Is a long run really that important?

SlowFatMaster wrote:

HRE wrote:

Lydiard's guys did do long repeats with short rests but more likely miles or 1320s or 880s than 1,000 meters. The 1,000 reps seem to have caught on big time in the not terribly recent past but I can't recall anyone much doing them in the 70s or before at least in the English speaking world. There absolutely was aerobic interval training in Arthur's vocabulary. It was unsrtuctured and he called it fartlek. And there were sessions like that in the early part of the interval phase. Snell did sessions like 20 x 440 in 70 or so seconds with a 440 recovery.

I once asked Snell about the value of the sort of precise and intricate kinds of training that seem to come with modern training. He said the value of such sessions was that they allow coaches to justify their own existence. I passed that line along to Ron Clarke who absolutely loved it. I may be showing my age here but from maybe 1967 on I read everything I could get my hands on about the sport and especially about training. I just don't see anything modern that's much different from what people did in the 60s and 70s. It's measured and prescribed and described more precisely and there's a much larger vocabulary around it. The obvious counter argument is that times today are much faster than they were in the 60s and 70s but the sport is so different now that it's impossible to attribute those times to any specific thing.

But to the business of the long run as I said earlier, Elliott and Snell did them and subsequently so did everyone else. They didn't all do 22 miles, at least not regularly, but they did long runs. I believe that Walker's typical long run was 15 miles and of course he got under that 3:50 mark you're keen on. Would Snell have gotten closer to 3:50 if his long run was 15 miles or would he have been slower than he was? Would Walker have been faster if he'd regularly done 20 mile runs? I do completely agree with people here who have said overall mileage is much more important than a long run is and so to the question in the thread title I'd say it's important but I don't know what that important means in real life.

This is from a Lydiard lecture from 1999 on the "Champions Everywhere" website:

"As a practical guide, however, the work intervals should total about 10-15 minutes, or 5,000 meters; i.e.,
12 × 400 meters, 8 × 600 meters, 5 × 1,000 meters, 3 × 1,600 meters, etc., with an equal distance of
recovery jogging in between. If one athlete needs more or longer repetitions than another to gain the
same physiological response, then he will just need to train for a longer period."

I don't consider equal distance jog to be short rest. Can you show me where Lydiard-trained athletes did that?

SlowFatMaster wrote:

HRE wrote:

Lydiard's guys did do long repeats with short rests but more likely miles or 1320s or 880s than 1,000 meters. The 1,000 reps seem to have caught on big time in the not terribly recent past but I can't recall anyone much doing them in the 70s or before at least in the English speaking world. There absolutely was aerobic interval training in Arthur's vocabulary. It was unsrtuctured and he called it fartlek. And there were sessions like that in the early part of the interval phase. Snell did sessions like 20 x 440 in 70 or so seconds with a 440 recovery.

I once asked Snell about the value of the sort of precise and intricate kinds of training that seem to come with modern training. He said the value of such sessions was that they allow coaches to justify their own existence. I passed that line along to Ron Clarke who absolutely loved it. I may be showing my age here but from maybe 1967 on I read everything I could get my hands on about the sport and especially about training. I just don't see anything modern that's much different from what people did in the 60s and 70s. It's measured and prescribed and described more precisely and there's a much larger vocabulary around it. The obvious counter argument is that times today are much faster than they were in the 60s and 70s but the sport is so different now that it's impossible to attribute those times to any specific thing.

But to the business of the long run as I said earlier, Elliott and Snell did them and subsequently so did everyone else. They didn't all do 22 miles, at least not regularly, but they did long runs. I believe that Walker's typical long run was 15 miles and of course he got under that 3:50 mark you're keen on. Would Snell have gotten closer to 3:50 if his long run was 15 miles or would he have been slower than he was? Would Walker have been faster if he'd regularly done 20 mile runs? I do completely agree with people here who have said overall mileage is much more important than a long run is and so to the question in the thread title I'd say it's important but I don't know what that important means in real life.

This is from a Lydiard lecture from 1999 on the "Champions Everywhere" website:

"As a practical guide, however, the work intervals should total about 10-15 minutes, or 5,000 meters; i.e.,
12 × 400 meters, 8 × 600 meters, 5 × 1,000 meters, 3 × 1,600 meters, etc., with an equal distance of
recovery jogging in between. If one athlete needs more or longer repetitions than another to gain the
same physiological response, then he will just need to train for a longer period."

I don't consider equal distance jog to be short rest. Can you show me where Lydiard-trained athletes did that?