On Saturday, December 10, 2004, Arthur Lydiard passed away. Many of you are probably wondering who in the Hades is Arthur Lydiard. Well partner, if you aren't into running then you probably will have no idea who Arthur Lydiard is. If you are and don't know who Arthur Lydiard is, then it's time you received an education.
Arthur Lydiard was a runner and coach from New Zealand who during the 1940's and 1950's developed the general form of training that is used worldwide today. To appreciate Lydiard's achievement, it is necessary to write a brief history on how training methods have progressed in the sport of track and field
In the early decades of the 20th century, runners strongly tended to keep their training secrets to themselves. As such, we know fairly little about how such sport legends as Paavo Nurmi achieved the results they did. We can imagine that people back in those days had to perform more manual labor than most people do today, ergo it was possible that talented athletes of the late 19th and early 20th century were able to achieve their results with possibly lighter training loads than those that are practiced today.
We do know that in the 1930's Swedish athletes were publicizing such training methods as fartlek, a form of distance running where runners throw in surges and pick up the pace for various amouts of time and distance. In my younger days, I used to enjoy running fartlek workouts of 7 - 9 miles, where I would typically throw in 12 - 20 minutes of surges. For example, I would start by running 2-3 miles at a steady pace, then I would run hard for 2 minutes, jog for 2 minutes, pick it up for 3 minutes followed by 3 minutes of jogging, then a 4 minute push followed by 4 minutes of easy running. Then I would go back down the ladder.Of course, surges and recoveries could be of any distance and unlike interval training (see below), fartlek is meant to be somewhat unplanned and spontaneous. Runners of the 1930's were able to get close to breaking the 4 minute mile barrier with this form of running before World War II disrupted progress in the sport.
Following World War II,a Czechoslavakian runner named Emil Zatopek achieved legendary status in the sport by winning the 1948 London Olympic 5,000 and 10,000 meter golds. Zatopek followed up his "distance double" achievement by winning the 5 and 10k distances again in 1952 in Helsinki. To boot, Zatopek finished off the 1952 games by winning the marathon. Such an "Olympic triple" will probably never be repeated. Additionally, Zatopek broke first the 30 minute barrier in the 10,000, then the 29 minute barrier in the 10,000 meter distances.
Of course with such great achievements, people wanted to know who the Czech machine trained. Zatopek let it be known that he used what became known as interval training. Interval training is where a runner runs hard for a certain distance (or time), followed by a rest of a certain interval. Usually this is done around the track to control for distance and recovery.
What people were to discover later on when studying Zatopek's training was that Zatopek in fact sometimes ran "slow intervals" of 80 - 120 seconds for 440 yards / 400 meters in training. This training technique helped Zatopek achieve a form of long steady distance without him realizing it. This is an important observation because the entire rest of the world drew the exact opposite conclusion from Zatopek's training methods. Everyone else theorized that since Zatopek was running at certain paces during workouts, say 20 x 400 meters in 65 seconds, then if his competitors ran 20 x 400 meters in 63 seconds, then logic would dictate that they would run faster and start winning.
Such was the state of elite training in track and field in the 1950's after Zatopek retired from the sport. The tough minded souls of the sport, such as Gordon Pirie of Great Britain and Vladimir Kuts of the Soviet Union, would run brutal track workouts every day of the week. These men (women weren't allowed to participate in events longer than the 400 meters until 1972) achieved some great results, but their careers were often over by the time they were 30. The mind rebels at doing such hard joyless work. All over the world, thousands of young high school and college aged runners of the era became burned out on the sport before they really hit their prime years because they followed such mentally difficult training regimens.
And then Lydiard came along. Lydiard had been running long steady "jogging" type workouts through the 1940's and 1950's, often running 100 or more miles per week. In the 1950's he started experimenting with running track workouts after he had spent time building a solid conditioning base with long distance running.
The regimen worked. Lydiard found himself winning New Zealand national marathoning championships when he was pushing 40 years old, a fact that didn't go unnoticed by his competitors who were often 10 - 20 years younger than he was. Soon runners were coming to him looking for guidance. Two of his best runners, Murray Halberg and Peter Snell, struck gold in the 1960 Rome Olympics in the 5,000 meters and the 800 meters respectively. Snell went on to win the 800 and 1,500 meter races in Tokyo in 1964. Lydiard also was instrumental in getting runners from Finland to start running hard again, and in 1972 Pekka Vasala won the 1,500 meters, while Lasse Viren took the 5,000 and 10,000 golds. Viren famously nearly repeated Zatopek's triple in Montreal in 1976, where he took the 5k and 10k golds again, while coming in 5th in the marathon.
Meanwhile in the 1960's and 1970's, scientists in the then burgeoning field of exercise physiology were discovering why it was that Lydiard's methods worked. At the cellular level, the body's cardiovascular system needs to develop networks of capillaries and efficient distribution of oxygen in order to develop its aerobic capacity. Once this is developed, the body's ability to withstand the anaerobic pressures placed on the body that are created by running at great speeds are greatly enhanced. Essentially Lydiard, through experimentation, led us to the mountain top of human endurance running.
But Lydiard was not someone who was satisfied only with working with elite athletes. He took his ideas and training methods to the general public. American coaches of the 1960's, such as Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, legendary coach at the University of Oregon, went to New Zealand and started spreading Lydiard's message and ideas. That message was that everyone could take up the sport and participate. Everyone could train to a point where they could achieved good results, or could see what the limits of what their talents were. Not only that, running was a sport that could be enjoyed. It was no longer a sport of punishment as it once was. This directly led to the running boom that took off in the 1970's and 1980's in America and the Western world.
So, as you see, if you or anyone you know has ever taken up the sport of jogging or running, then you have been influenced by a great man and fearless experimenter whose light has now left us. I myself have now been running for nearly 23 years and hope I never tire, of or quit the sport. It was a shock to hear that Lydiard passed away here in Houston. If I had known of the fact that he was going to be here, I would have made an effort to meet him. As such, I will have to be satisfied with remembering Lydiard when I go out and run.
Arthur Lydiard - RIP.
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at December 19, 2004 03:44 PM