Lydiard.....emperors clothes?

That would be your failing, not his.

The ambiguity of Lydiard seems to be a fairly common concern. Perhaps he is respected more for the general method of a volume first approach and his ability to apply the specifics as needed to a particular athlete then he is to laying out an exact program that fits all athletes.As for HRE's post:

HRE wrote:

That would be your failing, not his.

Wow, what a worthless statement. Pisano writes a well thought out and reasonable post and HRE comes back with the above. Nice.

Here's the answer then...http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=964958&page=0

pisano wrote:

I consider myself somewhat educated and knowledgeable about ex phys and training for races (enter funny comments here, but please make them good ones).

In reading different training books I eventually come to Lydiard and then here about coaches with VASTLY different training programs point to themselves being Lydiard followers.

My take on this is the Lydiard in not specific with his training ideas and vague. He doesn't say how fast intervals should be, how to run tempo runs, how fast long runs should be. He talks about aerobic runs without to much said about pace. He seems like the polar opposite of Jack Daniel's in this regard.

It's almost like the emperors new clothes where only runners and coaches of great incite can see his genius.

Yet, he's had results that cannot be knocked. I just can't make sense of him.

Comments?

Concerns?

Pisano ,an often heard comment about Lydiard. Check out the Lydiard and Daniels thread. Also Nobby, Kim Stevenson who post here and have trained under him have been most helpful with interpretation. (and HRE)

Great link....

Thanks!

Thanks.....

I see Nobby chimed in on the Daniels vs Lydiard thread. He has some good responses. Did HRE really train under Lydiard?? My humor radar doesn't always work in the on-line world.

Some of us have addressed this "problem". Think, read and maybe ask some of us if you want info.

Keep the negative stuff out of it.

Is that a reference to the Jack Herer book in the first post/title?

pisano wrote:Did HRE really train under Lydiard?? My humor radar doesn't always work in the on-line world.

Kim,

I'm actually reading many of your post on the link that was provided above. I see this issue was discussed in detail before.

I've re-read my original post on this thread and was not trying to be negative. I hope that didn't come across. My post do not have your grace or that of Nobby (his post are a class act)by I meant no harm.

If you would indulge me I do have one question.

When running longer runs (say 15-22 miles) what was the average pace that Lydiard's runner ran vs. their goal marathon pace? For Jack Daniel's this was ~45-1:15 per mile slower than goal marathon pace. The range is based on the speed of the runner and also the 2nd edition of his book slowed down the goal time.

Regards

I am at work right now and will address your question later.

Inerestingly it is one of the most common about those runs.

Pisano,

I attended the Lydiard Foundation kickoff session last Saturday in Boulder. Dr. Peter Snell, Phd in Exercise Physiology, said that during his buildup for Tokyo, for the first time he was able to average 100 mpw for 10 weeks. He said the first week of the buildup he ran a 15 miler in 1:40 and the 22 mile route in 2:25. At the end of 10 weeks on the same routes he ran 1:30 and 2:15. Mind you Snell won the national cross country title on several occasions over 10+ km and was the World Record holder in the mile. His attempt at marathoning had him running with the leaders through 20 at 2:20 pace. He stopped shortly after and sat down only to be cajoled into finishing which he did in around 2:40. That will give you some perspective on the training pace.

Glenn

Just when I thought I should back down a bit... Well, thanks for your compliment (it was a compliment, right?) on my previous posts.

In regards to the pace for your long runs, I have a very interesting story for you. You may or may not know, we just had the official launch of the Lydiard Foundation in Boulder this past Saturday. We had Dave Martin and Peter Snell for our key-note speakers; and these two plus Rod Dixon and Alan Culpepper along with Lorraine Moller and myself for the panel discussion. One of the questions addressed the use of energy gel during the training runs. None of us liked the idea (races, sure; but not for training). The gentleman who asked this question said, "But if we don't take extra energy source, we can't complete the 2-hour run!" Dr. Dave Martin, who quite often could be labeled as less-mileage-fast-pace guy, simply said; "Slow down."

