Lydiard.....emperors clothes?

Daniels is a scientist. Arthur was a runner. A scientist must quantify and document everything with repitious studies and experiments. A runner tries a different training technique and then races to see if the result is better. Arthur was his own guinea pig. It still took him 10 years (1950 - 1960?) to fine tune his methods. Considering the revolutionaly plan that he came up with, 10 years was quite fast. The reason is that he used his body and his intuition and energy... His intuition must have been impeccible...

This is in no way a put down of Jack Daniels. I feel that he is the "icing on the cake" for todays runner. But I thank God for Arthur. We may still be doing time trials once a week and calling that a good training program...without Lydiard.

[quote]Living in the past wrote:

And I'm sure that his six mile runs at 3/4 effort were also vital to his success. (This was what Daniels would call a tempo run.) Surely you aren't saying that the 10 mile run in 57 minutes had the same effect as the six-mile run at 3/4 effort? Maybe you are saying that.

Maybe I am. Maybe I ain't. We might be reaching the point where who said what becomes confusing. I actually have thought about this for a while and decided that I don't know if I'm saying that or not.

I've decided that I'm kind of a "MacFarquhar guy." I think the key is to get fit aerobically and once you've done that you need to spend some time doing faster stuff, but I am not convinced that you have to split a lot of hairs as to what that faster stuff will look like. Arthur once told me that you could get very close to peak performances by racing yourself fit. I always found that to be the best way to sharpen. Intervals always have slowed me. But doing a good number of races always got me into my best form.

I don't see any reason why doing a six mile run at 3/4 to 7/8 effort and a 57 minute ten miler need to be mutually exclusive.

Lydiard guys,

I've been following Daniel's RF for the past few years. As a little background to set up my question, I switch from being a runner in the late fall through late spring to being a triathlete the rest of the year.

One thing I notice during my tri-training phase is that some days when I'm scheduled to do a Daniel's-type tempo run is that I am just damn tired. Really tired. If I were doing one during my running-only phase, I can work my tempo pace down to about 5:40 when I'm in shape, but during my tri-phase (when I'm very fit) it bounces all over under the same effort (from maybe 6:25 down to about 5:45) depending on how fatigued I am from my other training.

If I followed Daniel's, I would be running my tempos at 5:45 (according to the tables), but it's clear that on some days 5:45 is a tempo effort, and on my fatiqued days it's a wicked hard VO2 max effort.

If I'm understanding the Lydiard guys right, I should just run at tempo "feel" and it will give me the same benefit, whether I happen to run 5:45 that day, or 6:25.

Am I reading you guys right on this? Daniel's approach seems to work fine for me when I just run, because I'm very consistent and rarely work myself into the extreme fatique I get when I switch to tri-training. I think the Lydiard approach, which I think is more in line with what I've actually been doing during the tri season, may work better for me.

Without treading on toes here. Just from what I have read I would say you need to 'chop' back the pace you run those "tempos" at and what some of us are saying is run it by "feel".

I would go so far as saying that Arthur would say if you are that tired why are you pushing the body. Head out for a run and if you feel the need, maybe pick up the pace and take it from there.

Enjoy what you are doing should be the first factor that should be taken into consideration. Hammering yourself because a schedule says that what you should do can lead to disaster.

Kim,

That book of Lyd's you sold me has garnered me with friends.

Everywhere friends - I have to chase the book.

I like it's simplicity.

Like today, I felt frisky and ran frisky on a road which has a rolly 400m stretch. I clicked the watch but never looked until after all was said an done. Each one was progressively faster, but I only wound the effort up by feel. I am sure if I had tried to run faster on each one, I would have anyway...but it's interesting that each repeat (not devestating) was neatly faster than the previous.

I jogged back to work refreshed.

Now today, I ran to work (15km) at steady pace. I planned on running at lunch based on feel - which I did. I had planned on cycling home easy, but forgot the key to unlock my bike, so I had to run the 15km home. Effort felt steady, time was fine.

Triples - too much laundry and eating to keep that up.

Anyway, now I have to run to work in the a.m....I guess I need to leave early to make it on time.

**note to self: Remember bike lock key.

Cheers mate: Nothing like a satisfied customer !.

