Lydiard Build-Up Question

That is a good question. I honestly have wondered the samr thing myself! I wish I knew the answer and I hope you get it...otherwise, I'd advise you search the monster "lydiard vs. daniels thread and report back!

build up to aerobic threshold on the 3 longer days, build into anaerobic threshold on 3 of the shorter days with the shorter day after the longest run relatively easy. throw in short jogs in the evening to loosen up and get refocused for the next days run.

No, the shorter runs were generally more intense than the longer ones. You'd do your long run at a comfortable pace and then go a bit, just a bit, harder on the shorter runs. This gives you some variation in pace and some time doing faster work.

isn't that what the guy was saying above?

He says, "shorter, less intense runs" in between. At least that's what I read. Lydiard had the shorter runs being a bit more intense.

So I guess Lydiard's reasoning is that by varying the distances, you can have longer long runs, and more training at a faster pace.

Somewhere on the web you can find "The Lydiard Clinic" which was, I guess, assembled by Nobby Hashizume. It's very detailed.

However HRE, as usual, does a good job of getting it down to simplest terms for those unfamiliar with the system.

To further simplify for the beginner, you started out at 10-minutes out and back, keep the same pace and your breathing under control for a couple of weeks to get the habit established.

If you had any experience you could be starting your LONG run at 30:00 or more, but keep the shorter, slightly faster runs down at 15:00 for two days following. After a month or so you'd add 15:00 to the long run, bring it up to 45:00, then 60:00 a month or so later, then 75:00, 90 and finally 2 hours.

The 90:00 to 2-hour long runs are the bedrock of the system.

M - Short

T - Long

W - Short

T - Long

F - Short

S - AT/tempo

S - Longest

btw, the short runs are there so you can recover from running the longer runs, not the other way around. You can jog as slow as you want, 15-20 miles a pop is still a lot of pounding for your legs...

Speed and tempo stuff supposedly comes AFTER a full 10-12 weeks of base mileage AT THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE MILEAGE ergo 100 miles per week.

HOWEVER, and this is a source of some discussion here, for beginners, Nobby has emphasized that the initial buildup should be by TIME ONLY with no concern whatever for the distance covered. In other words don't check every mile split...you should be attempting to enjoy the run, a novel idea.

To my mind this would mean: start your watch, run for the 1/2 the assigned time, then turn around and head back home.

To elaborate:

Sunday - 2 hours

Monday - 1 hour

Tuesday - 90 minutes

Wednesday - 1 hour

Thursday - 90 minutes

Friday - 30 to 60 minutes

Saturday - 60 minutes

Correct me if I am wrong.

HRE wrote:

No, the shorter runs were generally more intense than the longer ones. You'd do your long run at a comfortable pace and then go a bit, just a bit, harder on the shorter runs. This gives you some variation in pace and some time doing faster work.

Presumably this prevents the runner from just getting slower and slower as the mileage goes higher and higher?

The runner is able to do more mileage at a faster pace without getting too tired?

I see people with jobs and families just do the three longish runs, with one of them being usually a

run of 20 milers or more, and just cross train or take the alternate days off if circumstances require.

Some can run marathons quite readily off of 3-4 days of training as long as there is no finishing time goal per se.

This pertains to people I know who usually run in the 3:30-3:45 range.

'running dad' has not indicated what his prior experience or training has been up until now.

What are his racing goals, if any?

The Lydiard clinic can be found at:

http://www.fitnesssports.com/lyd_clinic_guide/lydpg2.html

Thanks.

The idea is to one day spend a long time on your feet (the only way you can do that is to go slow enough so you won't die prematurely); followed by the next day to work a bit harder on your breathing (call it tempo, threshold, AT whatever) but shorter in duration.

That would be a whole package but you need to be strong enough to handle that kind of regime. Lydiard realized that and later started to say "nucleus of marathon conditioning being three long runs a week (whatever long means to you)". When building up mileage, most people can't handle the level of effort Arthur's Boys did simply because most people don't have the background they had. When they try to build up the long runs, even for Peter Snell at some point, in-between "shorter" runs becomes mere recovery runs from the long runs. That's fine too initially.

When constructing the Lydiard regime, think about what you need to focus on developing at each phase. During conditioning phase, the main emphasis should be to build aerobic base. The best way to do so, according to Lydiard, is to go for long runs; preferably anywhere between 90 minutes to 2 hours. Initially, forget the efflrt; becasue, as you get fitter and stronger, the pace will quicken. Some people might be concerned with "mechanics" during this phase. If so, throw some hilly courses; do some easy strides one a week; have a fartlek workout one day... It's okay to do long reps at moderate effort in place for "3/4 effort 10 miles" in the original schedule--I used to do that because I couldn't push myself to do a kind of tempo the schedule calls for; so I broke it down in segments. But those are NOT the main focus. Main focus here is long runs. If, for exapmle, you absolutely have to skip a day or two during the week (for whatever the reason), don't skip the long runs. We call them "key workouts" or "point workouts".

