LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

Nobby/HRE/Kim,

Lydiard ever mention running triples? Bad/good/indifferent?

I know in the book I have, he mentions " x mileage plus and additionally jogging or light running".

Personally, I log any running into my weekly total...

Henry,

Any thoughts from you running triples? Three in a day.

Marty Liquori (you know him well, Mr. Rono) says: "(Once you start introducing hill training phase) the runner will notice that, almost without any effort whatsoever, his pace on long runs will drop a minute a mile or more! This will be despite the runner’s own effort to keep the pace even and slow". "Hill training may be the one true shortcut in training, that gimmick every runner wants," says Self-Made Olympian, Ron Daws. Liquori also adds; "Hills may be the wave of the future."

And finally, Lydiard always said: "There is no more rewarding way than training on the hills...Hill training can improve runners immensely."

Arthur would most likely have said; "Any running you can do would be of benefit. There is no such thing as 'junk mile'." He would have also said, and had said it this way, that it is the continuous running that gives you the best results as far as capillary development, therefore muscular endurance development, is concerned. Again, some people might take this as him saying "if you devide your runs, it's not Lydiard"; but it ain't so.

Think of "whys"; Why do some people run three times a day? Time constrain, injury possibility from pounding, emphasize quantity, etc. Didn't John Walker have some strange problem that, after running about 30 minutes, his knee started to give. Make sense to do three or four times of 30-minute segments. Why do some do long continuous run? Just get it over with once (don't have to keep changing!), better capillarization, can't afford to get out twice a day... Some people may take a long time (45 minutes or so) till they finally get warmed up and start to feel good. For the case like that, it does not make sense to have two or three 45-minute sessions; you're just about to warm up by then--you'll miss out all the vital part of workout.

I've personally found out that, if I do go for an easy jog in the morning, I feel much better in the evening (or main training session). Sometimes I'd even go out after the morning long run on Sunday just to stretch out and shake some stiffness out and it felt good. I know Mr. Rono used to, when he was at his top form, run something like 8-mile in AM and 8-mile PM up and down the Snake River in Pullman with a single long run on weekend. Snell, before he would tackle 100MPW, might do 30 minutes in AM with 60 minutes in PM. Chugoku-Electronic (where Ogata, the bronze medalist from Helsinki runs, runs for) did a training camp in NZ (Nelson where Rod Dixon is from) with 3-a-day training regime for about 2 weeks. They would do 60-60-90~120...something like that. Basically LOTS OF RUNNING.

In fact, I've been checking Mr. Rono's training thread and copying his comments and training pattern. I'm amazed how simple and effective it is; basicaly lots of running of total of 120~180 minutes a day! Do it once, twice, three-times (a lady!)... How much more simple can it be?

>>Once twice three times (a lady).<<

As soon as you start quoting Lionel Ritchie, I know we are in deep trouble.

Please quote from the Beatles/Stones...or maybe Jazz ha ha!

I had a feeling you would ay that LOTS OF RUNNING is important, first off....then of course long singles are better...

I am trying to add running for transportation purposes to my day and have caught myself having to do triples (well not totally having to) and finding they are okay...but thanks...and um...stay away from the Lionel....

I was actully thinking about Newman from Seinfeld... He was singing that song when his truck caught fire on Craimer's road... Anybody who knows what the heck I'm talking about, you're in trouble...!

dreams, reality, etc. wrote:

you ARE old. old fashioned that is.

i don't think the sport should be genderized in the manner that you speak of. i won't even get into the venus and mars stuff...

I shared much the same attitude for a long time. I started women's t&f/x-c teams at multiple colleges, back in the day, and tended to train them "like men," which is all I knew.

But men and women are different. They're not just different in degree (I think back to all the coaches--myself included--who've used a "four-fifths rule" or "three-fourths rule" in scaling down their men's workouts for women); they're different in *kind*.

Jack Daniels is a terrific coach. Yet his men's teams at Cortland, though usually strong, were consistently outrun by other Div. III men's teams in the region (I think of Tim Hale's teams at the University of Rochester). Why? I think it's because Jack trained his men and women alike. It's the reverse of the situation from 30 years ago: back then, we trained women like "little men"--now the DRF trains men like "big women."

Another example? Lou Duesing, at Cornell, is a superb coach. His women's middle-distance and distance runners--non-scholarship athletes--are competitive at the highest collegiate level. Yet, when he also coached the men, they were never consistently at the same level. I suspect (I don't know for sure) that he gave the men and women the same kind of training--a kind that women responded to better than men did.

