running at Aerobic capacity (Lydiard stuff)

Finally, Pete, I found the question.

Let me tell you this. If you can ever get a dyed in the wool Lydiard person to talk with you about specific paces or heart rates, you know that you're not talking with a dyed in the wool Lydiard person. It really is something you're supposed to learn to feel and this answer will be pretty long.

Ron Daws did a lot of his distance work at around a 7:00 pace. So, I'm told, did Bill Baillie. Peter Snell told me that at the start of his build up phase he'd do the 22 miler at around a 7:00 pace early in the year (on a very hilly course) and work down to a bit above 6:00 at the end of the phase. The shorter runs were a "bit" faster he said, mentioning that by the end of the build up he'd be doing 10-12 milers at about a 5:30 pace. Peter actually believes that once you're running much slower than 7:00s the usefulness of the run declines, but that's Peter, not Arthur. Jeff Julian did a lot at 6:30-7:00 pace, but Mike Ryan (not to be confused with Kevin Ryan) was evidently below 6:00 pace much of the time. But before you wed yourself to any of those paces, remember that all of those guys were world class runners capable of going much faster for a long time.

If you follow Arthur's quotes on this you find a bit of self-contradiction, e.g "good runners rarely run slower than 7 minutes a mile," and "what an LSD runner can accomplish in two years maybe we can do in one," and (to his guys in the 60s as they ran the Sunday 22), "You're wasting your time if you're running slower than 2:20.

But he also told me once, "Don't think about minutes per mile. Think about staying comfortable." And in "Running to the Top" in discussing base training he says, "You can never run too slowly, but you can run too fast."

So that should sort it all out, eh?

If not, here is the one thing that he has said consistently over the years and Peter Snell told me the same thing; that the trick is to be able to get out each day and do the run that your schedule calls for. If you run a 20 on Sunday at an 8 minute pace and planned to run 10 on Monday at a 7 minute pace, but are often unable to do that Monday run, you went too hard on Sunday, or perhaps on Saturday or Friday. If you can manage the 8 minute paced 20, the minute paced 10, Tuesday's 7:45 15 and so on, you know that you aren't running too fast. But are you running too slowly? The only way to tell is to rachet the pace up a bit. If you still can maintain the desired pace and distance day in and day out, you still aren't going too fast. It's too fast when you need real "recovery days."

So you want to run as fast as you can within that framework. But I think in recent years, Arthur, like Hadd, has become aware that people tend to overestimate how fast they can run aerobically and tend to push too hard, making fast aerobic runs into slow anaerobic runs, hence the quotes like "You can never run too slowly," etc.

Yes, the steady state is very much like Hadd's runs where you go as fast as you can for an extended time without having your heart rate creep up during the duration of the run. The difference being that Arthur puts very little stock in heart rates and would describe the steady state run as one where you go as fast as you can without feeling your tiredness or breathing rates increase as the run goes on.

unfortuneately, druggies like bekele and el g. have made a mockery of lydiard trained (clean) runners.....

This is a truly helpful post (which is in effect now being bumped!).

Thank you.

Bill,

I think HRE gets way too little credit on this board. I don't know where he comes by his apparent wisdom, but it's obviously there.

Thanks for the overdue bump.

Pete,

Regading "Maximal Steady State":

It is the maximum pace, velocity or intensity above which your body starts consuming every-increasingly more air per minute. It is equivalent to your lactate threshold pace, pretty much or slightly slower. I think of it in exercise physiological terms as the ventilatory threshold pace/velocity/intensity.

If you had a gas analyzer measuring your inhaled and exhaled air as you ran incrementally faster (holding each increase in velocity steady for 3 minutes) you would see that at some point along your step-by-step progression a sharp rise in the volume of air inhaled relative to the volume of C02 produced. The sharp rise in air inhaled, theoretically, reflects the bodies dire need to get rid of CO2 produced via lactic acid metabolism (anaerobic process). Researchers Wasserman and McIlroy termed this sharp change in values the "anaerobic threshold" reflecting what they thought was an abrupt increase in blood bicarbonate buffering of lactic acid. Later people measured blood lactate levels and noticed in some athletes a fairly abrupt rise in lactic acid as pace increased a a steady incline.

Regarding "aerobic capacity", the term was used by early researchers at the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory in the 1920 and 1930s to identify the maximal amount of oxygen a person (runner) could consume. Sometimes it was used in general or absolute terms (4 liters, for example) and other times (later) it was divided by body weight to compare it relatively to other persons (runners).

Lydiard, in his old training schedules, used the terms he borrowed from Swedish coach Holmer (coach of Anderson and Haag, famous milers in the 1940s) 1/4th effort, 1/2 effort, 3/4th effort, 7/8th effort, and full effort. Lydiards marathon/endurance phase of training was a mix of the 1/4 to 7/8th effort runs throughout the week. A couple times per week it included easier 1/4th effort runs to recover, yet still put in the distance, other times the athlete ran 1/2 to 3/4 effort. Time trials, lengthened in his schedules produced in the 1970s from the ones he had written out in the 1950s were run at 7/8th effort over 5k and 10k distances = to lactate threshold or close there abouts. Lydiard did not advise his runners to hammer distance every day, but rather vary both the amount of time or distance run and the effort of the runs so that balance was created. Over the weeks, the paces increased but the effort was similar. Snell may run as slow as 7 min miles for a long run at 1/2 effort but 12 weeks later cruise along at 6 min miles on his long run at the same 1/2 effort. His 10 miler at 3/4th effort on Mondays may have been 6:30 on week one but by week 12 he could cruise along at 5:30 per mile, still at 3/4th effort because, obviously, his condition had improved measurably.

Bill M and Pete,

Thanks for the nice words.

It's worth mentioning here that Lydiard's runners ran faster in training because their fitness was improving. The level of effort remained pretty constant, i.e. Snell wasn't working harder at 6:10 pace in the later 22s than he had been at 7:00 in the earlier 22s. Not all of Lydiard's runners went faster as the base phase moved on apparently. A mutual friend told me that Bill Baillie says he stayed at a 7:00 pace on his distance runs throughout the build-up and didn't go faster as most of the others did.

HRE, where are you from? You met Bill Baillie? Share what you learned, please. Thank you.

Just 'Surfing articles'.

I have run and trained with Bill Baillie.

Late 60's - early 70's. and again in mid 80's when he was preparing for masters racing.

I can confirm 7 min miles on long runs. In fact he started out slower than that some days !!.

regarding lydiard's max steady state,

back in 1987-88 i participated in a max steady state study

thru the southwestern medical hospital in dallas.

Dr. Jim Stray-Gunderson was overseeing along with francie l-smiths coach-can't think of name and Peter Snell was the guy that took our muscle biopsie from the calf.

i was in the group that twice a week did max steady state runs

using a HR monitor. so my corresponding HR was 172--this was where i needed to be after 10 min. of running and then stay at this effort until hr reached 182 or if you cannot maintain this effort then must stop

i was able to work up to 1 hour to 1 hr 10 minutes at this pace

my max hr was 192.

so this was comfortably hard wkout

francie larrieu smith's coach was robert vaughn. without question, one of the best coaches in the country. i doubt many on this board have heard of him. youth is wasted on the young.

T-head: WOW! If there is ANY validity at all to those estimates you list, then it is now no longer any wonder in my mind why I got flu and bronchitis so often.

I was killing myself in my training runs and running 'way 'Way 'WAY too fast on a daily basis.

Oy vey!

:(