Lydiard Training Foundation Training

Arthur would tell you that once you've done a particular kind of training for a while you've gotten about as much benefit from it as you can and should switch to something else. When he said to do base training for as long as possible he meant within the context of ending your last training cycle and beginning your next one. So you'd pick the time when you wanted to peak, count back four weeks for your coordination phase, four for your intervals, four for hills, then 10-12 weeks for base. That's 20-22 weeks. He usually had his guys take two weeks of rest after the previous cycle was done before beginning the next base phase. But if you were done with those two weeks and had more than 22 weeks until the next time you wanted to be at a peak, say 23 to 26 weeks, you'd extend the base phase for that time rather than any of the other phases. So when he said to extend the base phase for as long as possible, he meant as long as possible within the time period between the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next one. Literally, as long as possible could mean extending the base phase for years or even decades.

If we're talking about new runners he might want someone to do a year or two of base work. This is in line with his idea of getting fit enough to train., of "training to train." When he talked about high school runners he liked a quote from Holmer that said if you could get a kid to do nothing but train for two years and not race you'd really have something good. He'd say that you should try to get young runners interested in how far they can run rather than how fast. But this is all preparatory to using his system.

In the case of the guy not making progress after nine months of base work, he'd think that little or no progress in racing times wouldn't matter if the guy was new to the sport or to serious training. Progress in such a case would be more along the lines of looking at his ability to cover a lot of miles comfortably. You wouldn't conclude that there's not much progress being made in racing until someone like that has begun training for races, i.e., adding hills, intervals, time trials, etc.

HRE and too hot - This is great commentary here, guys. What too hot said about going with the flow of things, listening to one's body, and finishing runs feeling like one can give more are all key features of my training. Once I started doing things in a simple, straightforward manner, and listening to my body (rather than a schedule or a book), I started to see significant improvements--across the board.

And the ability to cover lots of miles comfortably, as HRE says, is so logical and simple for a distance runner (especially a marathoner), but is often ignored or neglected, usually in favor of VO2 work, speed work, or something along those lines--you know, we have to do this in order to "keep our speed." It has been a long time since I have been to a track or have done a "this x this" workout, and yet not only has my marathon time improved significantly, but my 5k and 10k times are much better, too (not even close to what they were). All of this I believe comes as a result of prioritizing aerobic work, especially high-end aerobic work, running hills, and getting in as many miles as I reasonably could. It really is not that complicated. Do the miles, do what motivates you, and focus on the cake, not the icing.

I thank both of you for your input here.

I know it's a copout to say that Lydiard training is more specialized on a per athlete basis than these plans can ever do justice, but it has to be stated. Lydiard was the epitome of a coach who would tell a high mileage guy he needed to go do sprints or tell a middle distance guy he needed to go run a 20 miler. More to the point I don't think Lydiard would want an athlete to adhere so strongly to the phases at the detriment of the person's overall running. I'm sure he'd tell you to back off the hills if they were tiring you out. I'm sure he'd add some strides or intervals if you were jogging around everywhere. And I'm sure if you felt completely lethargic he'd look into the whole training and try to figure out what was going wrong. If he were alive today he would also have paid attention to the last few decades of exercise science rather than completely promote his thoughts from 50 years ago, which is to say that I'm not sure he'd be comfortable with anyone using static training plans from a book about him.

What you basically need to recognize about Lydiard is that he is a firm believer in aerobic development. He would have extolled the virtues of red blood cells had he known that's what he was really talking about. So you need to realize that his goal is to maximize aerobic development while still keeping you sharp for important races. Having to drop runs from 90 minutes to 45 minutes is the last thing he would want to see you doing. That would be a red flag to him.

HRE wrote:

Arthur would tell you that once you've done a particular kind of training for a while you've gotten about as much benefit from it as you can and should switch to something else. .

