LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

I'm looking forward to the Legend race. Training is going well. Too bad it will not be the full original Waiatarua course, but it will have to do. I did read on the Legend website that Arthur approved the changes, so hopefully it is fairly representative.

Kim, not sure if I'll have time to make it to Rotorua, but I'll try. I certainly will be calling you, though. I arrive Auckland 30 Aug, leave 9 Sept. It would be great to meet you. I'll be seeing your old friend, Bill B and several other of Arthur's boys. Hope your knee is healing well.

-Mark

I was planning on attending one of the Lydiard clinics before he died. I was hoping to speak with him about a possible coaching situation. If any of the Lydiard disciple coaches out there would be interested in discussing some training with me, I would greatly appreciate it. Just drop me an email. Thank you.

I'd like to attemp to get back to at least somewhat close to the original question and I'd like your input, Kim. Someone, might have been Dr. Daniels himself, mentioned something about strengthening legs by introducing repeats earlier. When I visited Jeff Johnson, the founder of Nike Farm Team, who follows the Daniels' formula quite extensively, he told me that he one time tried to follow the Lydiard program backward, meaning he started with track workouts and moved on to distance work with his team, they had one of the best seasons with least injuries. That got me thinking...

Far too often people see the schedule in Lydiard's books and simply jump onto it without fully understanding what the actual content in the book. I have always liked the original "Run to the Top" and when you read it carefully, he started the whole program from cross country training. You will start running mileage at relatively slowly without much concern with the speed (LSD?) and move onto cross country schedule that involves some faster running and racing over uneven and undulating terrain. That, to me, would strengthen your legs generally. Particularly XC in NZ is generally much more like what XC is supposed to be; unlike what Arthur used to call "glorified road race" over relatively flat gold courses.

It takes certain development and maturity to handle full scale Lydiard program. As a matter of fact, some of the original runners told me that they used to do quite a bit of Race Week / Non-race Week schedules which Kim Stevenson shared with us earlier. Even though the program is based on relatively slow aerobic development, my understanding is that Lydiard did not shy away from faster running and more rigorous leg strengthening exercises such as hill exercises or cross country running in the early stage either.

Nobby,

excellent insight, just want to bump the thread and keep it alive

Nobby, thanks for saving me from myself !!!!!!!!

Cross Country in NZ is indeed totally different to say the USA. Glorified Road Races on Golf courses was my US College experience.

Cross Country makes you very "strong", particularly with the variation of the countryside and what is underfoot.

If you check some of the stuff I wrote about Jack Foster you may get an idea of what I am saying.

A typical cross country race (or even a run) here would incorporate maybe a Fast start on a smooth grass surface, moving to hills (up and down) and as what one humourous friend said "Lots of side hills to work the ankles" meaning having to run across the slope of a hill, maybe take in some mud (at least ankle deep !), some long grass, heaps of animal excrement and to top it off, half a dozen fences that are at least 4ft high.

If the body does'nt get a workout after that it never will !!!

Our cross country races can be held on a farm that has just had cattle grazing on it maybe hours before.

As a teenager I hated racing over some of our courses, but persisted because all the Coaches said "It will make you strong in the Track season !!"

I noted that "sprained ankles" were not as common as you may think. Ankle ligaments and "stabilising" muscles got excellent workouts and if you did have the misfortune of twisting your ankle it healed very quickly.

Hamstring injuries are virtually unheard of if you train and race over those surfaces.

Pace means nothing over good Cross country. If the country is tough you can't run fast. I remember running 50 mins for a 12k Cross Country which was all very steep hills, not fast I know but then Jack Foster did'nt break 45 minutes on the same course that day and was 'miles' ahead of us.

I still have vivid memories of my first 2 hour run over the Farmland near here. I was so exhausted I went to bed for the afternoon. However, a week later I was "flying", such was the effect.

I believe what it does (apart from the 'strength' factor ) is teaches you to relax and stop "fighting the terrain".

Jack Foster was an artist over rough country, he looked as though he was at one with the land and just (in his words)

"Flowed along".

All Arthur's athletes ran Cross Country races (extremely well) and if any of you are coming out here for the run on Sept 3rd, make sure you have a run on Cornwall Park in Auckland, that is where for many years the Auckland Cross Country champs were held. It is a public Park but also a fully operational farm.

Hope that helps what Nobby is saying.

"Run to the Top" is an awesome book , but was written with this country in mind. Our running "culture" is totally different to the US, so it is important that that is recognised.

PS : Check out the Jack Foster threads we were doing a few months ago.

The man was the epitome of what Arthur was trying to describe regarding Cross Country.

Kim, Nobby, jtupper, HRE --

Swell thread. I've been reading along and noted that tonight (after the WC and three thousand Webb threads) that this thread had passed back to page 3. So this is something of a bump.

Kim -- say hit to HRE when he gets out there (he and Nobby and I had lunch at Boston, had a swell time).

At the risk of bringing in an inappropriate suplementary question on page 12 of a thread: do you think that Daniels and Lydiard are all THAT markedly different from what Peter Coe did? I know folks stress Lydiard's mileage and Coe's speedwork, but from what I've read, even Coe emphasized quality basework (I think he would've approved of Daniels' avoidance of quality-junk) and he certainly utilized hills extesnively.

Thanks Spider, Not sure I can comment on the Coe Trainning,

Maybe someone like Tinman could jump in here.

Keep it rolling Team !

Spider,

I'm still following this thread. I'm in Perth now and will hit NZ in a week. Great place but you'd think Craig Mottram got stuck in the can and missed the race for all the attention he's gotten here.

