Arthur Lydiard

Because I remember, you know, before we had zone two, we had easy running, and before we had easy running, we had LSD, long slow distance.

And even if you pull back way through the history of running, when you had Lydiard, you also had, who was it? Was it Egoli who was like, "Let's just do a bunch of intervals, and that's how we train." There will always be argument and counter-argument, philosophy and counter-philosophy.

So these people saying zone two is bad, it's not that they're privy to some new knowledge, it's just we've always seen this happen with training.

So one of the things that kicked this off was there was a 2025 PubMed article with the title, "Much Ado About Zone Two." And so a lot of people took it and summarized it to mean that zone two is just not helpful.

I started running in the 1980s, and in the '80s the, we were very focused on high volume.

Arthur Lydiard was kind of-

Yeah

... setting the tone for the type of training we were doing.

No, that's correct.

You know, in the, in the '90s, uh, when I was, uh, you know, running at York High School in '95, '96, um, it was more, I mean, it was more of a mix, I would say, um, with a Lydiard type of training with the, you know, lots of volume, lots of load, and also the, the, the, uh, Pfitzner type of training, which was multi-tier, lots of different paces.

So, you know, threshold is sort of like in the middle there.

Um, and, and it's, uh, been developing m- later, you know, the, the-- I think the importance and understanding of the whole concept, uh, has been evolving, which is a good thing because it's a much better way of training.

It's built around easy days and hard days on a, a very, like, uh, I would say not strict fashion, but, uh, um, you do the training much more controlled and within, like, a narrow area.

Um, so it's, um...

I mean, if you had to compare it with something, you know, it would be like, um, I would say a mix between the, the Lydiard and the Can- Canova style with, but with measurements on top of it.

Can you, to conceptualize it, take me through, like, a, a general week-

But was Arthur still a big influence in New Zealand running and running? Did you and your brother follow kind of a Lydgerd philosophy, if you will, in training? Oh, absolutely.

It was interesting because Arthur Lydiard and Peter Snow actually worked for Rothmans, and that was the tobacco company.

And the New Zealand headquarters were in Mojaveco, which was about 30 miles from Nelson.

So whenever, and I was a member of the Nelson Amateur Athletic Haring Cycling Club, which was formed in 1896.

And often I'll say, "Well, so long as you do a couple of these in the 10 days, that's fine." Also, what we haven't touched on is just a rest day.

I'd say to most of my athletes, you know, "If you've gone 14 days without a rest day, you either need an easy day..." I'm not advocating total rest, 'cause I remember being at a, a seminar with the late Arthur Lydiard, the famous New Zealand coach, and we were talking about rest and recovery, and he said, "Well, of course, if you have a day off a week, you've lost 52 days of the year, and that's not good.

You're never gonna make the Olympics." And I, I said, "Well, no, I didn't, [chuckles] I didn't say take a day off a week." But again, periodization of training and just having an easier day, and the easier day is usually to replete fuel and carbohydrate.

You've also done some really interesting work on carbohydrate mouth swishing.

Yeah.

But just to move every day, because as you said, you take one day off a week, you've taken 52 days off a year.

I-- Again, that was Arthur Lydiard who said that.

And as again, [chuckles] a final anecdote to close, we were at a seminar.

And so it has been interesting to see some of them start to pull down a little and sort of finding the place of like, what are they actually recovering from versus, "Oh, I need to be getting that much mileage in." And I think we take so much from what we see of the elites and sort of transition it down, but we forget that we have to adapt it, not just like transition it down.

And we've seen that in a lot of the episodes where we've talked about either Lydiard or Jack Daniels' methods, um, and how it's, it's not an exact one-to-one.

It's a, "Here's what we've learned by watching them.

Now how do we actually utilize this?"

And because they've got a big following, 'cause they might be good looking or they've just spent some time in the gym, and they've, I don't know, whatever, and then all of a sudden they're coaching.

And it's a tricky one, right? Because y- they could easily point to someone like Arthur Lydiard or even, I'm pretty sure even Renato Canova doesn't real- I, I think he, he might have some sort of qualification.

But a lot of the best coaches ever didn't really do any, any formal course either.

Now I did-

I think, I don't think he ran very fast at all.

I think he was, like, a 2:48 or a 2:50 marathon runner, so [chuckles] that's, that's, that's...

Yeah, you can't, uh, you can't start thinking about, uh, through the lens of, uh, has the runner become a pro? Because a lot of very good coaches, and I'm pretty sure Arthur Lydiard also was not, not overly fast.

So yeah, it's a tough one.