Also had some awesome runs in Central Park.

Is the saying still around ; "The Bronx is up and the Battery down?"

Cheers

wellnow,

being able to run 12 x 400 in 60 with 60 seconds rest does not equate to a sub 27 minute 10 km. I have known runners who did not do enough endurance work and because of their 47 second 400 speed could run that workout in their dreams. However they could not string together 4 of them and run a 4 minute mile. As I said, one workout does not make a program or a runner. Putting the cart before the horse, to me, means that you give a runner workouts from some article that indicated ""so-and-so", during his build-up to his 26:XX performance ran 10 x 1 km in 2:40 with a 60 second recovery". It does not tell how he went from being a 28 minute runner to sub-27, just what he did when he was already there. As a coach you get the athlete where he is and take him to his best, you work at it, you do not give a 29 minute 21 year old 10 km runner that workout and expect him to run sub 27. That is what I meant cart (this specific workout) before the horse (runner who has the potential to run sub 27 but is currently at 29) because it will do more damage than good.

Good discussion. You just need to be open to the reason the Lydiard approach works is because it is VERY flexible and can take runners to the top. Viren did that with 4 Olympic golds and world records to boot.

Glenn

Good stuff Wet Coast. I am having a discussion with some parents right now along similar line about basic fitness. NZ is going the same way as the US !!. Playstation rules in many houses !!!

Kim Stevenson wrote:

Good stuff Wet Coast. I am having a discussion with some parents right now along similar line about basic fitness. NZ is going the same way as the US !!. Playstation rules in many houses !!!

Dont let them discover the xbox!

In "Train Hard, Win Easy" some Kenyan coach says that if people follow his workouts they can become world class runners. His first one is 4x800 in 1:56-2:00. Well, if you can run that workout you're pretty close to world class anyhow. The question becomes how you get good enough to run 4x800 in 1:56-2:00.

I think that's an example of putting the cart before the horse. If you start doing sessions of 4x800 thinking you'll eventually do those 1:56-2:00 sessions and ignore other sorts of sessions you'll likely never get there or if you do it'll be a lifetime accomplishment that never translates to racing at that level.

Lydiard understood that. Many don't, especially people who espouse sessions like 12x400 in 60 as some sort of panacea. There's a time for that sort of session. I haven't seen evidence thought that Mottram does many of them and as Nobby said, Bideau is a Lydiard guy.

I think you shy away from prescrbing the tough sessions that are necessary for a young athlete to reach their potential. I doubt if you even believe like I do that a lot of young Americans can break 27.

Yes I know about Nic Bideau being a Lydiardite, why do you think I mentioned him in my post.

Wet Coast, I agree with most of what you say apart from the stuff about "anerobic" work. This is bad science. What Lydiard refered to as anaerobic is actually completely aerobic, that is to say Lactate is an aerobic fuel.

It was not Lydiard's fault that this physiological misconception came about, because until recently the research was very poor in this field of physiology, and based on very old ideas which are still repeated in most textbooks.

[quote]wellnow wrote:

I think you shy away from prescrbing the tough sessions that are necessary for a young athlete to reach their potential. I doubt if you even believe like I do that a lot of young Americans can break 27.

after watching american "lydiardites" apply their understanding of arthur's methods at the college level i believe their understanding of his method causes overtraining/overcoaching from their own poorly managed "tough sessions" you imply are needed.

if anything can be learned, simply running mileage, hills and then using the american understanding of interval sessions, coaches still ask and impose ridiculous sessions in the name of "toughening" their athletes. lydiard's friend, bill bowerman, would impose modestly hard sessions AND emphasize recovery the next few days. this more often than not is still lost in the "american system" if there is any such system at all.

Glenn, if a young endurance runner can run 12x400 in 60 with 60 rest and still recover in 2 days, wouldnt you expect that he can run 12x 800 in 2.08 with the same recovery very soon after. That is 26.40 pace for 10000m

It only seems ridiculous to those who lack vision and awareness.

To run the first session, the 400's the athlete has to be in awesome shape, not someone who can run a 47 second 400, probably around a 51 but with good endurance.

That I see in a lot of young athletes....awesome fitness. They need some guidance to believe that they can extend their natural endurance. They will only get that guidance from a very small number of coaches.

