A taste of Lydiard's training philosophy
Interviewer: Fundamental to your training methods is to develop stamina by doing marathon-type conditioning.
Lydiard: Stamina is general cardiac efficiency. And building stamina means putting your body into a near-tireless state so that oxygen debts are not created quickly and the ability to recover rapidly is at a high level. This way, you’ll be able to accept a heavier workout in practice, you’ll recover from races quicker and be able to resume normal training sooner—also enabling you to hold on to your “peak” racing fitness for a longer period of time. Also one of the biggest advantages is that, at the end of the race, you’re not even the least bit tired so that you can capitalise fully on your basic speed. [Peter] Snell was the slowest runner in terms of basic speed over 200 meters in the final of the 800 meters at Rome [1960] and Tokyo [1964] Olympic Games. But because he was marathon trained, he could capitalise that speed and sprint full out while his opponents, whose basic speeds were faster than Snell’s, were too tired to use it. Best way to improve your cardiac efficiency is by running long distances.
Now, I found out years ago, when I was running 100 miles a week in training, if I alternated the distances, say, instead of 15 miles every day, run 10 miles one day and 20 miles the next, I got better results. It was Dr. Gerhard Uhlenbruck of West Germany who confirmed for me that, during the long runs, particularly two hours or more, you very quickly develop underdeveloped capillaries and build new capillary beds. General cardiac efficiency is developed through improvement of assimilation, transportation, and utilisation of oxygen; and development of capillary beds increases utilisation of oxygen at the working muscles. So consequently the longer runs enhance these physiological reactions. So we made sure we incorporated long runs in our training schedule during the conditioning period, usually three long runs of at least one and one-half hours to two hours or even longer as a nucleus. This is why Peter Snell, competing twice around the track as an 800-meter runner, ran 100 miles a week with a 22-mile run on Sunday.
Interviewer: Fundamental to your training methods is to develop stamina by doing marathon-type conditioning.
Lydiard: Stamina is general cardiac efficiency. And building stamina means putting your body into a near-tireless state so that oxygen debts are not created quickly and the ability to recover rapidly is at a high level. This way, you’ll be able to accept a heavier workout in practice, you’ll recover from races quicker and be able to resume normal training sooner—also enabling you to hold on to your “peak” racing fitness for a longer period of time. Also one of the biggest advantages is that, at the end of the race, you’re not even the least bit tired so that you can capitalise fully on your basic speed. [Peter] Snell was the slowest runner in terms of basic speed over 200 meters in the final of the 800 meters at Rome [1960] and Tokyo [1964] Olympic Games. But because he was marathon trained, he could capitalise that speed and sprint full out while his opponents, whose basic speeds were faster than Snell’s, were too tired to use it. Best way to improve your cardiac efficiency is by running long distances.
Now, I found out years ago, when I was running 100 miles a week in training, if I alternated the distances, say, instead of 15 miles every day, run 10 miles one day and 20 miles the next, I got better results. It was Dr. Gerhard Uhlenbruck of West Germany who confirmed for me that, during the long runs, particularly two hours or more, you very quickly develop underdeveloped capillaries and build new capillary beds. General cardiac efficiency is developed through improvement of assimilation, transportation, and utilisation of oxygen; and development of capillary beds increases utilisation of oxygen at the working muscles. So consequently the longer runs enhance these physiological reactions. So we made sure we incorporated long runs in our training schedule during the conditioning period, usually three long runs of at least one and one-half hours to two hours or even longer as a nucleus. This is why Peter Snell, competing twice around the track as an 800-meter runner, ran 100 miles a week with a 22-mile run on Sunday.
Peter Snell
Training at Dickson
..is on tonight. Of course. Fancy believing the forecast of rain all this week! No sign of it, of course. As usual, no explanation or apology from the BOM. I will be there at 4:30pm as usual for a long easy warm-up (7.5k) for the 5:30pm warm-up (2.4k).
Final "Maxine" cartoon. Thanks Speedy Goose!