Watch those triples though. Keep it nice and easy.

Dr. Exag wrote:

That book of Lyd's you sold me has garnered me with friends.

Everywhere friends - I have to chase the book.

Just curious which book it is. I have several of Lydiard's books and many other good ones on the same topic (Liqouri and Daws mainly along with the biographies of Arthur's Boys.)

Again, just curious which one you're speaking of.

Thanks.

Wasn't MacFarquhar the guy that was sort of coaching Snell during the period that Arthur and Peter had the falling out?

Braavo Furgi wrote:

Daniels is a scientist. Arthur was a runner. A scientist must quantify and document everything with repitious studies and experiments. A runner tries a different training technique and then races to see if the result is better. Arthur was his own guinea pig. It still took him 10 years (1950 - 1960?) to fine tune his methods. Considering the revolutionaly plan that he came up with, 10 years was quite fast. The reason is that he used his body and his intuition and energy... His intuition must have been impeccible...

This is in no way a put down of Jack Daniels. I feel that he is the "icing on the cake" for todays runner. But I thank God for Arthur. We may still be doing time trials once a week and calling that a good training program...without Lydiard.

Daniels is an Olympic medalist, he's not some non-athlete in a lab coat clutching a calculator. And, he was very much like Lydiard in that he took his ideas and experimented by applying them to the athletes he was coaching. In fact, Lydiard had one lab (the feedback he received from his athletes) while Daniels has used two labs (the human subjects of his many studies and the feedback he received from his athletes).

Bob Wildes wrote:

Wasn't MacFarquhar the guy that was sort of coaching Snell during the period that Arthur and Peter had the falling out?

That's the guy. He's a "Lydiard guy" himself but Peter said he was a "free thinker."

I ran the 15km to work today feeling tired but not wrecked...frikken bike isn't even locked up after all.

I ran past the bike cage to see it sittign there completely unlocked ha ha ha.

Running with Lydiard.

As I have said on the other thread. Don McFarquhar is one of the 'nice' guys in the Sport. A real expert in the "Aerobic conditioning' of Distance runners. Probably understands Arthur's ideas as well if not better than most. Still going strong Coaching wise although he is not running anymore himself I believe. I see him once or twice a year and he always greets me as though I am a long lost friend.

If I put a definition on Don's Coaching and how runners approach their training it would be : Consistency of miles, Consistency of days , consistency of Months, consistency of years.

Barry had some really good things to say about him as well. Sorry I missed meeting Don last year.

My views on training are primarily sports science. So I come from a background of understanding what works from a physiology point of view.

Having only known that he was a great coach, I never really read up on Lydiard's ideas I searched for info on his training. I came across a PDF file Arthur Lydiard's Athletic Training. Which was prepared by Nobuya "Nobby" Hashizume and Steve Bobenhouse.

After reading through the paper, I can understand why people value his knowledge. Everything that I had learned through school in sports science linked with the his training methods. As though he did the work and sports scientist tested it and understood his success.

Several questions:

Lydiards article states that you should exercise between 70 - 100 of your maximum aerobic effort. Running any slower will help but will take longer to adapt.

This maximum aerobic effort is the highest possible steady state possible "given your particulat situation" (current fitness level)

What would be Lydiards example of highest steady state possible?

Steady state is reached after 3mins. And most scientist agree that 7-12 mins (3k) would be 100% of maxiaml oxygen consumption.

Then again when I think about steady state and exercise performance. Every event over 3 minutes has its own particular steady state. From a mile to marathon you have to keep a pace at which you can keep "steady" through out the entire race to run sucessfully.

As anything eles I think the confusion comes in with the terms used. Effort vs. percenages. If I have this correct effort isnt the same as a percentage of maximal steady state??

Kim you wrote -

"If your 3 mile best was 15 minutes then he had your 3/4 effort at 15:30, 1/2 effort at 16mins,1/4 effort at 16:20.

Note these efforts were not "3/4" pace but an 'effort' or if you wanted to break it down a 'pace' to run at."

How do you break down the differences of effort between 3/4,1/2,1/4? (20-30 sec slower between the three?)

This schedule was taken from the Lydiards paper on marathon conditioning phase.