That's the thing, though. You will not stop benefiting from a base phase if you are continuing to add on miles and the pace is dropping naturally and you are recovering sufficiently day to day. if you can do that for x amount of time and keep improving. Why not?

auckland nz wrote:

HRE wrote:

Arthur would tell you that once you've done a particular kind of training for a while you've gotten about as much benefit from it as you can and should switch to something else. .

That's the thing, though. You will not stop benefiting from a base phase if you are continuing to add on miles and the pace is dropping naturally and you are recovering sufficiently day to day. if you can do that for x amount of time and keep improving. Why not?

Agreed. That's pretty much what Ron Clarke did and it worked out okay for him. But we don't know if the guy I was responding to is doing that, i.e, adding miles, having the pace drop naturally, or recovering sufficiently. I can't tell from his post. All he says is that he's done base training for nine months and not really seen improvement and I know that Arthur's answer would be that this guy is not doing full Lydiard training so he, Arthur, wouldn't be surprised the guy's not racing better.

I don't know how up on the sport's history you are, but there was a split between Arthur and Peter Snell in 1963. Peter told me that a big issue was that he'd been training with another of the guys from the original group, one who never reached international class but was a "free thinker" who later was a fairly successful coach. This guy had decided that the base work was reason the Lydiard system worked and that once you'd done that you didn't need to invest a lot of time or thought on hills, intervals, etc. Peter told me that this became a real point of contention between himself and Arthur as he, Peter, was sort of siding with this other guy's view and wasn't doing anything but distance work. During this period, Peter somehow got entered into a mile race on short notice, maybe two weeks. He'd done no rep work to that point but added a couple sessions in each of those weeks and ran 3:58. So that's a good argument that this "base work is the only thing you need to do much of" guy might have been right.

Here's another story from Auckland. Sometime in the 90s a Colorado State University runner called Brian Berryhill, I think he's coaching at CSU now, was in New Zealand during Christmas break running the mile and 800 in some of your summer meets. According to a story in Track and Field News, all of his training to that point had been for cross country, 70 miles a week of distance work and nothing else. In preparation for the NZ races,.Before he left he ran a time trial at a mile and one at 800 at 80% effort. He did 1:47 and 3:56 in his NZ races. In that Track and Field News story he talked about how anxious he was to do some interval work for the US outdoor season and see how much faster he could run for those distances. But he didn't go faster. This is all from Track and Field News. I don't have any first hand verification but they're a reliable source.

So I asked around about the guy Peter had been training with. There's not much information. But I did learn that when he coached he had his runners doing their distance work at a decent pace, not flogging by any chance but not what most people would call LSD. And Peter did have 3-4 track sessions under his belt when he did that 3:58 so it didn't come purely off of distance work. Ron Clarke's distance runs usually got to 5:00 pace or faster once he'd gotten a mile or so into the runs and he raced at least weekly most of the time. So yes, you can race well off of nearly nothing but distance work but I think you still need to spend some time going faster, probably not as much as many think. But if the nine month base work guy is only doing easy distance work he shouldn't be really surprised that he's not improving much.

Outside Runner, thanks for that post.

HRE - Thanks. I would love to have you follow my training. I think you would find it interesting. Your knowledge of running and running history have always impressed me. I post regularly on the “Road Racing and Training” thread.

Peace and happy running.

I used to look at that thread but then I stopped seeing it regularly. I'll look harder.

outsiderunner wrote:

HRE - Thanks. I would love to have you follow my training. I think you would find it interesting. Your knowledge of running and running history have always impressed me. I post regularly on the “Road Racing and Training” thread.

Peace and happy running.

I can vouch for outsiderunner as a frequent contributor on that thread. It reminds me of Ron Clarke's training, now that you mention it HRE.

Go on Youtube and look up Lydiard's lecture at Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh. I think it is from the early 1990s or late 80s and comes in two parte each about 40 minutes long. There is an excellent section on anaerobic/interval work at the beginning of the second part.

I think I remember reading from Snell's last book that he set a mile world record just 2 weeks after finishing the hill bounding phase.

