Lydiard or Speed Endurance?

[mr brightside]

I was getting my overalls off after work today and i overheard some of the road runners from the company running club going on about how 'you've got to get the miles in'; and it got me wondering again about how you reconcile the performance gains with the potentially high degree of joint wear. From what i know of the club, they are basically 10k runners with the odd HM thrown in.

I've always considered this approach to be in line with Lydiard's approach, as he advocated that all under his program should be able to run a marathon regardless of their competing distance. Personally i prefer Seb Coe's method which i believe was known as Speed Endurance. It seems more logical to me to train at and below your competing distance, and there seems to be a good deal of focus on aerobic fitness through intervals of various lengths; though i guess sets of intervals may take you over your competing distance on occasions. It has been proven that interval training gives noticable boosts to V02 Max. Furthermore, i can't see how anyone but a professional athlete can hope to properly execute the complexities and give the required time input to the Lydiard method.

I can see that if you are a regular face in the FRA champs then you're going to need to train for AL races and do some equivalent milage, but for runners in the Bofra champs long slow runs must effectively be junk miles.

[steadyeddy]

I would have to disagree Mr Brightside, Coe trained for events lasting either 1:4X mins or 3:3Xmins, massively different from the 15mins or so a Bofra is usually won in. Even when considering the downhill it still means 10mins of 'effort' running which is far closer to 5km as an equivalent. If you look at any half decent 5km runner they will be doing no less than 70-80mpw with most world class runners nearing 120mpw if not more. Aerobic development is unavoidable and there is no better way of attaining this than easy/steady miles ala Lydiard, infact most 1500m will do a fair distance and i'm sure Coe regularly went well over race distance. If you have a search this a good documentary on him on youtube. A good website for reference is www.runnerslife.co.uk it has a number of international runners from various event who post training and gives a great insight into exactly what they do week in week out.
It is believed the poor period of distance runners we appear to have just come out of is due to a theosophy of low mileage, back in the 80's (Golden Era) it was well accepted there were no short cuts and 100mpw was the norm.

[dominion]

I'm sure CL will be along any minute...

Steve Ovett won the Dartford Half Marathon 2 weeks before he set a British record for 1500m. A year later he won the Olympic 800m. Don't forget that Coe was almost a 400/800m runner, rather than the traditional 800/1500m specialist. His 400m best is nearly 2 seconds quicker than Ovett.

I don't believe that either approach is definitively right or wrong. Just different,

[Dynamo Dan]

Why does it have to either or? Surely the sensible thing is to combine the two. A long run at a decent pace on the weekends a turbo session, a threshold and the odd steady run scattered in between. When the season starts in earnest race twice a week and run easy/bike easy in between.

That's what I'm going to try anyway.....

[dylan]

seb coe suplemented his training at times with long bike rides to the coast.
lydiard also advocated periodisation,blocks of specific training (hills and long and short speed sessions)based around what distance you planned to race at.

[Stolly]

I have no idea of what either of these training methods entail but, if what you're saying is correct Mr B, all of my running is 'junk miles'

[DazTheSlug]

I know quite a few people who follow the "traditional" road club method of training for 2 fast flat road marathons per year (spring and autumn)
they "periodise" (as dylan said above) - i.e. bang in big blocks of 70-100M/wk, then, closer to the race, work in tempo/interval sessions

although I personally have never done the above (I would lose the will to live, doing that many road miles), I did find that, 2 years ago when I was ramping up my mileage for Bob Graham purposes (so most of my increased mileage was "BG shuffle" type stuff), I had some of my best ever race results at all distances/types without doing much/any race-specific training

[CL]

I'm sure CL will be along any minute...

Steve Ovett won the Dartford Half Marathon 2 weeks before he set a British record for 1500m. A year later he won the Olympic 800m. Don't forget that Coe was almost a 400/800m runner, rather than the traditional 800/1500m specialist. His 400m best is nearly 2 seconds quicker than Ovett.

I don't believe that either approach is definitively right or wrong. Just different,

Coe's best 400m was 46.87 and Ovett's 47.5. There are claims Coe ran a 45 something in a relay but we can't really count that on a comparative basis because the athlete is already moving when crossing the starting point.

[CL]

I would have to disagree Mr Brightside, Coe trained for events lasting either 1:4X mins or 3:3Xmins, massively different from the 15mins or so a Bofra is usually won in. Even when considering the downhill it still means 10mins of 'effort' running which is far closer to 5km as an equivalent. If you look at any half decent 5km runner they will be doing no less than 70-80mpw with most world class runners nearing 120mpw if not more. Aerobic development is unavoidable and there is no better way of attaining this than easy/steady miles ala Lydiard, infact most 1500m will do a fair distance and i'm sure Coe regularly went well over race distance. If you have a search this a good documentary on him on youtube. A good website for reference is www.runnerslife.co.uk it has a number of international runners from various event who post training and gives a great insight into exactly what they do week in week out.
It is believed the poor period of distance runners we appear to have just come out of is due to a theosophy of low mileage, back in the 80's (Golden Era) it was well accepted there were no short cuts and 100mpw was the norm.

According to an interview Said Aouita never ran further than 16km in training but in my estimation is the best 5000m runner ever. He used training methods that meant he didn't have to churn out 120mpw. Yes he was gifted in terms of having a body built for running fast but it was his methods that made him excel.

It is too easy to put Britain's present/past poor results down to a lack of mileage as I've shown with my example.

[Trog]

According to an interview Said Aouita never ran further than 16km in training but in my estimation is the best 5000m runner ever. He used training methods that meant he didn't have to churn out 120mpw. Yes he was gifted in terms of having a body built for running fast but it was his methods that made him excel.

It is too easy to put Britain's present/past poor results down to a lack of mileage as I've shown with my example.

Are you trying to suggest that SA had it right and every 5/10K runner since who does put in 120mpw is wrong?