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Arthur Lydiard -- A Brief Biography
Arthur Lydiard was born in Eden Park, New Zealand, in 1917.
In school, he ran and boxed, but was most interested in rugby football. Because of
the great Depression of the 1930', Lydiard dropped out of school at 16 to work in
a shoe factory.
Lydiard figured he was pretty fit until Jack Dolan, president of the Lynndale Athletic
Club in Auckland, and an old man compared to Lydiard, took him on a five-mail training
jog. Lydiard was completely exhausted and was forced to rethink his concept of fitness.
He wondered what he would feel like at 47, if at 27 he was exhausted by a 5 mile
run.
Lydiard began training according to the methods of the time, but this only confused
him further. At the club library he found a book by F. Wesbter called "The Science
of Athletics." But Lydiard soon decided that the schedules offered by Webster
were being too easy on him, so he began experimenting to find out how fit he could
get. Lydiard was not a particularly fast runner in his day, nor had he any formal
education in his coaching or physiology. He had never been to college.
He began running seven days a week, up to 12 miles a day, which at the time was considered
exceptional. In 1945, at age 28, he began racing again. But while he was fitter and
faster, he had trouble winning because he had trouble hitting at the wrong times.
Because his mileage was considerable higher than those who beat him, he became annoyed
and experimented with the daily distances and efforts, with some days short and easy
and others hard and long.
Others joined Arthur Lydiard in training and thrashed along with him, though Arthur
Lydiard still used himself as the principal guinea pig. He tested himself in the
extremes of best and endurance -- running up to 250 miles a week -- and discovered
that when he balanced distance and speedwork, not only did his marathon times improve,
but his track performances improved also. Where other coaches and runners had been
incapable of unraveling the fundamentals of conditioning, to Arthur Lydiard , his
training experiments spoke volumes. This was to become the keystone of the system
he would later use to develop Halberg, Snell, and the rest.
After two years of training with Lydiard on his lonely runs, Lawrie King beat a provincial
championship field in a 2 mile race by 80 meters. King's win established Lydiard
as a coach, a qualification he neither sought nor particularly wanted. King went
on to be New Zealand cross country champion, six mile record holder, and 1954 Empire
Games representative.
In 1951, Murray Halberg, then 17 years old, came on the scene. His coach, Bert Payne,
consulted with Lydiard on Halberg's training. By 1953, Halberg, who was now with
Lydiard entirely, was joined by Barry Magee. It was with these men that Lydiard first
tried out his formula for building stamina and coordinating training with races.
Lydiard completed his recipe for running in the mid 1950's. By then he knew how and
when to mix the ingredients -- the long marathon type mileages, the hill work, the
leg-speed work, the sprint training, the sharpening and freshening -- and how to
plan it so his runners would peak at the right time.
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