LYDIARD OR DANIELS?

I know I need to read Jack Daniels to I can formulate an informed opinion.

Sounds to me though, that he was more scientific and much more specific with his scheduling.

When it comes down to aerobic conditioning-hill phase- speed etc etc etc., was he/is he that much different than Lydiard?

Tom:

Thanks for saving the thread from typical-letsrun.com-ism.

On the weekend of 12/10 & 11, SunMart in Houston, TX, will be hosting Memorial Service for Arthur. We will be having, tentatively, Lorraine Moller, Rod Dixon and Dick Quax. I spoke with Gary Lydiard, Arthur's son, last night. We wanted to bring him up as well but his prior committment unabled him. We would like to make this SunMart Ultra Trail race as Arthur's memorial event and bring related people/athlete(s) each year. We would also like to set it up so we can have some sort of exchange program between this race and the Legend Race in Auckland where Hotlanta Master finished second this year.

Hotlanta; How's your preparation coming along? When is the race?

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Nobby wrote:

Tom:

Thanks for saving the thread from typical-letsrun.com-ism.

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Okay Tom,

First of all I explained why I needed to bump it. Either my computer is too slow or the site is or whatever, that if the thread drops to 3rd page, it takes quite a while to open it.

So I do it for real reasons. Calling me an idiot without knowing why, especially after I have clearly explained so, it idiotic (yourself). So just keep your comments (like that) to yourself.

Is Kim Stevenson an idiot? Kim bumped several times over the course of this thread.

Anyway, I made it clear that I am enjoying this thread. I am learning from it, as I am sure others are too - the content is good resource material.

Learning never stops, except for idiots.

>>hooray<<

Well if it's 'done' for you, why do you continue. I don't see you answering my legitimate question above.

Perhaps someone else will put into a nutshell the key differences between Lydiard and Daniels.

Dr. E:

I think you will receive a Forum message reply notice when I write this to respond to you. Keep that message. It should have the site address at the bottom and you can simply click that and you should be able to get the the thread without getting into letsrun.com site. By the way, I posted my "thank-you" message to Tom Dederian and I have no idea this "not at all" guy is. So don't get those two mixed up.

I was hoping people would pay SOME respect for the old man when I mentioned Memorial Service but I guess not... I wonder if people even remember who Rod Dixon, Dick Quax and Lorraine Moller are any more.

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Dr. E wrote:

>>hooray<<

Well if it's 'done' for you, why do you continue. I don't see you answering my legitimate question above.

Perhaps someone else will put into a nutshell the key differences between Lydiard and Daniels.

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Now Nobby, you know full well I know who Dixon (Rod and John), Quax, and Moller are; also Walker, Ballie, the late Davies, Audain, Magee, and Jelly. :>) (Is there a better name in coaching than Arch Jelly? It sounds like it should be in my kids' lunch box.)

I am glad there will be a memorial in Texas. Not surprisingly, most of Arthur's friends and fans are in points elsewhere too far to attend. But thank you for the update ( . . . now, y'see, some of us do read this).

Separate Nobby question: what is the status of your own website (fivecircles.org) and other projects.

Separate Daniels question (I hope jtupper knows how much he is appreciated, without having to have a memorial service to prove it): my interpretation of avoiding "junk miles" is to run fairly comfortable (slower than marathon pace) for most of basework (either for my slowpoke self or the occasional youngster looking for advice) but that it is okay and good to occasionally to pick it up for 20-30 minutes of tempo (but not exhausting) work.

Hey guys ! Lets not get carried away with the negatives.
I was just chuckling to myself prior to writing this. If Arthur read these last few posts he would probably use some colourful "auld English" in describing what he read.
So guys lets get back to the thread proper.

Oh, c'mon, Spider! You don't know who Dick Quax is! Just kidding. He's really a prime example of how 0.4 seconds separates (Viren and Quaxie). I remember he asked me to contact some publisher for his training video in 1985 in Japan; not one that I contacted remember who Quax was; thought all of them knew who Viren was.

I know, I'm waaay behind! So please bear with me. At least we ARE still going with it. Perhaps I shouldn't spend so much time and effort on posting these messages but I fugred this is a good ground work??? ;0)

Nobby,

I wish I was educated more in who Quax and some of the other great runners are from the NZ Lydiard days. Reading the posts referring to them, gives me an idea we are talking about some pretty solid athletes, who were very serious....weren't they all?

Please keep posting , this is all so brilliant. And like you have indicated for yourself, I also find the logic (rather than science) of Lydiard, easy for me to understand.

