Lydiard's Runners Progression

Training Advice/Discussion General

15 years ago 06/29/2008 6:06pm EDT

I was recently reading the Molvar Lydiard Interpreted thesis and was astounded at the starting points that some of Lydiard's athletes came from. Halberg-10:22 to 8:30 2 mile, Snell 4:48 to 3:54 in the mile, and Ballie 11:00 ish to 8:45 two mile. Does anyone have any information about what type of training these athletes were doing prior to Lydiard? To me it seems like he took a bunch of neighboorhood boys to world beaters in four years. Pretty astounding stuff to me.

Here's the link to the Molvar thesis with Nobby's annotation.

http://www.bunnhill.com/BobHodge/Special/LydiardInterpreted.htm

15 years ago 07/01/2008 11:11pm EDT

re: RedFred

I asked Barry Magee about this. Here's his answer:

Early years of my running . Joined harrier club at 15 and club captain took a coach role over me and wrote my first distance shedules . Gil Edwards was his name . He did that for about 2 and a half years till he gave me to Lydiard .

Schedule was something like this first 2 years .

TUES --- --- 4 mile square block running fast all the way . Tried to beat record every week .

THURS ---- --- 5 mile run with 1/2 fartlek and 1/2 T/T . --up and down a main road racing trams .

SAT --- -- Harrier pack run or race every Saturday for 6 months of winter .X/C and road .

SUN --- -- Occcasional 1 hr easy run .

So I was not overdone or overtrained . Virtually nobody trained 7 days a week as they thought that it would kill you and you would get burnt out . Very intersting .

15 years ago 07/02/2008 2:42pm EDT

re: HRE

Molvar's "thesis" on Lydiard training has some pretty serious flaws in it. Nobby pretty much rips him apart. You're much better off reading either Nobby's stuff or the books Lydiard wrote himself.

But yes, you are correct. ALL of "lydiard's boys" were neighborhood kids who started training with him. They all lived within 5 miles of his house. He took a kid he met at the shoe factory and made him a national cross-country champion.

15 years ago 07/02/2008 5:12pm EDT

re: 777

yep. only lydiard took some 'neighbourhood kids" and turned them into champs. in no other case did any othe coach in histiry achieve this.

15 years ago 07/02/2008 6:25pm EDT

re: here we go again

He only said that Lydiard did this. In no post in this thread other than yours did anyone say that no other coach has ever done that.

15 years ago 07/03/2008 4:32am EDT

re: gobrules

A couple of other coaches at least did this but probably not as well as Lydiard.

The implications are quite scary. If there is one kid talented enough to break a world record in every city on the planet and probably many more than one ...

then what on earth are the coaches actually doing with all of this talent?

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Lydiard's Runners Progression

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