This threat gets better and better. I'm an ultra runner now, concentrating on 50k's and 50 milers. The amazing thing is this: I still do intervals and tempo runs just not as fast as previously. Most of my long runs are between 4 - 8 hours on extremely hilly courses- meaning some courses have climbed for over an hour - one particular run was 22 miles and took me 5 hours to complete - alebit it had 8,000ft of climb and descent. I jumped into some road races a couple of weeks ago. One particular race runs to the top of a mountain 5700ft high. It climbs 2000ft in 5 miles. I ran 35:40 and amazed myself that I finished very close behind some very good road runners - two in particular running 2:19 marathon and a 2:22 marathon less than 8 years ago. The next day I ran a road mile for the heck of it "not really in any mode of training, down season for now" and ran a 4:52.9 (nothing fast except strides); the next day ran an 8k race at night -28:33 - a PR. The point is, I am strong as an ox due to the aerobic work I am doing in ultras. My leg speed has always been there - 53.9 440 speed. I just never had the endurance to improve on it, the result is that I keep improving year after year. My mile time was a tad slow, but given the fact what I am racing I was quite pleased with it and it correlates well with the 8k time the next evening on tired legs.

Nick

You just don´t get it. The question, like the previous posters said, is how do you get somebody to be able to do a session like 12x800 in 2,08. You can have young runners running 12x800 weekly for years and they won´t become top runners because they don´t have the correct background training. It wasn´t monster interval sessions in their teens that made El G, Geb etc. world class, it was patient, long-term, well-planned training.

At the risk of dropping myself right in it I caught on to the the words of well now of "intensity" addressing the 'How do you get the athlete to the point of .. ".

Gapa, I would not have a young athlete doing workout like 12X800m. What I would do is build quietly towards that point. The most my kids do would be 6. (If I scheduled that workout)

Sorry I am jumping around here as thought s come into my head.

Okay, regarding the Intensity. I found (from personal esperience) that as I maintained my consistency over a long period of time the "Intensity" level (if you want to call it that) of runs increased accordingly.

I mentioned waaay back in the thread about one particular long run I did. I ran the 22 miles at 2:40 Marathon pace.

I was the least talented and had the worst PR's of any athlete in that group (In fact I was the only one who had not represented NZ).

What I found though, is I ran that "easily" and my recovery was fine. The next day I trained as though I had only had a jog the day before.

This was not one of those "out of the bag" runs it was common place.

My point here is the training (In this case the long runs)are as Intense as the condition of the athletes allows.

Peter Snell describes his 100mpw as he conditioned himself for Tokyo.

To quote " I don't think I ever ran faster than 6 minute miles,although my speed increased naturally as I got fitter and stronger. At first I took 1:45 for 15 miles. After 6 weeks I ran 15 in 1:30 and 18 in 1:52. I cut my Waiatarua from 2:25 to 2:15, with the odd one in 2:12. I rarely ran 2 hard sessions together. i would run 6 minut miles one night and 7 min miles the next to make sure I was in fact, building up and not draining out."

I know most of the areas that Peter did that training and as casual as that training sounds I can tell you that with the terrain involved the 6 minute miles would translate to a hell of a lot quicker if it was on flat areas.

As for those Waiatarua times that 2:12 is still amongst the fastest. The only ones quicker on that course were our top marathon runners of the time.

Unfortunately those times will never be produced on that course again. It would be impossible with the traffic loads on those roads.

Finally, a bit about those 12X800m. I was told by some guys who were there that "Back in the day" Arthur was doing some sessions with the guys of 8 to 10 X 800m.

From what I was told they were knocking them out around the 2:08-10 mark.

One session Peter Snell was struggling with said work and copped a bit of 'niggling' from the younger guys in the group. Nothing was said from Peter's side.

A week later the workout was on the cards again, everyone was duly cranking out the reps.

It came to the last one. Peter stepped up to the line and ran it in 1:42. Waited for the others to arrive and said something along the lines of "Who's struggling now"

That workout had to be done on a road as there was the tracks were too soft (All grass in those days).

The section of road Arthur did this on was slightly down hill as well.

Was that Intense enough !!!!

I have probably 'raved' on here and not sure I have made any sense but what the hell ! Keep this going team !!