Bill Baillie was one of the all-time greats of New Zealand athletics, winning 15 national titles from 880 yards through to the 6 miles on the track, as well as cross-country and road titles. He placed a close 6th in the Tokyo Olympic 5000m, and also pipped Ron Clarke on the post in an international 2-mile race. Bill set world records over 20000m and 1 hour on the track in 1963; these were broken by Ron Clarke, but they still stand as New zealand records. After 40 laps of 72s, going through 10000m in 29:48, he switched down to 70s a lap for the next 10 or so laps to make sure he set the New Zealand 10-mile track record on the way through. In later years, Bill established himself as a world force in age-group triathlon.

Barry won bronze in the Rome Olympic marathon in 1960, and later that year won the inaugural Fukuoka marathon. Barry won many national titles over 6 miles track, cross country, and road. A career highlight apart from his Olympic medal would be ranking first in the world over 10000m in 1961. Barry won the World Cup 10,000m in Helsinki in 28:51, with a very hard last 800m, and ranked 3rd world-wide over 5000m in 13:39.

Jeff Julian was one of the icons of New Zealand distance running, winning 11 national titles: 4 marathons, 2 cross-country titles, and 5 road race titles. He was famous for his prodigious fast mileage training. Jeff had an amazing year in 1963, when he set world 30-mile (2 hr:47.34) and 40-mile (3hr:53.36) track records in the one race. He also clocked 47:36 for 10 miles, and won Fukuoka in 2hr 14mins, beating a world-class lineup. Unfortunately he couldn’t reproduce this form the next year in the Tokyo Olympics, but his place in the pantheon of all-time greats was cemented by his victory in Fukuoka, often described as “harder to win than the Olympics”.

Other New Zealanders to have won Fukuoka include 1968 Olympic bronze medalist Mike Ryan,(1967, 2hr 13m), and Paul Ballinger (2hr 10min).

Bill Baillie is married to Jeff’s sister Val, who took the photo for coach Randy Smith, who runs the Arthur Lydiard Classic, a high school track meet in Ohio.

Graydon Snider of McGill University, Montreal, has the following query about improving speed.

Hi. I’m a long distance runner looking to gain some extra “speed” for middle distances. ( I can run 21.1k in 70min but struggle to run sub 9min in a 3k). After years of neglecting the gym ( I usually do only bodyweight resistance), I’ve decided to try some weight training appropriate for endurance athletes. From what you and others recommend (in the early pre-season), the goal should be to lift heavy weights (deadlift & 1/2 squats) 4-6 times with good recovery between sets.

Q:

My question concerns what comes next! After successfully improving your 1RM, would you then leave the gym and replace weights with alactic hill sprints, eventually doing the Lydiard Hill circuits?

Or assuming you still go to the gym, do you recommend next focusing on low weight, high rep exercises to improve muscular endurance? i.e. 20RM with shorter rests, then later 30RM with even less recovery. Looking forward to any advice!

A:

Good question, Graydon.

You don’t need to leave the gym! And you certainly don’t want to switch from low reps with near-maximal lifts to many reps of light weights! By doing that you’re going from specifically training fast-twitch fibers to specifically training slow-twitch! ( Why would you do want to do that? ). Those fast twitch fibres need to be stimulated regularly to maintain their development and not atrophy!

Heavy near-maximals should be done in low-rep sets, with plenty of recovery. Start as heavy as possible, after warming up briefly with the exact movement pattern with a much lighter weight. Do your weight training at night, when fully warmed up from the day’s activities, and AFTER an earlier running session. Weights should never replace a running session. If tired and low-energy, “can” the weights session as it won’t be productive.

I used to plan a tough weight workout after a tough running session, having re-carbed and topped my protein in between. My thinking was that the tough training stimulus from the running would fire the anabolic hormone systems of the body, and I could avail myself of them while the blood levels were high, before a (usual) scheduled easy and slow recovery day. The recovery day would flush any metabolites from both sessions away and back to the liver, and allow some resynthesis of new muscle protein.