Monday 10 miles (15km) at 1/2 effort over undulating course

Tuesday 15 miles (25km) at 1/4 effort over reasonably flat

Wednesday 12 miles (20km) at 1/2 effort over hilly course

Thursday 18 miles (30km) at 1/4 effort over reasonably flat

Friday 10 miles (15km) at 3/4 effort over flat course

Saturday 22 miles (35km) at 1/4 effort over reasonably flat

Sunday 15 miles (25km) at 1/4 effort over any type terrain

Are these effort levels in regards to maxiaml steady state?

Or effort level off predicted marathon pace?

Eric, Great to have you on board. I am cut for time right now (Work beckons !!) I am sure some of the guys will jump in here.

Will talk later.

Cheers

Rivas:

Just had a chat with my "partner", Lorraine (Moller), this morning. They had a wonderful press release in Otago Daily Times (NZ) about the launch of the Lydiard Foundation (yeah, our own press release is taking longer to be published). She was quoted in it by saying that the Lydiardism is (1) sequential training and (2) feeling-based. In it, she criticised the use of heart rate monitor. However, we actually talked about somehow incorperating % and heart rate to get our message across. We don't know how yet; but it COULD be a good "training wheel" as she put it.

When we got together with Peter Snell and Dave Martin in Boulder, we all agreed that Arthur knew enough about sports science "to be dangerous". This is by NO mean being disrespectful to the old man. But, seriously, we DO realize his usage, or "misusage", of certain "scientific" terms that, in today's audience with way too much vast knowledge on specific terminologies, could make things very very confusing and misleading.

Arthur used the term "steady state" as the point at which internal actions and reactions, such as oxygen need and oxygen supply, are "high level but steady". You could perhaps term it as "threshold" (now we have aerobic threshold AND anaerobic threshold it seems like and I don't really want to get into it too deeply with it); but the point is that you are not getting into anaerobic state. Or Bill Bowerman would have simply put "the pace you can hold normal conversation". So, for example, when you are actually pushing the pace fairly hard but still feel like you're not over the edge and you can complete the required distance or time duration; and you can recover relatively easily for the next day's workout; then you're most probably still in that "steady state" level. And I really don't know if we need to know more about it. Do we need to know the exact pace? Well, how about hills and wind and temperature and the day's condition (how you feel in general)?

In regards to effort and %; I think % of heart rate would bring you better, or closer, to the effort than pace. I believe biorhythm and on some days you just don't seem to get moving so the pace is slow but your heart is pounding; it's because you are actually putting more effort into it. At least that's my take.

What are the different training effects of running 15 miles at an easy pace versus at a high steady state? In both cases, you are running below your anaerobic threshold. In both cases, you are developing mitochondria and extending your capillary network through going long. What benefit does one get from high steady state running that you do not get from running the same distance at a somewhat easier pace?

Some Coach wrote:

Daniels is an Olympic medalist, he's not some non-athlete in a lab coat clutching a calculator. .

In modern pentathlon. Get real - that's not an athlete. That's someone who can make his own grey poupon, and who knows which spoon to use on caviar.

If you're running at higher aerobic pace, or closer to maximum steady state (in Arthur's term), the pressure generated by the heart would be higher; therefore you should be able to expect greater cardio-respiratory development. Bear in mind, however, that Arthur was always big on the German study that capillary development would be encouraged further by going longer period of time, particularly longer than 2 hours (hense advantage of LSD, he said). In other words, if the training schedule calls for a 12-mile run, a fast guy might run it in 1:10 while slower guy might run it in 1:40. As far as capillary development is concerned, the slower guy actually get a better result by going "longer" period ot time. According to Lydiard, there were three aspects of "aerobic development": 1) assimilation, 2) transportation and 3) utilization of oxygen. (1) and (2) should be greatly enhansed by going at higher aerobic speed but (3) involves capillary development of "working muscles" as well as mitochondria development. This is why, you can be a great swimmer with great oxygen uptake level (or cyclist) but, apart from the ability to take pounding, you still need to work on the actual "working muscles" for the specific event. So the key is balance these development by including various workouts (distance/durating and effort) within the weekly schedule.