Mopak:
All due respect, Arthur had prescribed this quite a few times with several of his runners. Magee wasn't so much of a mega-mile kind of a guy either--not like Julian. He had told me that, even though he might get up to 120+ miles during conditioning, he'll cut back and probably year's average would more like be 80MPW.
Plus it's not just 2-hour "jog" that'll work. It's got to have some effort into it. There was this young American miler when Dick Quax was coaching Athletics West; he was so close to breaking 4-minute but kept on coming short. After several tries, he got "stale". Quax called Arthur and asked him what to do. Arthur told him to give him a 15-miler at a "strong effort". He did just that and a few weeks later, he broke 4-minutes.
I tried 3 X 2-hour a couple of times myself. One time, when I went back to Japan after my visit in NZ; I had this 18-mile very hilly course and I did the first one in something like 2:09, second one was the toughest and took me about 2:12 but in the third one, I was flying in about 2:05. Of course, unless you had built up a decent condition before-hand for this to work.
I was in Flagstaff with Yoko Shibui last summer. I would go run with her coach, young Watanabe. For the first time, I had a hell of a time keeping up with him (he is 10-years younger than me with marathon PR of 2:20) but I tried to keep up with him, laboring, breathing hard... After about the third run, he asked me if I'm doing okay. "I need this to 'knock myself in shape'..." I replied. They went back to Japan for 2 weeks and me back to MN. Three weeks later, I went back to Flagstaff. This time around, I had no problem keeping up with Nabe and, during this one particular run over the rugged trail, we had a thunderstorm and we had to run through mud and stream. I ended up leaving him behind in this 1:40 run (I was a better mud runner). We went to Berlin together and we ran about 1:30 every day while in Berlin, going around the park near the finish (that gate). On this particular run, about 200m from the end of the park, I looked at him with a grin and I started to sprint. He was too quick for me and caught me in the last 30m but he just could not believe, only 4 weeks earlier, I had a hell of a time keeping up with him on a 40-minute run.
If you have any more legitimate questioin about Lydiard, come visit
www.lydiardfoundation.org
forum. We go straight to the source--if you're wondering if Snell really did "Lydiard" before his WRs, we go directly to Snell. Wet Coast also started Arthur Lydiard Legacy facebook and there's a great discussion on interval training going on.