That aside, I think there are more similarities than dissimilarities among Lydiard and Daniles and from what Arthur told me, what Coe did was not as different as people have been lead to believe.

I think that coaches and athletes are inclined to attribute their successes to whatever they've come to believe SHOULD account for their success and then explain their success in those terms, sort of minimizing other elements. I believe that there's actually been some sport psychology research done that corroborates this hypothesis, thought the article I'm thinking of is currently about 12,000 miles away.

Kim,

Scott Winton over Jono Wyatt? Who'd have thought that? And 30-13 over the Wallabies. Life must be good there at the moment.

From my understanding of Coe and Lydiard, they're not as different as many think. Most of the same elements are done in each of them. Even the periodization is somewhat similar as in Peter Coes book it shows the periods establish aerobic base followed by increasing intensity then harder tempo, and consolidate periods.

I think the major difference is that Coe seems to suggest almost year round anaerobic capacity training. Although the amount does vary with more done at the end. Also Coe's training seems to meld together the different systems, just in varying degrees throughout the year, while Lydiard seems to emphasize really working on each different system at different times throughout the season.

Besides that, Coe seems to have done a lot of training at LT (lactate threshold) which would be similar to Lydiards maximum aerobig effort, or high end aerobic runs.

Just my thoughts, they're pretty similar in that they hit on all the same systems, but the difference is the mixing of them. When they are done and how much is done seems to be the difference.

Rich (HRE), sjm -- good comments, and in keeping with what I've read (though I never quite plowed through all of Peter Coe's book). I never had five gears worth of speed myself, so I never worried too much about the fine points of Coe speedwork. I am sure that Seb Coe had an unusual gift of endurance for maintaining speed at the redline, but I always imagined that at that level he had to do more endurance work than was sometime let on. Kenny Moore alludes to it in his article on Coe (reprinted in Best Efforts).

Rich -- Enjoy Oz and NZ. How bad is winter down there?

Snookie wrote:

Who would you rather have as your coach Lydiard or Daniels, if you feel like you have to, please explain why...

actually i'd take mark wetmore over either. truly.

How do we compare Wetmore to Lydiard or Daniels out of a top DI college program context?

Tom

Kim --

Would you compare Kiwi-style cross country to Gaelic fell running? I've never competed in either, but it would be a lot easier to get some of the latter type of races started here in the American midwest.

Rich, I am not surprised by Winton over Wyatt. I maybe wrong but from my understanding of current Mountain running there are some "purses" involved. So I am wondering whether Jonathon is suffering from what Arthur called the "Brown envelope" syndrome. He has raced a lot over in the USA and Europe this year.

He got away with it last year to a certain extent (Faster Oly marathon)and then won the World Mountain title. He obviously plans to do the same this year as the Mountain titles are on his Home course.

I have never done a Fell Race but I would say the countryside would be similar. I believe a Fell Race tend to be quite long : ie 30k, Wheresas most if not all Cross Country Races here are standard International Distances.

Another aside : Cross Country is Suffering from the same "Politically correct" problem as Road races and are gradually moving to Public Parks. Luckily there are still quite a few around. We have an awesome one here called the "Foster/Smyth Shield". Named after Jack Foster and another runner called Colin Smyth (good buddy of Jack's)

10k of either steep uphill or down hill. Magnificent views from the top of the hills (if you are not too tired to enjoy them !!).

HRE downunder say:

>I think that coaches and athletes are inclined to attribute their successes to whatever they've come to believe SHOULD account for their success and then explain their success in those terms, sort of minimizing other elements.<

Rich,

I still have your Bill Adcocks book, sorry for the delay in getting that one back to you. It has made the rounds!

All due respect to jtupper, Arthur and all other "coaches" but in my view athletes like Adcocks, Hill, Bedford etc. were examples of the "experiment of one"

The best athletes are primarily responsible for themselves and Adcocks is a great example of that.

The more important aspect of becoming a greater runner does not lie in the detailed running program of one coach vs another. As you have observed there is always much more the same, no radical differences.

The important thing is to become inspired and that is what Adcocks is doing for other runners. Providing a template.

I agree with you whole heartedly. Great athletes are the result of great talent, with great motivation, getting into an environment that allows their potential to be realized. Succesful athletes make some coaches look pretty good, and someimtes some great coaches never get realized because they never got one of those great talents to work with, but they did wonders in improving the performance of some lesser-talented runners.

wetmore boys! c'mon! be real!

Hodgie,

I've got a post on the thread about the anniversary of Percy Cerutty's death (pretty appropriate thing to do from Down Under.) I've always thought that Cerutty was more motivator than technician and on thinking about Arthur, I've concluded that he too was at least as much a motivator as technician. Essentially, I'm saying that you're dead right. Succeeding as a runner is more about spirit and desire and passion than about how fast or slow you should run for Thursday's mile reps. If you look at the training of a lot of the successful guys from the past, Adcocks is a good example, it's missing so many of the elements we "know" you need to include. And yet most of today's top guys would kill for Adcocks's performances.

Anyway mate, happy birthday and no worries about the book. She'll come right. (That's my attempt at going local.)

Spider,

It's a big continent. We had a stopover in Melbourne and learned that they'd had snow earlier in the day for the first time in 19 years. Perth is a bit more northerly and sits by a warm ocean current (can't think of the name.) It's great weatherwise, sort of like a New England October minus the colors. It's been in the 60s most days. We hit the 70s once, I think. The nights are cool and it's pretty dry, though we did have a bit of rain two days ago. Nice break from the stickiness we had before I left.