The best all-round exercise would be deadlift, however failing that, half-squat, with heaps of padding over shoulders. Other exercises can be core exercises. Unless you want to look good on the beach, there’s no need to do excessive upper-body work like bench-press, as the muscle groups involved don’t aid running speed.

The amount of work required to lift your strength to a higher level is much more than that required to maintain your strength at a high level. Initial strength gains will be very good due to neuromuscular recruitment rather than new muscle synthesis. So let’s say you double your 1RM half-squat by the start of your track preparation, and you want to maintain this strength. You want to maintain or slightly improve that right through your competition period. However you’ll also be doing a significant number of “tough” anaerobic sessions designed to increase your efficiency at VO2 max speeds and above. All these tough workouts will increase acidosis and the general stress level or “allostatic load” on the body.

So rather than do lots of light weights with more reps, just MAINTAIN HIGH INTENSITY for FEWER SETS. ie: if you were doing 4 sets of 5 reps with 85% of 1RM pre-season, you might drop back to 2 sets of 2-3 reps with 90% of 1 RM on selected nights in-season. Each week, if competing on Saturday, you might do an intensive 2-set session on Tuesday, and a 1-set version of the same on Thursday night.These short, sharp, high-weight/low-rep sessions will NOT tire one excessively, but will certainly keep those fast twitch fibers firing. Alactic lifting can actually be done 4-5 days a week while maintaining improvement, and it’s “safe” as acidosis does not get too involved. But it all has to be balanced out according to the individual’s other training and lifestyle demands.

Short sessions of hill-bounding, and even hill sprints, will maintain fast twitch activity and leg strength too. One could fiddle around with doing Hill-bounds and hill-sprints in an afternoon session, then later at night doing the alactic weight training.

High-rep low weight exercises tend to train only the less powerful muscle fibers, due to the 85% 1RM threshold not being reached to stimulate fast twitch IIB.

I would not do low weight, high rep exercises to improve “endurance” once I’d improved my absolute strength. Past about 20 reps, we’re getting into training Type IIA fast twitch oxidative and Type I slow twitch fibres and not even getting anywhere near the intensity to selectively recruit fast twitch Type IIB. You’re actually de-training fast-twitch fibres once you start to introduce weights below the summation threshold. A muscle fibre not recruited for weeks will atrophy, and because of the size principle, the best options to keep the IIB fibres stimulated are by

1.lifting very heavy

2.Hill Resistance Exercises/Bounding/plyometrics/ballistic movements that can by-pass the “size principle” and its normal sequential recruitment from Type 1-Type IIA-Type IIB. very fast for a very short time

3.Very fast relaxed sprints over very short distances

4.( Indirectly by exhausting the IIA and IIB fast twitch muscles of glycogen in the closing stages of long runs, and increasing muscle volume that way ).

• Lifting very heavy weights will increase maximal muscle tension capability (strength).
• Hill bounding will translate this into POWER.
• Very fast relaxed runs over very short distances will translate this power into SPEED. (By training increased neuromuscular coordination: the millisecond muscle recruitment switching between agonist and antagonist muscles ).
• Long runs give an endurance capability to the IIA fast twitch fibres so that more anaerobic work can be performed when the time comes.

The way I look at it, endurance is a function of strength. The higher the 1 rep maximum, the higher the rep maximums at each percentage below 1 rep maximum. This seems to go all the way down the strength pyramid. For instance, your 5-7-rep max is about 85% of your 1RM, and your 2 RM is about 95%.However, all the way down the line, a stronger muscle can do more repetitions with a given weight. So I’d say endurance is improved. I’ve also discussed this in the book where a study was done with low-rep high intensity weight training with trained orienteers and it improved 5000m time significantly WITHOUT any change in VO2 max, threshold, etc. Increased leg-strength confers endurance advantages unrelated to measurable cardiovascular change. Some boffin will tell us why, some day, but it’s a fact nevertheless.

Hope that helps! On another note, probably the best running training to get your 3000m time down a lot with your proven endurance base is to do VO2 max sessions once a week leading into competition. These can be safe and effective at 95% VO2 max pace (5k pace) or more intense at 3k pace.

