Post your Lydiard training results

Way back in high school injured ( kidney) when advancing out of hill phase missed crucial month able to come back and finish session,

Recently 2008 injured during build up wasn't even able to get up to base phase. Was increasing time 5 % per week.

2009 Again injured during build up phase knee and achilles was not able to get to a decent phase.

2010 Built up realy slowly able to achieve goal level for base phase had hard time maintaing it, Injured in hill phase looks like I will miss summer track season again.

These are just a few snap shots of trying to follow this approach which only leads to overuse injuires for me. Don't know what approach will work for me , but clearly Lydiard doesn't.

a kidney injury?

Over training resulted in hematuria, which my coach told me was a normal training response, continued training through it which resulted in kidney tubule damage which forced me to miss a great deal of my senior year. I am not criticizing the Lydiard approach, several of my teammates responded quite well to it. I did not see the significant drops in times that they did in the two years I was under that particular coach.

I'm calling shenanigans on that history of injury using Lydiard. I injured my knee (ran through having a tight IT band for a long time until I realized what it was) and injured my Achilles (hill bounding on a very cold morning with no real warm up). I could blame Lydiard training because I was using it at the time, but it's not his fault I got injured. Both were avoidable things caused by my own stupidity or ignorance.

Lydiard training doesn't mean to follow one of his books word for word or to cling to 100% of the scheduled workouts given by a coach claiming to use his system. The important thing to understand about Lydiard is that distance running is nearly entirely an aerobic sport. Lydiard argues a training pyramid that believes a bigger base leads to a higher peak. This is all you really need to understand about Lydiard. Much of the rest means getting lost in the details.

Lydiard doesn't believe in training "hard" per se. He'd be the first person to tell somebody they're doing it wrong if running is causing pain. This caveat exonerates Lydiard from a lot of blame.

My suggestion is to read Lydiard, especially "Healthy Intelligent Training," which translates much of his relevant teachings into modern terms. I'd also recommending reading Daniels and as many other training books you possibly can. I've taken bits and pieces from all of them, but ultimately I'd have to say I follow a Lydiard approach more than anything simply because I wholeheartedly believe this is a mostly aerobic sport and that recognizing such should be the emphasis of any training plan. This is the kind of thing you see in the way Greg McMillan trains, where he obviously coaches a wide variety of ways to run, but would probably agree that he is a Lydiard boy simply because of where he places the emphasis.

A good example of the Lydiard approach is probably Wejo right here from LetsRun.com, though I don't know for sure whether he would call it the Lydiard approach.

I use the Lydiard approach and have not only seen my times improve, but also believe in myself a lot more. When doing intervals and tempos during a lot of the year, like in other plans, I never saw my times change by much and it seemed like I was fighting an eternal battle of significantly diminishing returns on my improvement. With the Lydiard approach, I basically feel as if my race times have a nearly limitless potential (basically a question of how high will my base mileage build each year before I get too old to see yearly improvement). The key really is to be consistent and stay healthy. Most runners are too concerned with where they'll be in a year or two. Lydiard is concerned with where you'll be in 5 years or 10 years and this typically leads to Lydiard athletes having successful longevity in the sport.

dropped 40 second on my mile time in high school using this training. my mile time was sub-5 before starting this training. would do again. :)

My training is lydiard-esque, according to my coach at least. I know the hilly sunday long run is something that was prescribed by lydiard. When I put these into my training routine (18-20 on a VERY hilly golf course or country roads), I saw my 10k PR go from 30:55 to 29:36 as it stands now, early in my season.

nevereverr wrote:

dropped 40 second on my mile time in high school using this training. my mile time was sub-5 before starting this training. would do again. :)

what was your time