Quote of the Day — You're Training to Race
© Kevin Morris
“Realize you’re training to race.” — Arthur Lydiard
Long slow distance is better than nothing, but it’s not nearly as good as long fast distance.
Lydiard is often thought of as a long slow distance (LSD) advocate. Not so. He rejected that school of thinking and did not want to be associated with LSD concepts.
Here’s Lydiard: “A runner should be working at speeds just under their maximum oxygen uptake. He should be running fast to work at a rate that puts some pressure on the heart.” Lydiard urged his runners to keep pushing. Push down the pace of runs as conditioning improves so the steady-state ability is upgraded.
Lydiard said runners make the mistake of settling on a comfortable training run pace and not trying to improve it. Recovery runs have their place after very hard sessions. But training runs are about training the cardiovascular system, and without mild stress, the system can only be maintained not enhanced.
If you’re training to race, realize the game is a cycle of stress, breakdown, recovery. Different types of stress have different recovery horizons. The cardiovascular system, as Lydiard knew, could be stressed frequently as the recovery horizon are relatively short.