Cheers!

Keith

Jeremy Donahue of Harrogate, Tennessee, has a query about incorporating alactic leg-speed drills into his high school program.

Great job on the book. Arthur Lydiard’s books were some of the first books I picked up when I began running in high school. Over the years as an athlete I have tried many different approaches however, now as a coach I am trying to follow more of a Lydiardesque plan. Your book is great to explain the principles of Lydiard’s program and how many different approaches can be taken with the Lydiard philosophy at the heart of each program.

Q:

My question in not having much experience with the Alactic Training is how you run these workouts with athletes. I have always been taught strides and performed strides with my athletes to touch on speed year round. However running 20-30 sec. strides at 1500 meter speeds does not seem to accomplish what you explain in the book. Do you have your athletes run shorter sprints at max effort or do they accomplish the work in 100-200 meters building into max effort? Also the fartlek sessions in the base phase (not the sausage sessions described later)do these consist of 10-13 seconds burst of speed or do you subscribe longer workbouts at slower speeds?

Thanks,

Jeremy Donahue.

A:

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for your question. We get our athletes to stride into maximal bursts over 60 metres or less, to keep the energy system primarily alactic. Often done close to the start of a session after a brief warm-up, before moving on to more formal work in some specified zone. I think I’ve explained it in the book in the chapter about our HIT squad, but to clarify things, there’s no-one on the planet who can hold top speed past about 60m. So anything further than that is a bit of a waste of time if we’re training SPEED. Speed is a combination of explosive muscular power (the IIB fast twitch muscle fibres and their neurons) with relaxation. The body loses both power and speed once it leaves the “alactic” time frame and heads into the lactate zones.So we keep the work bouts well under 10 seconds to be very safe. Another reason we don’t go beyond 60m is because the sprinter reaches top speed between 40-60m, then after that it’s a matter of decelerating the least. Why train deceleration?

The excellent thing about training in the alactic zone is that near complete recovery of the “phosphate battery”: the CP system- is possible within a few short minutes of easy recovery. This enables multiple repeats of very high quality to be done, that will likely stimulate only the most specific neuromuscular patterns and the most specific power fibers: the IIB again.

So we get all the benefits without the downsides of longer reps. Exercise much past 100m for the typical athlete will start to trigger the sluggish lactate response, and incrementally raise localized acidosis a little bit each time: Acidosis does not provide a good foundation for developing the neuromuscular patterns of quick and relaxed running, as it affects coordination, and beyond a point the firing of the muscle fiber is affected because it prefers an alkali environment.

Athletes will often run ’strides’ of 20-30 seconds off a curve, but this will not develop that brutal switch down that the very best athletes display. It develops more of a relaxed efficiency at race speeds.

I know Craig Mottram did a lot of work where he strode off the bend, building up to top speed over the last 50m of a 150m run-through. Snell did the same.

In fartlek sessions part of the work can be “speed play” with work bouts that may extend well past the 60m sprint, but the trick here is to keep the vast majority of the session in the aerobic or high aerobic zones, and as long as there are a few short sharp bursts in there a stimulus to the IIB fibres is still there.

Because middle distance requires the IIA fibres to be trained as well, a little bit of a stimulus in a fartlek session is OK, and it’s common sense to keep in touch with all these muscle fibre recruitment patterns and their relevant energy systems.

‘Keep in touch with’ means a little prod here and there, and as long as the aerobic recoveries are extensive, and the workbouts don’t flog the lactate system too much, we’ll be moving forward with our aerobic development without damaging the enzyme systems.

As I said in the book, it’s impossible to keep entirely out of the lactate zones in a base period, especially in a hilly region; when we ran the weekly Waiatarua hill circuit there was a very steep and sustained incline of about 5km that ensured the heart rate hovered around threshold the whole way. But the other 30km was pretty relaxed and undulating, so we really had a 6:1 ratio of aerobic: sub-threshold/threshold work in that weekly run.