Mr. Ray wrote:
I guess everyone has different viewpoints, but my recovery runs are short and slow, and my long runs are a little faster and long.
For me, the main purpose of recovery is recovery, and the main purpose of long runs is to develop endurance.
I'm pretty much with you there Mr Ray
at the moment i'm coaching a 43 year old female with Lydiard style training with a mechanical approach to her style. She has had a lifetime of interval style hill and track repetition training focussed on maintain a high heart rate and began with me in April- to date 27 weeks of 1 hour aerobic capacity development with 30 or 40 min recovery runs and other runs brieding the gap between those two different paces - progression runs they could be names. She has created lifetime personal bests over every distance she has run over Winter/XC season and in her first race on the track over 5km also did a lifetime personal best. It's proving to be a very interesting experiment.