You want to go for a long distance; preferably 2 to 3 hours. The pace should be what you feel comfortable in completing that duration without killing yourself. If you have to slow down dramatically, or have to stop the workout prematurely; you KNOW that you started out too fast. Lydiard always said "Run at the pace that you know you could have run faaster or further if you wanted to." What's the point of knowing some fancy formula (your 5k pace + 20 seconds or half marathon pace X 75% or whatever!) if you can't fulfill that simple criteria? You need to be able to go the distance comfortably and finish the run at pleasantly tired state. What more do you need to know? How can you mold yourself to the formula of the world record holders (unless you ARE one of those elites--I know I'm not)? Number game will NOT work.

Glen:

Thanks for coming. It was great to see you again. And your boy, Bradley, is a delightful young runner. It was great to meet him.

The thing is, Arthur spent his life giving talks and writing articles that explained his methods. There have been countless threads here where we've dealt with Arthur's approach. It does require a bit of thinking, but by now there are probably hundreds of thousands of runners worldwide who understand and use Arthur's approach. It's not that hard to understand if you make a little effort. Hence, my comment.

"One of the questions addressed the use of energy gel during the training runs. None of us liked the idea.." in the Nobby post.

We had this post GBTC workout cool down discussion and I said I didn't like the idea of taking an energy source during workouts because I thought that a runner has to deplete energy stores in order to persuade the body to learn to store more. Then I began to wonder if you really need to learn to store more if there is plenty of food/sugar/gel/ water offered to you during your race.

Or is it better to learn to store because stored energy is better used during a race than ingested energy. Has anyone studied this and done experiments? All I have is an opinion. I never did an experiment.

Tom

I found your initial post and title quite negative and would have responded better to an actual question. I'll cover this until Kim answers.

Arthur made very, very few comments about specific paces. He once told his guys that if they were running the 22 mile Waitakere course in more than 2:20 they were wasting their time. That would be slower than 6:30 pace for guys capable of running marathons at under 5:30 per mile. Peter Snell told me that he recalls doing the runs at about a 7 minute pace at the start of base training and that the pace would drop to a bit above 6 as the season went on. But he emphasized that the level of effort was the same. In other words, you went faster because you'd gotten fitter, not because you were working harder.

Barry Magee was briefly the South Korean national distance coach until he gave up the job because he couldn't stand the food in Korea. He was given all of their top marathoners, the slowest had done 2:25, many were much faster. He sent them out for a 20 miler and gave them the "best aerobic speed" talk before the run. They all ran the course in 2 hours, much harder than he wanted them to. He told me that to get them to run the proper speed he had to tell them to jog.

Eventually, Arthur moved to a system of running for time rather than for miles and advised runs of two hours or more but was NEVER specific about the distance one should cover in that time. He once told me never to worry about minutes per mile but to go out and enjoy my runs.

I think this gets confusing for people because he was always telling people not to worry about going fast and then getting angry at people who described his system as one of long, slow, distance. He never liked the idea of LSD, but also insisted that you should be comfortable on your base building runs. It's probably a hard adjustment to make for people who've grown into the sport while being told to run x minutes per mile on long runs, y minutes per mile on "recovery" runs and z minutes per mile on intervals. But the realtionship between marathon times and pace for long runs is very loose in his system.

Lydiard.....emperors clothes? aka Son Of Lydiard vs Daniels? :) The same stars are back for the sequel!!! Hahahahaha.

I still think that Lydiard appeals to the artistic types, and other systems might appeal to the scientific / engineering types. OK, maybe that's an oversimplification, but as runners we shall be attracted to certain outlooks, and repelled by others. Lydiard's outlook has been incredibly successful to countless runners over many decades. But there are other ways and means that are clearly Unlydiardlike which also produced WRs and Olympic golds. There is beauty in every successful system.

Tom:

Great to catch up.

People go further than the race distance to get stronger; people go faster than race pace to accommodate the actual racing stress. People remove oxygen from atomosphere to toughen it up with red blood cell production. But for some reason when it comes down to energy depletion, people get whimpy and pamper themselves with energy gel DURING the training. It doesn't make sense to me. Does it to you? It's like training with extra oxygen tank with you to help breathing. Most likely these are the same people who are considering buying the oxygen tent. Any gimmick there is out there; they would buy--these are the suckers for the marketing strategies.