There are always individual exceptions. No training routine works for everybody; almost any routine works for *somebody*. But individual anecdotes aside, the fact--the physiological FACT--is that men and women are different and, in general, respond optimally to different emphases in their training. What's "old fashioned" is ignoring the differences for the sake of some vague concept of gender equity.

Bottom line, responding to the OP's question: if I were a male 1500 or 5000 man, I'd rather be coached by Lydiard (or Tim Hale, for that matter) than by Jack Daniels--though I'd be very lucky to be coached by any of them.

Dr. Exag. wrote:

>>Once twice three times (a lady).<<

As soon as you start quoting Lionel Ritchie, I know we are in deep trouble.

Please quote from the Beatles/Stones...or maybe Jazz ha ha!

............................................................and um...stay away from the Lionel....

Hey, Lionel was COOL! (Hear he's recording a new CD too!)

From my experience and observation, they are definitely different. Of course, that also depends on individuals... In general (and this is simply generalization of the two), men would need a little bit of competition and kick in a butt; while women would react better to praise, encouragement and more caring approach. Koide of Japan has had great success with some of his female runners (Suzuki, Arimori, Takahashi, Chiba) but he's definitely female's coach. He praises the heck out of them. The story goes that he deliverately seeks for at least one thing to praise each day. If nothing else, even something like "Wow, your socks look great!" Male runners would most likely think that's stupid. They don't need to be kind to; they want to stir things up a bit. In "Miracle", there was a scene where coach Brooks brought a complete stranger to the team, insinuating that he would go to the Olympics and one of the team members would stay. Of course, his intention, right from the get-go, was to get more of a team chemistry up. I don't know if that approach would have worked with female team. Squires would be a men's coach; Dick Brown would be women's. Koide, women's; Sakaguchi, men's. Nakamura for men's. Plasencia definitely for men's team. Not that they cannot coach other gender but their chemistry and mentality work much better for one group than the other. There are very few who can coach successfully both men and women; but there certainly have been and still are.

Their physiological differences is an interesting opinion. We know, in general, women are better suited for endurance type exercise. I noticed, and I've discussed this with some of the leading authorities of genders, that men seem to work fairly hard everyday to keep up their fitness level; while women seem to be able to skip a few days and that don't seem to bother them as much. I haven't seen female athletes hardly ever "goof" point workouts. Men seem to get too psyched up and bomb out at the end of the workout. But it's probably more to do with mentality than physiology. Men probably behave better with intervals/tempo type workouts than women.

wow, i just don't know what to say to all that. obviously i don't agree with these comments on the differences between mean and women. "leading authorities of genders"? please!

"Squires would be a men's coach; Dick Brown would be women's. Koide, women's; Sakaguchi, men's. Nakamura for men's. Plasencia definitely for men's team."

i'll try to be a bit more specific i guess. you sure about the above? did you ask them? or just your opinion? what makes you say that one coach is better for one sex over another?

"men would need a little bit of competition and kick in a butt; while women would react better to praise, encouragement and more caring approach"

this is such a victorian generalization / cliche. it's actually sexism.

Nobby has well and truly nailed this one.

Also, I have seen triples used when someone is getting over injury. ie 3 runs a day of 15 - 20 minutes, rather than a 1 hour run.

Well, I really don't see any point of proving myself but for one I know all those coaches I mentioned in person. Also, I'd classify Kathrine Switzer to be one of the leading authorities of women's running since she had been in it ever since the beginning of it. And her husband, Roger Robinson, was, and still is, one of the leading masters runners in the world. We in fact discussed the very topic together. I did warn, however, that I'm "generalizing here" and certainly there will be lots of exceptions. With all the criticism you have pointed out; may I ask if you've coached anybody at all? Men and/or women? I'm curious because, as far as I'm concerned, there ARE differences and the approach should be altered slightly. Coaching is all about psychology. It also has to be applied to raising children as well. I certainly do with my 13-year-old daughter.

you are now turning what you said on it's head and applying it to how well you know people, who i coached, and raising children. i don't want to destroy the party here. i made a thread on this men / women topic. contribute there if you wish.

