When Seko did 1000m intervals; usually it's either for 10000m when he would do, in general, 10 repeats in 2:40~50; or 20~30 repeats for the marathon when he would do it a bit slower, somewhere around 2:50~55. Seko was a speedster and personally prefered faster training like repetition despite popular information about him going some rediculously long distance. Surprising thing is training for Nakayama, Seko's archrival who was basically faster than Seko. One of the national coaches of that time told me that his main menu was to run 10X1000m at around 3 minutes or only slightly faster.
I totally agree with your point on steady state run. Frankly, I feel it's much more benefitial to do 3/4 effort steady state continuous run than long reps. I personally liked doing 3~4 X mile repeat with short recovery like 200m jog just to get myself up and going. It worked for me at the time when I wasn't doing enough higher level aerobic runs. But either way, I still think people are hooked with intervals way too much.
When you look at Japanese running books, they tend to view Lydiard and Cerutty in the 60s as someone who "freed athletes from number-games with stop watch. They got their athletes out and running on the road and trail." I believe "training by how you feel" is actually more important to the Lydiardism than it has been stressed.
My family watched "Pleasantville" tonight. I couldn't help but think about this topic (now, this ia bad...). When the guy at the coffee shop didn't know what to do because what's his name? The main charactor who also played Spikerman, didn't know up on time. "I didn't know what to do so I just kept wiping the coutner..." he said. On the day of repetition, what would you do if you couldn't figure out the speed? What if you feel really really good and felt like just blast away; would you still have to stick to the predetermined pace? I remember talking to Bob Sevene about the Lydiard training, he said something like he (Lydiard) didn't particularly need any specific speed training during conditioning because he "just let his runners go when they feel good."
True meaning of Lydiardism, as the philosophy (I don't mean to start a cult here!) of it, is "enjoyment". I remember numerous runs I had with Kiwis, in particular Ray Puckett and his buddies; we would run hard, up to 3+ hours, in the rain, through the mud, and we'd come back and said, "Man, that was a lot of run!" We'd feel that way if we are truly "fit" or "at tireless state" as Arthur would say. That is the core of Lydiardism; and you really can't enjoy the activity if you're so hooked with numbers or pace or what's going on in your blood or heart rate or whatever, can you?