Wow, Lydiard training seems ridiculously hard

I thought running and training to be a successful runner was supposed to be easy. Isn't that why everyone does it and why 99.9% of the us population can run sub 16 5ks.

You have to read Lydiard's books to understand this better. Get "Run to the Top". Or get Keith Livingston's "Healthy, Intelligent Training" endorsed by the Lydiard Foundation.

Sprint training does not mean all out 100s until you puke. It is really strides and drills, usually less than 10sec hard efforts so you don't go anaerobic. It builds leg speed without beating you down. An Easy run and a few of those is not a hard day, but teaches your legs speed.

Hills - very demanding, but you don't run uphill for an hour. It may be 15+min of actual uphill running mixed with some downhill and flat striding (not so demanding). You run by feel and make sure you recover because it is about building leg strength.

Time Trials and DEVELOPMENT races are run at 3/4th to 7/8th effort with NO KICK. In other words, hard but not all out while focusing on even pacing and relaxing.

In his books, he ALWAYS advocates backing off it you are deeply sore or run down, but still run easy. Many people train too fast for their current ability and that is how they have difficulty recovering. Most Lydiard repeats are done at about actual 5K race pace (not your dream 5k pace). The supplemental Sprint training helps build raw speed for mile/800 type pacing and helps a slow improvement to your interval ability.

Yes, the schedule is demanding but it is set up for an Olympic Champion who has been running 100mi/wk at 6:00 pace plus easy morning jogs for base work. You have to scale it back a bit for a local road racer. But NO ONE can run hard every day. Lydiard was famous for 2 things: Mileage/Aerobic development, and Hard/Easy cycles.

Learn it, Know it, Live it.

What he said. But one feature of the base schedule is that it makes you strong enough to do the following phases. Lydiard was always insistent that the schedules were examples and everyone needed to adapt them to their own capabilities.

Agreed. It's not supposed to be easy.

Yeah basically each phase allows you to do the next. It works great but it's not the only way obviously. But, because of it's massive emphasis on the aerobic system, it is highly effective.

RealityCheck wrote:

Time Trials and DEVELOPMENT races are run at 3/4th to 7/8th effort with NO KICK. In other words, hard but not all out while focusing on even pacing and relaxing.

Can you try to quantify the Time Trial part a bit more? Let's say, I'm in 17:00 5k shape. That's 5:30/mi pace, with 30 seconds for the final 0.1 mi sprint.

So, at what pace do I run my 5k time trial at 3/4 to 7/8 effort?

This is part of the training that I don't like. The speed part is so vague. In my honest opinion, I think building a base similar to Lydiard's is important, but run doubles. Also, once you want to incorporate other stuff, go use Daniel's training and keep the doubles. You'll be surprised how good and fit you get.

Don't get too caught up in the fractions. Just run hard but not all out. Or think of, say 3/4 effort this way; three miles is 3/4 of four miles so 3/4 effort for three miles would be a pace you could run if you were going all out for four miles.

young one wrote:

Link here:

http://www.fitnesssports.com/lyd_clinic_guide/Arthur_Lydiard.htm

Holy crap! (1) can people actually complete this level of work? (2) can anyone who has followed Lydiard in practice give us some insight as to what kind of modifications were made, because this "schedule" seems unreal, (3) how the heck did anyone ever get the idea that Lydiard training is just long slow running? That seems to be the opposite of the truth. Letsrun seems to think that Daniels is rep work and Lydiard is distance work. But man there is a lot of sprinting, time trials, hill work, etc. in this Lydiard program.

Here's a more suitable adviser for your special needs.

HRE wrote:

Don't get too caught up in the fractions. Just run hard but not all out. Or think of, say 3/4 effort this way; three miles is 3/4 of four miles so 3/4 effort for three miles would be a pace you could run if you were going all out for four miles.

So, using McMillan to get the 4-mile equivalent for my 17:00 5k, gives me 22:14, or 5:34 pace.

So, 5:34 rather than 5:30'ish?

HRE, that sound about right?

clarify please wrote:

HRE wrote:

Don't get too caught up in the fractions. Just run hard but not all out. Or think of, say 3/4 effort this way; three miles is 3/4 of four miles so 3/4 effort for three miles would be a pace you could run if you were going all out for four miles.

So, using McMillan to get the 4-mile equivalent for my 17:00 5k, gives me 22:14, or 5:34 pace.

So, 5:34 rather than 5:30'ish?

HRE, that sound about right?

17-minutes 5k is 5:28 per mile pace. Why train at 5:30 when your racing pace is 5:28? Besides, 5:30 or 5:34 in your training makes no difference.

Arthur used the term "time trial" for both high end aerobic run during conditioning as well as race simulating workout during track training; but they are completely different workout.

For your "time trial" during conditioinig, the pace should be quite a bit slower than your race (5k) but it should be a bit more in duration--more like 3/4 of an hour. Once you move on to track training, or coordination phase, you should start out doing a 5k, for a 17-minute runner, 18:30 or thereabout but each successive 5k time trial, you should pick up the pace--or more presicely, the pace should come down naturally. This is where the training concept, popularized by Bill Bowerman, Date-pace/Goal-pace should come in place. You put down 18:30, or whatever the time your first time trial came out to be, and 17:00 (or actually after a cycle of program, your time should be faster, more like 16:40 or something like that) at the end of the chart and you connect these two; put down how many weeks you have and shoot for progressive times along the way. Your point of development might be speed, or tolerance to oxygen debt, stamina, pace-judgement or any other factor; and you work on these elements along the way so your progress comes gradually and naturally. You should be able to handle all these workouts IF you have developed good aerobic foundation to begin with. Without this foundation, you start to play around with all these worikouts, your plateau would come rather quickly and your progress will stop prematurely. In other words, if you've done Lydiard "Conditioning" correctly, then the rest of the workouts should not be overly taxing to you. If you haven't, it could come out as "ridiculously hard".