I tend to treat men and women the same -- with the exception that I try to think more in terms of time than distances. For example, a guy might do 6X mile intervals and a woman 6X1200, and both are doing about the same intensity for the same duration of time. I used to worry about our women doing better than our men until I compared our men and our women to current world records and found the women were farther off than were the men. So I guess our women were not really that great, just a lot better than the typical team of that time -- greater competition for the men and you have to be closer to the best to be as successful in terms of winning. Maybe it's the maturity level of each? I had pretty good luck with Ken Martin, Jerry Lawson and Peter Gilmore, (but all post-cllegiates) and I have come to believe that I probably train the females harder, which is not to say I feel that I under- train the males. As far as women being better endurance athletes, that has been around for some time based on the fact that the average female carries more fat so therefore has more available energy, which would suggest they could win a long race if it was to see who could go the farthest before death. However , most races are to see who can get from point A to point B the fastest and that ulimate endurance factor won't kick in. As far as treating men or women better I tend to think it is more physcological than physiological, which also means some coaches respond better to certain males than they do to other ,males, or better to some females than to other females. I like to base training on the best indicator of what your ability is -- race times, and as far as I am concerned you can blindfold me and the runners and I will give them the same training without knowing gender or age. Heck if you are old and slower than you used to be, then your current slower times tell me you can't train as fast as you used to, but you can certainly train as fast as a younger person who happens to be in your ability/fitness level. No need to get to technical nor picky about who you do what to -- use what works for each person you coach

A difference in degree is a difference in kind (to be Marxist about it!) if those differences in degree are large enough.

Can I plead that we try and discuss this without assertions that believing men and women might need slightly different training to be sexist.

For the most part men and women need the same kind of training. Daniels or Lydiard, men or women, lets not dispute that the majority of miles run in training are going to be at some aerobic pace from recovery jogs to tempo workouts.

I believe, and others with more scientific training can back me up, that it's established that, on average, women have a better speed decay function than men. That is women's pace drops less as distance increases. One just needs to look at how Paula Radcliffe and Deena Kastor's half-marathon times correlate with their marathon times, and compare to say, Geb or Tergat. Probably holds down the field too. That difference in speed decay might be reason to emphasize slightly different areas in training.

As you come closer to your best performances these little differences in training will matter, and can perhaps be seen in oldcoach's example of Daniels' Cortland teams having consistently different results over time. That said, it would be nice to hear from jtupper himself on this point, and know if perhaps he got different quality of recruits etc, to eliminate confounding influences.

Even if you believe there to be slight differences on average between men and women it's highly likely that the distributions will overlap. Thus, you can find women who respond better to intervals etc ... And as a coach the art is in moving from the science which gives some averages and distributions to finding out where individual athletes are, how they respond.

The differences that Nobby mentioned about motivation are so obviously due to different socialization for boys and girls that is culturally and historically specific, that we can't assume it to be a stable difference.

I have Coached some talented young women (as noted earlier in the thread).

I don't want to get into 'responses' to training as they are very individualistic but what I can say is I have found young women in particular will turn up to training and do EXACTLY what you want and will carry out Training 'to the letter' when you are not around and apologise profusely if they have not quite done it the way they think you want it done. Guys are a lot more laid back.

Just recently I have been asked to take on an "older" woman who wants to improve her marathon from 3:10. I wil keep you informed.

That might have been the most laugh out loud segment of that show I ever so. And yes I confess to having seen all the episodes multiple times.

The real purpose of this post is to ask two questions about Peter Snell's theories. They both come from Rich Englehart's piece on him in Marathon & Beyond.

When asked what he might do differently in training, Peter stated that he would probably do 300 or 400 repeats in the base building phase. He also mentioned that the recovery for the 400's would probably be 400 jogs and that he never understood why some runners liked to have short recoveries like 400's with 100 float. I'm more interested in the pros and cons of lenghthy recoveries with intervals than with whether during those in the base building phase are appropriate.

Snell has believed for a long time that the fast twitch muscles get trained on long runs once the slow twitch fibers become exhausted. He further stated that one would have to be running at a 7 minute pace or better in order to insure that glycogen would be used which eventually would enable the ST fibers to be exhausted. He seemed to feel that a pace slower than 7 minute miles would primarily burn fat and would be useless for the purpose of eventually recruiting FT fibers on the long runs. That may be exactly how it happens. but if so, why 7 minute miles versus 7.5 or 6.5?

Kim Stevenson wrote:

I have Coached some talented young women (as noted earlier in the thread).

I don't want to get into 'responses' to training as they are very individualistic but what I can say is I have found young women in particular will turn up to training and do EXACTLY what you want and will carry out Training 'to the letter' when you are not around and apologise profusely if they have not quite done it the way they think you want it done. Guys are a lot more laid back.

Just recently I have been asked to take on an "older" woman who wants to improve her marathon from 3:10. I wil keep you informed.

what "you have found" is really just a generalization based on sex. nobby, i coach maen and women, have done for years. why are you folks (not jtupper) exclaiming that "men behave this way and women behave that way"? i propose that these are preconceived notions about men and women, clouded by societal dictations and made for tv films.