Lydiard's style of lacing shoes - do elite athletes do this? Malmo, Tinman, anyone else...

I'm far from elite, but my mile is in the mid 4's and 5K XC is 16:40, and I just relaced my shoes the lydiard way a few days ago. It definitely feels better (I train in Elites).

how exactly do he suggest you should lace your shoes?

Here's a link:

http://www.fitnesssports.com/lyd_clinic_guide/lydpg28.html

can someone explain that picture better to me im a lil confused by it...

it makes sense to me in the fact that all those little X's the laces make are essentially pressure points on the top of your feet. The lydiard lacing minimizes the pressure points on your metatarsals and such.

I have no idea how one laces that way.

(if you DO have a big one, good for you)

I plan on lacing my shoes using Lydiard's model starting Jan. 1st (kind of a resolution, I guess.) I was curious too whether a lot of the great high school, college and Olympic athletes & coach's lace their shoes this way.

I can't lace my shoes like that. My second would-be set of holes is a sort of sleeve on the front of the shoe. It wouldn't work. I'd skip it, but there's only about 3 pairs of holes after that anyway.

not elite wrote:

I'm far from elite, but my mile is in the mid 4's and 5K XC is 16:40, and I just relaced my shoes the lydiard way a few days ago. It definitely feels better (I train in Elites).

Thanks. I guess I need to try it out myself, but I was wondering if it would be worthwhile to have my high school kids lace their shoes this way. Thanks for your input. Anyone else?

I'm in high school, but I'm the only one on my team who knows about it. Or even cares about shoes at all, everyone else just goes to the store and gets the new model of what they already have. That isn't to say that they're not dedicated, almost all of the athletes on the team are very committed to the program.

I just switched to Lydiard style because i had a metarsaliga problem, i couldn't even run on the old style laces, but ever since i switched its felt great on my feet.

I guess I'm sort of a shoe fetish and I always check other people's shoes (as Arthur used to say all coaches should...). I think, it's hard to say exactly because they may do other types of lacing except the top looks like Arthur's lacing, Rob de Castella and Carlos Lopes used to do that. I noticed some African runners also do that as well. We had a 2:26 female marathon runner in Japan who did that and, from her lacing, I track her coach down and we got acquainted later.

We are working on easier-to-understand graphic for PPT part III that's yet to come (like Ghost of Christmas yet to come?) but remember, if that really doesn't work, there's not point trying to do it. Some shoes have very soft material around the eyelet and if you try to do Arthur's lacing, it wrinkles up too much. Or sometimes with "D-ring" or its equivalent, you really can't do this lacing, unless you chop off the rings and punch holes instead (which I did for Arthur with DS Trainer).

Dick Quax's brother told me that he does this lacing with training shoes but not with spike shoes. Oh, that's right. Dick does this lacing but I don't think he was doing it when he was competing. I believe Priscla Welch does it too. I converted some Japanese runners to this lacing but they weren't at the top level. Not yet anyways.

Hi Nobby. How was SF? I hope you're having a better week.

On the lacing: I like to run a lot in very simple shoes and often in "retro" shoes, which are more akin to what Arthur had available to him in the old days. I think Arthur's system works well with the old, very simple lacing systems (essentially evenly spaced eye holes and a flat shoelace). With some newer shoes with loops and gilly-lacing and some laces through straps, it is much harder to pull off. Ran 16 miles in Adidas Dragons with Arthur lacing last Sunday. Worked fine. Smart guy, that Lydiard.

I don't know the answer. Maybe they do. Tinman

In my best race last summer, my shoe came untied.

I now run every race with my left shoe untied for good luck.

Adidas Dragons. Sounds familiar but I can't place them. New or retro?

HRE: the Adidas Dragon is a retro shoe; try adidasstore.com. I remember I had an adidas dragon in 1978, but I'm not quite sure this shoe is the same. Good luck. -- Spidey

Thanks Spidey. Us relics have to stick together.

The problem, HRE, as you probably know, is whenever companies trot out these retro shoes, they ain't the same as you and I remember. They more or less look the same but the inner and bottom of the shoes are usually inferior/different than the originals. The mold was busted years ago, or something like that.

As for lacing shoes, the only way I can see anything other than the 'traditional' way helping is if you have too wide or too narrow spots in your feet and need to relace to account for this. It ain't the lacing, it's the miles you put on the shoes.