Runner's World's Coach of the Century is New Zealand's great running coach Arthur Lydiard. The most influential distance running coach of all time, Lydiard is still inspiring coaches everywhere with his timeless message of the value of endurance training.

Lydiard developed his running philosophies as a young man, experimenting to find the best approaches to training. At the age of 33, in 1950, he represented New Zealand in the Commonwealth Games marathon. He also became New Zealand champion in the marathon. Soon he was training other runners around his home city of Auckland. Before long Lydiard's runners dominated the New Zealand distance running scene. In 1960 his runners, virtually unknown on the international running circuit, went to Rome for the Olympic Games. There they caused a sensation, with Peter Snell winning the 800, even though he was the slowest runner in the field, Murray Halberg, a man running with a withered left arm, winning the 5000, and Barry Magee, only the third-best runner in his training group, taking the bronze medal in the marathon. Tiny New Zealand had become the world's leading distance running power!

In 1964 Snell returned to the Olympics, winning both the 800 and 1500 meters, the last man to achieve that double. Lydiard then moved on to Finland, a country that had achieved great glory in the 1920s through the exploits of Paavo Nurmi and others, but had not achieved much since. Lydiard got the Finns training long, even through the brutal Finnish winter, and laid the foundation for their success. By 1972 they were ready. At the Munich games, Pekka Vasala won the 1500 and Lasse Viren won both the 5000 and 10,000. In 1976 in Montreal, Viren repeated his double gold medal performance, the only man ever to repeat a double in those events.

I have personal experience with the Lydiard method. In the early 1970s, several distance runners (including me) at my college (DePauw University in Indiana) adopted Lydiard's training methods. Our long weekend runs, and our relatively modest use of interval training astonished the other runners. We set every distance running record at the school, with my record in the Mile/1500 lasting for 24 years, and my record in the 3-Mile/5000 lasting for 28 years. I have since put my knowledge of Lydiard's methods to work in coaching numerous runners, including several national champions and record setters. In 1995 I had the pleasure of visiting Lydiard and his wife at his house in Auckland.

Lydiard very kindly took the time to discuss the fine points of his training methods and to show me videos of his runners doing hill bounding. I was struck by the depth of insight that Lydiard has about training, his generosity, and his willingness to be an iconoclast.

What are Lydiard's training secrets? Put simply, Lydiard believes in breaking up the year into training segments. The base to the whole schedule is the endurance phase, of ten weeks or more, in which the runner builds up to the maximum mileage that he/she is capable of, and then increases the pace to just under the anaerobic threshold. Following the endurance phase the runner moves into a hill phase, in which the primary element of the schedule is hill-bounding exercises to build strength. Following the hill phase is a sharpening phase, in which the runner adds the speed necessary to run fast. Then the runner backs off from the hard training and concentrates on racing. I have found that some of Lydiard's methods need to be adapted for special circumstances (e.g., older runners), but all of his principles are sound, and produce a competitive advantage over runners who train in less effective ways.

There are several main principles to Lydiard's training schedules. The first is that an endurance base with high mileage is the foundation for everything else, and the long run (often of 20 miles or more) is the key to the endurance base. Another is that most runners do not do enough aerobic work, and tend to do too much speed work. Another is that progress is a gradual thing, but the best results come from slow and steady improvement.

The great coach is an old man now (87 years old), and does not get around as well as he once did. A stroke has slowed him down and made his speech more difficult. Still, the greatest coach of the last 100 years is making a final tour of the United States in Fall 2004. He is tentatively due to visit the Washington area on November 13 to give a running seminar. This would be a very unusual opportunity to hear and learn from the most legendary coach in distance running history. The principles that Lydiard pioneered are now almost universal among the top distance runners, but hearing about it from the originator provides insights that are invaluable.

Roland Rust coaches a handful of dedicated runners. His coaching and running resume can be found at Roland Rust resume. He also compiles the Washington Running Report runner rankings. Roland can be contacted at Roland Rust.