Spider,
Arch Jelly sounds like something Asics would ut in their shoes that Arthur wouldn't like.

Naughty boy, HRE... Think of one word; Sortie...! Just kidding.

The video Nike put together on Pre, Fire on Track, starts with a comment; something like 60s and 70s being the Golden Era of Track & Field... In a way, perhaps. When I was in NZ, I spent quite a bit of time visiting local second hand book stores, digging out all the out-of-print running books. NZ and Australia have such rich tradition of running. And 60s and 70s must have been the highest point of all. I've seen a picture of Murray Halberg dashing out of the front door as a 17-year-old. Those were the days of care-free, they didn't know much about how much lactate they were getting in their blood stream or if their threshold pace was 7 seconds slower or faster or things like that. They just got out and ran; up and down the muddy bush-track; hills so steep even John Walker had to walk (I saw it one time...). When I ran my first ever marathon at Rotorua, I did 3-hour run a week before, then 2:30 on Tuesday and 2:45 on Thursday. I still brokw 3 hours at Rotorua. They didn't really have custom-made shoes; I guess Dick Tayler always lost his toe nails running around 10k on the track in spike shoes.

60s and 70s must be considered as the Golden Era of US distance running as well (and it extended into early 80s with the Squires' Group). Shorter used to always tape his spike shoes because he had such narrow feet. He used to take his foot for the marathon as well because shoes he was wearing didn't have much arch at all. They basically hammered themselves and knocked them into shape. You guys had many great "unknown" runners in the 60s and 70s. In MN, many people still talk about Ron Daws but we also had Varn Nelson, Steve Hoag, BJ...and yes, Buddy Edelen! The guy held the world record for the marathon in the 60s!

I was just reading this book on marathon history in Japan. It talks about Shigeki Tanaka, first Japanese to win Boston marathon at the age of 18! Then Keizo Yamada, Kokichi Tsuburaya, Kenji Kimihara...moving on to Seko, Soh brothers, Morishita, Taniguchi... People know who those people are. In NZ, I can still find a book on Jack Lovelock. I don't think in the US, people don't know enough about their local heroes; Ryuns and Liquoris and Shorters and Moores... US had probably the highest finishers in the Olympic marathon history in 1972 with Shorter winning, Moore 4th and Bacheler 9th. Why? What was it that they were doing that made the difference? What was it that Squires was doing that made such a huge impact?

Today everybody is talking about LT pace and AT pace and training like walking in the glass slippers; we're supposed to know more about what's going on in our bodies. We're supposed to eliminate all the wasted effort. And with all the money going into the sport and much advanced equipment and sponsorship and so-called "professional" attitude, for some reason we don't see as much depth in performance. So I guess the question still remains; why?

Nobby: You mention the memorial run in Houston. But I just thought you would like to know that the boys here are doing a memorial run on the 18th over the full Waiatarua circuit with Barry starting them off on their way. They did it last year too, and I think its going to be a tradition.

Also Im not sure if you have heard of not, but Waitakere City Mayor - Bob Harvery is looking to create a plaque along scenic drive (the slightly hilly part after THE hill) at the waterfall where Arthurs Boys used to have a drink.

Just thought you might appreciate knowing that.

[quote]Nobby wrote:


What was it that Squires was doing that made such a huge impact?

The Crest of the Wave

I have studied the ebbs and flows of distance running prowess over the last century. I will put it bluntly: let's squash the
"Great man (coach or runner)" view. None of these guys, Lydiard, Squires, Shorter, et al, created anything. But each happened to ride the wave of a confluence of societal forces from population, to economic, and to political. For a set of reasons in the very late 1960s more guys continued to train after college. Maybe because good jobs weren't as plentiful or that some felt they could postpone job drudgery in favor of a pursuit of amateur running. Without a large population of runners trying to run well we would never have heard of any of these guys. They did not make it happen by force of genius or personality any more that the surfer makes the wave he surfs down.

The personalities and all they produced are like the essential skill, courage, and agility of the surfer but are only the topping that is fun to lick off and talk about.

If anyone wants to talk about the water, the wind, and the bottom contours that make the perfect wave, we can do that. For example: Where are all the Indian, or Indonesian long distance runners? Where is the Punjabi Lydiard or the Java Squires?
Tom

I've noticed that a lot of people who are Lydiard fans don't have a lot of knowledge of Daniels and vice versa. It would probably be good for people to read up on both of them, it would make the discussion better and more informative.

