LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

wowowowowow wrote:

I just finish reading the whole thread. If only all of the threads have the quality like this.

Haha, brave! I feel like you've just returned from a great journey; 130 pages is intimidating.

What did you learn? Anything change your mind, better shape your understanding? Do share!

Spent the last month (probably a little more than a month) reading this thread, well worth a read. A lot of hidden gems on here that should be dedicated to their own thread.

I just finished reading the entire thing too. The last 10 pages or so were a turn off but the rest is pure gold. A shame that Nobby doesn't post here anymore.

Snookie wrote:

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

Well......I was close to get Lydiard to be my coach. But after my own running career I took the best from Daniels, the exact paces, and the best from Lydiard , the LSD aerobic power ( long steady distance) and mixed them into my own system and created a more effective system than both of them.

Continuing the discussion..

1) I noticed that in the original schedules there were certain days in the conditioning phase allotted for 1/4 effort, certain days for 1/2 effort etc...and generally speaking the shorter the distance the higher the effort (the long run seems to be the exception) but is that just a guideline? If you run by feel then you could move those ratios around? Maybe one week you do them all at 1/4 or 1/2 effort for example?

2) I am leaning towards increasing the volume over several cycles gradually until I get to 10 + hours of running per week and until then I wouldn’t mess with steady state to avoid excess load. Sound reasonable?

3) I do speed development (in the form of strides) during the conditioning phase but I avoid fartlek though Arthur included those in the original schedule. I use fartlek to transition from hill phase to anaerobic phase.

4) I am wondering if anyone had tried flipping the pyramid for marathon training? In other words, integration before the anaerobic repetitions? I don’t know why intuitively that makes sense to me.

SUPERIOR COACH JS wrote:

Snookie wrote:

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

Well......I was close to get Lydiard to be my coach. But after my own running career I took the best from Daniels, the exact paces, and the best from Lydiard , the LSD aerobic power ( long steady distance) and mixed them into my own system and created a more effective system than both of them.

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And then I came along, and took the best from Lydiard, Daniels, and you. I mixed them into my own system, and created an even more effective training program.

The problem I have with Lydiard is that 10 hours of running per week isn’t enough volume for an amateur marathoner. Why cap the long run at 2.5 hours for someone who has to be out there for 4 hours or more on race day?

wang xu wrote:

The problem I have with Lydiard is that 10 hours of running per week isn’t enough volume for an amateur marathoner. Why cap the long run at 2.5 hours for someone who has to be out there for 4 hours or more on race day?

I don't know how much you know about Lydiard's coaching but he had gotten loads of people around Auckland into jogging. These people were not athletes before they began. They were mostly older. Halberg's father was one of them. Some had physical problems, a lot had taken up jogging after having heart attacks. This was no physical elite. Several of them decided to run marathons. Complete information on this may be forever lost to time but when Nobby (who you're responding to and who hasn't posted here in years) and I went looking to see what sorts of times these joggers managed when they ran marathons the slowest we could find was 3:58 and change.

So the quickest answer to your question might be "because it worked." A more detailed answer is that Arthur's original schedules had people running for mileage and the long run was 20-22 miles. That schedule created with national and international caliber runners or at least decent "club runners" to use a Kiwi term, in mind, people who could cover that kind of distance in two to two and half hours. As running became popular and slower people discovered and used Arthur's training some would tell him how they liked his training but it was taking them vast amounts of time to cover the miles (because they were not able to run nearly as fast) and the amount of time was a problem for them.

Remember that Arthur had experimented with almost anything you could think of and had found that a long run of two to two and half hours had given him his best results. He chose the original 22 mile course he used for long runs not because it was 22 miles but because he was looking for a course that would take two to two and a half hours to run. When he heard that people using his training were taking three and four hours to finish their long runs he decided it was counterproductive to have people running for such excessive lengths of time so he re-did his schedules and prescribed running for time rather than distance.

I doubt that many people needing four hours to run marathons are putting in anything very close to ten hours a week of training a week unless they're fairly old or have some sort of disability. You probably could run well under four hours if you were training ten hours a week and did no long runs at all.

There are plenty of 4+ hour marathoners who train 10 hours per week and yet these people will not be able to “race” a marathon at a steady speed if they have never even been on their feet for that long. Lydiard has the right idea with his elites but is ignoring the muscular and fuel utilization demands of the runner is who trying to race at their top end for 4 hours. Local muscle fatigue and hitting the wall are very real in these situations. These are runners who are not as genetically gifted but they are past the point of just trying to finish a marathon.

I'd like some documentation, details, and demographics of the many runners who train for ten or more ours a week and can't run at least four hours. A definition of "many" in terms of percentage would be useful too. I'm not going to debate about straw men.

Snookie wrote:

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

Lydiard or Daniels? Neither. I had chosen JS.

Starting with my local club where I coach...in a program of about 30 marathoners we have 1/3 who are sufficiently motivated to train 10 hours per week and run in the 4 hour range

10 hours when you are running 11-12 minute miles isn’t that much.

