Update on 6 Month Lydiard Style Base Training for a 17 Year Old

I haven't seen this thread's resurrection until today. Honestly, you're making this too complicated for me to offer much more. I see that you've gotten your miles from 19 to 39 a week. That's real progress and I'm impressed. I'll just say again, as long as you're able to keep your focus on running more and not having it be too draining you can do many things as you do it as long as you don't end up doing runs that have you breathing really hard and needing recovery days.

parkerjohn wrote:

Lydiard would not have you doing repeats at CV intensity during the base phase like the Norwegian brothers do. He would have you do some fartlek or have you pick up the pace during sustained, hilly efforts. Supplement with very short (100m) sprints to maintain leg turnover.

Arthur didn't even know what CV was. He'd be fine with the other things you mention but any sort of repeats in the base phase was not something he'd have been okay with.

This makes sense. I will stick to keeping my intensity work at tempo and ensure that I am prioritizing milage.

Thank you!

Do you by any chance happen to know of any good form drills?

I am always trying to find marginal gains where I can improve and I think that hip mobility etc. would benefit me.

Thank you very much!

Sorry. No. I was always a "just run" guy.

No problem. My guess is that the benefit would be less than 1%, but I am always looking for safe marginal gains (flexibility, stability, strength, etc). If anybody else has any stability, flexibility, or form drills I would love to try them.

RunnerWithoutAnAerobicBase wrote:

No problem. My guess is that the benefit would be less than 1%, but I am always looking for safe marginal gains (flexibility, stability, strength, etc). If anybody else has any stability, flexibility, or form drills I would love to try them.

Arthur did have drills that he assigned. If you look around at a place like the Lydiard Training Academy there might be something there. He also had his guys enter the sprints at club track meets to help with their form.

Thank you! I will do short sprints and check out the resources on the Lydiard Training Academy!

RunnerWithoutAnAerobicBase wrote:

Currently all of my quality sessions (20%) have been at threshold. Aiming to peak around May. I have been using a hybrid of the advice from HRE, which is lots of miles and not worrying about the pace, and Gert Ingebrigtsen, who uses a lot of thresholds (HRE also thinks that this is ok during a base phase). I started at 19 miles a week (early December), this week I am at 39, and hope to be around 60-70 by May. Also, if you don't mind, what types of form drills should I be doing (besides strides). I sometimes see runners stepping over hurdles, isolating and exaggerating elements of their form.

Many thanks!

What I meant was that you have this plan, so stick to it, instead of wanting to change it up every time you read something. Learning is good, and you should file it away for the future.

By "peak around May", I suppose you mean peak base training.

Peter Snell said more or less, that the one thing he would do differently during base training would be to add a set of 400s once a week. Here's the quote:

"In the distance training phase I would schedule a session weekly of easy repeat quarter miles to keep my leg turnover."

Based on other stuff Snell has said, I would interpret this to mean that he might do 400s with a 400 jog, maybe 10-15% slower than mile pace. This is a reasonable alternative to threshold workouts, because they basically are threshold efforts, if you're disciplined about the pace of the repeats. The idea is to run fast, but not fast and hard.

I am not a fan of form drills, in general. There are coaches that know how to use them, so maybe if you were to find such a person, okay. An exception for self-coaching would be the simple drills of Bill Bowerman. Those I have done from time to time, and have found them useful.

I'd suggest sticking to strides for now.

Wait a second. Granted I only read the last page but, here’s a healthy 17 year old taking god knows how long to build up to 39 mpw?!? And, talking Lydiard, CV, et al? Hopefully it’s already been said, just SUAR.

HRE wrote:

I haven't seen this thread's resurrection until today. Honestly, you're making this too complicated for me to offer much more. I see that you've gotten your miles from 19 to 39 a week. That's real progress and I'm impressed. I'll just say again, as long as you're able to keep your focus on running more and not having it be too draining you can do many things as you do it as long as you don't end up doing runs that have you breathing really hard and needing recovery days.

Looks like he's taken a month to get from 19 to 39. He needs to keep going but it seems decent progress to me.

I have taken a little under 3 months to do this. I have been increasing my milage by around 2 miles every week. I would love to go out and do 90 miles a week, but I am injury prone. Thus I will build up to that and hopefully hit 70-90 over the summer. I think that there are some diminishing returns to milage and I would be better off averaging 20 miles a week less without having to take a few weeks off for an injury.

Diminishing returns are a real thing. But diminishing returns are still returns and at some point, you aren't there yet, if you want to be as good as you can you will pursue them. Yes, running 20 mpw for a year will leave you in better shape than six weeks at 90 and half a year off will. But 20 mpw is also not going to get you close to your potential. You're on the right path though you do seem to want to make it more complicated than it needs to be. You'll grow into higher mileage and should do it in a time frame you feel comfortable with.

Thank you for the reply. I wasn't clear. I should have said that 50 miles a week uninterrupted is better than 70 with a few weeks injured. I will just focus on running more.