Jed Clampett wrote:
Do an internet search. Lydiard spent several years in Finland. He not only coached Viren, he also had impact on Pekka Visala and several other Finns!
Lydiard didn´t coached Lasse Virén, there´s some incorrect info on this in the internet. But his influence behind Finnish runners in the 70´s was undenieable, he traveled around Finland giving speeches and educating Finnish coaches, and suddenly there was massive increase of runners training really hard, he was a great inspirer. He didn´t coached Pekka Vasala directly either, but Vasala´s coach used Lydiard´s methods. Coach of Lasse Viren, Rolf Haikkola (14:14 5k runner), didn´t use hill bounding phases, or bounding in general, etc. He varied the intensity more throughout a year, using 5 different intensities, based on the HR (measuring manually). But of course mr. Haikkola took a lot of ideas from Lydiard. Before Lydiard, in the 50-60´s, the training in Finland was generally based on interval/repetition training a´la Mihalý Igloi, and that didn´t suit into snowy and icy winter conditions well.