Uhh, I wrote that last message when I only had a few minutes and didn't do the math beyond the "3 miles is 3/4ths of 4 miles thing." Five thirty four seems awfully fast for someone who'll run about 5:30s all out. I think I'll pretty much defer to Nobby on this one and say that I'd have you start around 18:00 or a shade under and have the time come down in subsequent trials.

That does get away from the whole fraction thing but I've written here many times before that Arthur really never thought that business out very well and its just caused way more confusion than clarity.

Cool, thanks HRE & Nobby.

I completely understand that it's tough to get an exact answer, but obviously a ballpark estimate helps me get an idea of what effort a "time trial" requires. When I read descriptions that say "race effort, except for the sprint" and then see a 5000m and 10000m time trial scheduled each week, in addition to other solid (not recovery) runs, I had the same reaction as the OP. "HOW THE *-#$??"

So, to put it in a little context, starting around 18:00 for a 5k time trial would be 5:48 pace... which is only slightly faster than Daniels' recommended 20-minute tempo run (5:53 pace). 18:30 would be 5:57 pace, or slightly slower than Daniels' tempo pace. Then, working that pace faster as I work through that training phase.

If I'm interpreting what you guys said correctly, that makes more sense. Thank you both for the help!

HRE:

Actually I don't think we're that different. I said actually to start out with 18:30 and drop it down to 17 so mine's actually slower than yours.

Now, that said, bear in mind, this is for the final stage of program. When Arthur said "Time Trial" during conditioning, it has totally different meaning. In fact, I didn't really wnat to make a sales pitch here but we have developed Master Run Coach at

www.go2lydiard.com

website. We actually laid out EVERYTHING there though they are still nothing more than a guide-line. We have what we termed "Out and Back" which is equivalent of tempo run once a week and it's very much slower than most of what you see else where. Only final 6 weeks, we pay a lot of attention to how the pace is coming down. During conditioning, it's nothing more than slighly faster pace than other aerobic pace. We went over this many many many time and I believe the effort distrubution is pretty close to what Arthur was doing--in fact, if you plug in the times Magee or Halberg were running back in those days, O&B pace would come out very close to 53~55 minutes 10-mile pace which is what they were running as 3/4 effort.

We have even identified paces for intervals workouts at 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 effort based on your calculated VO2Max with possible range of pace as well. If you're interested, go check it out.

What we have come to conclusion is that most people tend to run their tempo or intervals way faster than necessary. The speed would have to be controlled well within themselves. Just because you can run fast, it wouldn't do you much good to see how fast you can do a workout. A good example is; Ron Clarke, when he was a junior, tried to do 10 X 400m in 60 seconds every week in hopes to break 4 minutes for the mile; he never did. On the other hand, Peter Snell did 10 X 400m in 60 seconds in January of 1963. He went on and broke the world record for the mile. Same workout, same speed, totally different outcome. Think about it.

the key is to have faith. i believed i could run sub 16 5k and was able to achieve that goal in a week with no prior running experience or training by just asking God.

NobbyH wrote:

A good example is; Ron Clarke, when he was a junior, tried to do 10 X 400m in 60 seconds every week in hopes to break 4 minutes for the mile; he never did. On the other hand, Peter Snell did 10 X 400m in 60 seconds in January of 1963. He went on and broke the world record for the mile. Same workout, same speed, totally different outcome. Think about it.

The fact that some of you are so addicted to Lydiard shouldn´t be the reason that in every post detail you profit the occasion to get Lydiard training up and be tendentious up to Lydiard.

Let me see things differently.

Different interval recovery leads to different output more than speed. If you omit the interval recovery of that 10X400m for 60secs we miss to understand what the meaning of that 10X400m is.

Ron is famous to be a 5000m 10000m specialist and not a 800m and miler as Peter Snell he was. Therefore Ron Clarke could show the effectiveness of that 10X400m for 60secs long term when he did break WRS in long distances, what he did after be senior age, because at that past decades, the 5000m and 10000m runs weren´t in the program of junior category.

In fact the same workouts can mean different relate to different middle distance or distance events.

Then you shall reformulate your comment as follows.

Peter Snell and Ron Clarke both did 10X400m in 60secs. Ron was able improved the 5000m WR from 13:35.0 to 13:16.6 and the 10000m WR from 28:18.8 to 27:39.4. That same workout results in Peter Snell mile WR.

Resume. 10X400m for 60secs is more effective for long distance runners than for milers.

You maight reformulate your comment. Or simply you can´t…

So Ron Clarke rearranged the 5 000m and 10 000m world records back in the 1960's because he ran 10 x 400m in 60 secs for a few years when he was a teenager.

I see.

young one wrote:

Holy crap! (1) can people actually complete this level of work?

This is why you fail.

I've never been great at really specific numbers and generally babble a bit when I try being that way. Basically, I've always interpreted the fractions as 1/4, very easy, 1/2, moderately easy, 3/4, moderately hard. 7/8, a step or two below all out.

In any case, progression of the trials should correspond to a progression in fitness as long as the trials aren't hard enough to make you go stale.