You're probably right. But I have tried reading JD's writing and it's just too technical for me. You could ask me what I read five minutes after I'd finished and I probably couldn't really tell you.

not having the time or the will power to read through this entire thread, i saw people were looking for the name of lydiards first book that he co authored, sitting my lap right now is this book, it's titled Run to the Top

What I’ve been trying to do with this thread is to share what I’ve learnt from Lydiard, or myself learning about the Lydiardism over the years; with help from knowledgeable people like HRE, Kim and Glenn. I’d be the first to admit, that I’m no position to “share” insight of the Daniels formula but that does not mean I hadn’t studied. I’ve read his book and I’ve read what’s posted on internet that someone so kindly shared on much earlier page. The problem today is that there are just SOOOOOOO much information out there. Particularly with the explosion of internet, there are 100 times more information available than 20 years ago. I probably shouldn’t call that a problem but really we are totally bombarded with wealth of information.

The real problem is that you lose focus. I actually felt that way in 1980, just reading running magazines. That’s when I decided; that the Lydiard program made a perfect sense to me; many programs follow the same patter though it may not appear the same; why not study THE Lydiard program and get down really deep into it? Too many young athletes and coaches have way too many choices today. They are sitting in front of a dinner table with 30 different small dishes; from Chinese to French to hamburger and French fries to seafood salad to pasta to rice. All they’re doing is try this a little bit and try that a little bit… They have no time to continuously stick to one decent program to really see the benefit of it. They would try high mileage for 3 weeks and when they don’t see a drop of 20 seconds in 1600m, they’d try out something else like 20X200 with 200 recovery jog. And even if that showed marked improvement, when they hear some argument that the recovery should be shorter, then they try out 20X200 with 50 recovery. They there comes scientific study that “continuous” tempo run would produce better result (“3.6% more efficient…”), then they’ll move on to tempo runs… Does this sound familiar? The Japanese marathon book I referred to earlier, whether intentional or not, kept talking about “…when Morishita ran his breakthrough marathon, it was 3 years after he joined Asahi-Kasei…” or “…when Taniguchi won his first marathon, it was 4 years after he came under Soh brothers coaching…” things like that. And here we’re talking about THE SAME TRAINING PROGRAM. Here in the US, some kids would post a message, saying, “I’ve been doing high mileage (40MPW) for the past 2 weeks. What else do you guys think I should do?” and the reply comes 7 different directions from run more slower to run less faster to include LT runs to include AT runs to include BS runs to go sprint up short hill till you vomit to running backwards… God knows what’s next!

My whole intention here is to share what I know about the Lydiard program—a sort of a strip-tease (sorry, Tom!) of what to come once the Lydiard Foundation is up and running (knock on wood!). I’m in no position to explain in depth anything else. In fact, I was hoping someone here who “studied”, not just “read”, the Daniels’ formula to tap in and share their experience. But when it really comes down to it, I really don’t think anything is that vastly different. I’m not insinuating at all that Lydiard invented everything. It is true that some other coaches were doing high mileage base building before Lydiard; hill training before Lydiard; peaking before Lydiard. All that is so true and, with all fairness, some people accuse him of taking all the credit, that is a bunch of BS. He always mentioned that 50/50 sharpeners is also called Igloi training. He didn’t invent that and he never took credit of inventing it. But I truly believe that he perfected putting it all together in a balanced way. Anybody who came after him is pretty much application of that. Nakamura never said he invented the Nakamura system but it’s the application of Lydiard program. And Lydiard never came down on him and accused him of stealing his idea. If you want to argue that, start a new thread; I don’t think our topic here is not that level and we’re not interested.

Another problem with the wealth of information, particularly internet, is that you never know who really knows what. You can just come out, pretending you know everything and throw some famous names here and there, pretending you’re buddy-buddy with them and so many of us just get suckered in. How do you know what I’m talking about is true? So be careful with that. And finally for God’s sake READ! I’m not the best writer either (what do you expect from a damn foreigner!?) but so many others just don’t read thoroughly. I have never had any intention whatsoever of putting John Molvar’s training down at all. As a matter of fact, I always stated that it seems like a sound program a (except for that 9-week build-up, John…!) and I’d highly recommend young athletes trying out. I had a problem that being called “the Lydiard Program” and I had even bigger problem people considering that as “THE” Lydiard program. John CLEARLY stated at the top of his paper, that it’s his “interpretation” of Lydiard program but when it appears on this message board, it has become “Molvar System = Lydiard Program”. What’s up with that? Where did they get that idea?