Jeff Julian got his best marathon after six weeks of hill training and a week with three 3 mile time trials and no track phase

I also remember reading that Vasala was doing some bounding until 2 weeks before the Munich games.

Snell wrote that bounding developed type 2 fast twitch fibers. Maybe that's why very little speed work was needed to hit peak form.

Those Meadowbank lectures are excellent--thank you for suggesting them.

Lydiard: "The kids know more about training than the coaches do."

And: "When in doubt, never do speed work." That guy was the best. Such a common sense approach.

outsiderunner wrote:

Those Meadowbank lectures are excellent--thank you for suggesting them.

Lydiard: "The kids know more about training than the coaches do."

And: "When in doubt, never do speed work." That guy was the best. Such a common sense approach.

In that vein and just in case the OP is still looking in, Arthur's answer to the OP's predicament would be to scrap the faster stuff, screw the computerized program, and do long, very leisurely runs for as long as necessary, i.e., until you feel some zing for running again. But I'd still recommend getting in touch with Nobby or Lorraine as well.

This. Definitely this.

There is a certain chasm between what we mythologize what Lydiard did versus what he actually did.

I had to go find my old notes and books on Lydiard. In Chapter 12 of "Running to the Top", he sets out the training schedules. For the various track events, he has the conditioning phase of daily aerobic runs, like 30 to 60 minutes or 60 to 90 minutes. However, he describes aerobic runs as 70% to 99% of your aerobic capacity.

Well, 70% to 99% of your aerobic capacity sounds like something between easy running up to 3k or 5k pace running. That's some pretty hard running. So it would probably be a training error to think that Lydiard training did not touch on faster paces during the conditioning or base phase.

I would also add that he has a different conditioning phase for xc and road racing. In a two-week cycle, he has aerobic running, running a hilly course, a time trial of 2k to 3k, and another time trial of 3k to 5k, Again, that is a lot of hard running in the "base" phase.

Similarly, in "Running With Lydiard" for the conditioning phase of men's training for distance track events, the schedule is:

Monday: Easy Fartlek one hour

Tuesday: Aerobic run of 1.5 hours

Wednesday: Time Trial of 10k

Thursday: Aerobic run of 1.5 hours

Friday: Easy Fartlek one hour

Saturday: Time Trial of 10k

Friday: Aerobic run of 2 hours or more.

Again, that is a lot of hard running. While there was periodization to Lydiard's training, it would be a mistake to think that certain speeds and paces were left out of training until you reached a later phase.

Snell told me that when they started a cycle they ran about 7:00 pace for their 22 mile runs and as the season went on they worked down to something closer to 6:00. Barry Magee told me that he'd often do a 10 mile run where he went "out" in 30 minutes and come "back" in 26. Fifty six minutes for ten miles is not jogging around but it's slower than Barry's best marathon pace was overall with five miles of it at or slightly faster than marathon pace. It wasn't slow distance as we probably understand it now but it wasn't real hard either. Arthur would say that his guys ran as fast as they could without getting out of breath.

Dear All,

OP here, firstly thank you to everybody for their input, just to answer a few questions raised during the discussion

I have got a full blood tests and thankfully I am in perfect health, iron stores are 44 and blood count is 15 is its not a iron deficiency.

My runs in the base phase were done approx 8.45 per mile, varying based on the terrain at an average HR of approx 145 bpm. So I don’t think I was overdoing the runs, I was always comfortably tired. My last 10k last year was 43.15 my pb is 42.25

The main problems I had with running 90 minutes during the hill phase was my ankles and lower ligaments were too tender and I didn’t want to over exercise them, once I got some rest I was fine.

But overall running at the moment is not going well, finally just to clarify my OP was not to construed as a criticism of the Lydiard Foundation or Healthy Intelligent Training, I was happy with both purchases and things just didn’t go according to plan and the training certainly a successful method based on the many reviews.

So, Lydiards base is as much easy running as you can handle, a long run, a few hilly short sprints and some quicker shorter stuff. Comfortably tired ergo Tinman training.

You’re welcome.