So about 55 miles per week on the high end and could be broken down like this

M 5

T 8

W 10

R 8

F 5

Sa 8

Su 12

You can’t go much further than 12 miles at that pace without going over the 2-2.5 hour limit

wang xu wrote:

Starting with my local club where I coach...in a program of about 30 marathoners we have 1/3 who are sufficiently motivated to train 10 hours per week and run in the 4 hour range

10 hours when you are running 11-12 minute miles isn’t that much.

So about 55 miles per week on the high end and could be broken down like this

M 5

T 8

W 10

R 8

F 5

Sa 8

Su 12

You can’t go much further than 12 miles at that pace without going over the 2-2.5 hour limit

Sufficiently motivated to run ten hours a week is not the same as running ten hours a week, but let's assume that's what they're doing. I can't ell if the schedule you've put there is what the runners are doing or what they'd be doing if they limited their runs to 2.5 hours. But the problem I see, in terms of getting them under four hours, is the 11-12 minute mile pace. If they're doing long runs at that pace they are limiting themselves. Their paces should be getting faster, naturally, not forced to be faster. Four hour runs at that kind of paces are not going to be nearly as helpful as two plus hour runs 2-3 minutes per mile faster. If they keep the runs to 2.5 hours their paces are much more likely to pick up.

It's rare today to find anyone training ten hours a week among recreational runners. Unless these folks are fairly old, have some sort of physical issue, or just don't push themselves when they race, they should be faster on that much running. Maybe there is an outlier, the flip side of runners who run under 2:20 on five hours or less a week, but if you've got thirty people running that slowly on that amount of training there's something really wrong with their training.

Correction.."If you've got TEN people running that slowly..."

HRE,

I think you underestimate the number of people out there training their butts off for rather “mediocre” times.

Take the 4:30 marathoners that I see who are training 55mpw. Their race pace is 10:20/mile.

It’s not unreasonable for these people to be logging 11-12 minute miles in base training based on their fitness.

If we go by the Lydiard 10-hour rule or limit their long runs to 2.5 hours, there is no way we can adequately prepare them for the specificity of the marathon distance.

I’m a Lydiard fan. I love that in some of the schedules he has runners doing a full marathon time trial four weeks before the goal race! But that was labeled for the “experienced” marathoner

I see a general dismissive attitude in Lydiard that quite frankly is upsetting to me. He was a great coach no doubt and took a great interest in helping people who were slow but he didn’t give them the training that would allow them to reach their potential. The attitude seems to be well...you’re just a fun runner....here are your 10 hours of running because that’s all you can handle!

I’d argue that these 4.5 hour runner marathoners need to train by distance, not by time. At the very least (if not 100mpw schedule) give them 3-4 hour long runs for crying out loud. They can handle that and they need that stimulus of their going to approach the marathon with any sort of physical and mental preparedness.

We tend to forget just how slow the average runner is out there even with good training. Just because sub-3 hours is slow by LR standards we cannot assume that with the right training everyone will naturally get faster and start running 10 hours per week at sub-10 or sub-9 minute pace.

I agree that that there are a whole raft of new runners who are only doing 11-12 min miles. It is hard to train them for a marathon. Really they need to spend time working on their speed first but often these are people who won't be coming back to the marathon.

But the answer is not to give them 3.5 -4 hrs runs. I've watched lots of these runners following training plans where they're building up to the Magic20 mile run because that's what Lydiard's elites did. And what happens is they break their bodies down. They get demotivated. They begin to dread the next Sunday long run, so they stop running during the week to conserve their energy for it. Then on race day, they run five hours and end up having to walk sections of it anyway.

Hanson's Marathon Method has a whole section on Long Runs and comparing recommendations of different coaches. Their view is to build Cumulative Fatigue through the week so that a Sunday long run of 16 miles is simulating the last miles of the marathon, not the fresh legged opening miles.

wang xu wrote:

...

I’d argue that these 4.5 hour runner marathoners need to train by distance, not by time. At the very least (if not 100mpw schedule) give them 3-4 hour long runs for crying out loud. They can handle that and they need that stimulus of their going to approach the marathon with any sort of physical and mental preparedness.

....

A 4hr long run! that sure will give them a stimulus, just perhaps not a good a one. I see your logic but can't agree, for one thing if one is going to take over 4.5 hours to do a marathon i'd rather just not do one until your fit enough to do it quicker, there is really no excuse not to train properly, i.e. long runs max 2hr-2.hrs max and just be patient and wait until your at least capable fitness wise of doing 4hr time or less.

wang xu wrote:Take the 4:30 marathoners that I see who are training 55mpw. Their race pace is 10:20/mile.

I missed this line.

If they're doing 55mpw and only running that fast there is something seriously wrong with their training plans.

Some good points from you! :) I`m also the coach that sets the limit for the specific long run to be at most 2 hours 40 min even for the slower runners when it comes to the marathon. When it`s time for the marathon race the runner will be more rested and loaded than normal at the training runs and therefore will manage to run 3-4 hours with more energy and power.

- The Wizard -