Effort is of importance. But if you can't handle doing high end effort short runs the day after long runs, make them just a recovery run but throw some effort into those long runs. Ron Daws used to have what he called "aerobic fartlek" and threw marathon-race-pace sections during his longest runs. I guess you can classify what Squires used to do in the same category...

Full-scaled Lydiard program is very difficult for anybody to handle. Most people, if tried, come out discouraged or disappointed or disgusted! Understand the principles of the program and apply it to your own needs. If Snell and Magee did Monday 10-miler in 55 minutes, that doesn't mean you need to do a 10-miler on Monday at 5:30 pace to be successful.

So you have to run at YOUR pace, not what the books said the NZ crew did. Improvement levels are totally individual, then?

So Lydiard had some moderately talented kids to begin with.

A 55-minute 10-mile run would be a MAGNIFICENT PR race for the vast(!) majority of people who toe a starting line.

The pattern, Nobby, then is: Long easy run one day, then shorter but quicker run the next day, or next two days...then repeat?

YES! Everything SHOULD be individual thing. It took Magee 5 or 7 years to get international level whereas it took about 2 years for Snell. Even within the Lydiard stable, things were very much invidual thing.

If done correctly, significant improvement comes surprisingly quickly. Take for example, this young lady I've started to coach, she ran 7:50 for a mile time trial (yes, just ONE mile!) in April. In September she ran a 25km race at 7:51 average pace, followed by her first ever marathon in October in 3:41 (first half at 7:55 pace).

My Eyes Are Opened wrote:

So you have to run at YOUR pace, not what the books said the NZ crew did. Improvement levels are totally individual, then?

So Lydiard had some moderately talented kids to begin with.

A 55-minute 10-mile run would be a MAGNIFICENT PR race for the vast(!) majority of people who toe a starting line.

The pattern, Nobby, then is: Long easy run one day, then shorter but quicker run the next day, or next two days...then repeat?

I believe Lydiard often said that most of his athletes took up to 4 years of his program to begin to fully reap the benefits of it. Nobby can jump in here, but it's not like Snell and Co. started off doing 55 minute 10-milers right off the bat. I've read that Snell struggled mightily in the beginning, trying to keep up with the more seasoned athletes and even may have needed a lift home on his first Waiatarua run.

I've often said to others that it's not one week of high mileage or one month of high mileage or even one year of high mileage that will get you your best results, but rather year after year after year. Lydiard's program definitely wasn't an overnight thing.

It takes patience and perserverance and a lot of staying the course but then it all pays off.

"What you do this year is for next year. It's not what you do this year or next year (performance-wise) that metters but in 5-years time..." --Arthur Lydiard

HRE,

sufferer was reffering to my post as the 'guy above you' who posted an explanation.

AT is done during base work, continued through hills and then only done during fartleks during anaerobic. the 10-12 weeks of base is the only time to really push your AT. And the 2 90min runs and one 2 hour run get up to AeT. So, all in all, it's all hard, with supplemental jogs done in the evening. Kellog does a great job of explaining the purpose of these jogs. Speed is not the point, just recentering for the next day's runs. Lydiard doesn't use the words AT or tempo, but he does explain the physiological goals from each run, and AT for the shorter runs and AeT for the longer runs is what he explains. As he wrote me personally, "we never jogged."

I've had great success with Lydiard training and let me say that it is HARD. It doesn't have the down weeks of Vigil training, short hill sprints of Canova (I found these to provide too little benefits compared to Lydiards continuous runs, when done as Canova describes: never going anaerobic), and it makes Jack Daniels look like easy training.

I've taken out the hill bounding and replaced it with T/R/Sat continuous AT hills..all uphill. On the longer days, we do AeT focusing on great technique held over hilly terrain with good practice on the downhills - the same goes for the long runs during base.

I've used Vigils model for structuring and adding variety to the AT runs, only having one continuous AT run effort each week. If done during a 60min run, it is 30min AT.

I've bumped the training up from 60/90/120 to 60/90/150 to 70/100/180 to 90/120/180 with hour evening supplemental runs, using the same rule of 20min warm up, 10min warm down. so, subtract 30 from every run and that is how long we do AeT for the longer runs or AT for the shorter runs, always doing our Sunday shorter run easy.