Elvet Striders

I actually did quite a bit of recreational running when in Dublin, along the beach at Portmarnock at midnight – I found it calming after a big performance. I did it too in Belfast in the mid-70s – that wasn’t safe, it was really a bit daft! But I used to do this with a couple of buddies from the Orchestra. We had a few ‘interactions’ with British soldiers, a bunch of guys out running at midnight on a Friday! But I wasn’t a competitive runner, not fast enough really, and the time commitment wouldn’t have worked. Later on, in 1988, we moved to Durham. This was just after the Good Friday Agreement which is back in the news again now.

What led you to becoming a triathlon coach?

I got into the triathlon scene in 2003, really by accident. We were at the point where our two sons were leaving home. I had turned into a couch potato, although I did some recreational cycling on a recumbent bike as I have a shoulder issue. So, in the 1990s my wife Ellen Ann was a cross country skier on the (Age Group) GB Team. She decided she needed something in the summer in the UK, outside of the ski season, to keep her fit. She was doing roller ski-ing but needed something more. So, she joined the Durham Triathlon Club and tried triathlon. I kinda went along as the groupie, taking photos of my wife. She did really well and came 4th in the world in her age group in Hamburg in 2004. She started doing more races. I took more photographs. As I was taking photos I started to look at the cycling, thinking that’s really not safe. So, I thought I could help out somehow, at least make the Durham Triathlon Club cycling a bit better.

So I did my Level 1 triathlon coaching qualification, along with Allan Seheult (former coach here at Elvet Striders and at Durham Triathlon Club). I found the cycling part fine but had to work on the swimming and running parts. Allan went straight on to do his level 2 triathlon qualification. I needed to improve my knowledge of the running side of things to get my level 2 qualification so I asked him if I could come along to track; he agreed and took me under his wing as I planned my four connected sessions to get the qualification. After that he welcomed me to continue with the sessions, and we went from there. Later on, in 2015/16, I did my level 3 triathlon coaching qualification which needed more running input, and the track sessions gave me the kind of exposure and experience I needed.

I did a bit of recreational fell running and paced a friend at the Great North Run, but my knowledge was really more from study and courses with Mike Antoniades at the Running School in London, and Lorraine Moller at the Lydiard Foundation. I was also taking the swim coaching more seriously, and did a number of courses with Paul Newsome of SwimSmooth. Video analysis was just becoming a real possibility for club level coaches at this stage so I did a lot of that for Run and Swim – it helps athletes zoom in more clearly on some limiting factor or action, or pattern of actions – and often it’s almost enough just to show them the video and point it out, for them to address the issue successfully.

Tell me about some athletes you have coached

I’ve been Head Coach at Durham Triathlon Club now for about 12 years and have helped many triathletes toward their goals. There’s less continuity of contact in the tri setting (compared to a running club setting) in terms of the coach/athlete – with 3 disciplines to look after along with work and family, the triathletes have to be very independent operators. But where I have had a more consistent arrangement with some athletes, they have had positive outcomes. That could be in terms of getting faster (Andrew Dixon was running 22 min for 5k and we got this down to 19 min over 18 months), or having a positive strategy (Tim Matthews, using run-walk in an Ironman marathon), or managing some medical issue or illness in order to maintain as much as possible and to get back into action without aggravating the situation.

I have coached and introduced Tim Matthews to the run-walk system, which is particularly effective for the run part (marathon) of Ironman triathlons. There is a perception in running that you mustn’t walk; but actually if you are an age group athlete and in a long-distance race then the run-walk system allows you to recalibrate your body and take on food and drink more easily at more regular intervals, and therefore to maintain a more even pace throughout the marathon. The system of running for 8 minutes and walking for two minutes takes practice because there is kind of mental permission needed – you don’t want to walk, you don’t need to walk – yet actually if you do need to walk in a marathon you are already behind the curve. Runners that have decided to use this strategy look quite different to those who are walking because the wheels have fallen off – they’re running with purpose, they’re confident it works, they’re getting ready to run again. Runners who are forced to walk adopt a kind of dejected walk, their body language tells they’re beaten. For someone running at a 10 minute-mile pace, fast walking is not actually that much slower in terms of distance ‘lost’, so you are not going to lose much ground and may overtake the 10 minute-mile runners later on in the race as they tire. The other part of it is that the run-walker has confidence. You can’t buy confidence when you are at a late stage in a race. It’s the same as in a track session; you get the recoveries, and you know how it helps you do the next interval – this is the same thing. The whole business of pacing is so important, whether you run at an even pace or use the walk-run strategy, to stop you setting off too fast.

John Lowe is another athlete I’ve coached. He was very comfortable running 6 minute miles and could run at this pace for a half marathon, but found it difficult to run at a 6.5 minute-mile pace, which he needed to do to complete the longer distance of a marathon. So we introduced the run-walk strategy where he would run the 8 minutes at 6 minute mile pace, then walk for 2 minutes, and this really helped and allowed him to run at the faster pace his body preferred.

Run-walk is a tool to be used when required, and – provided it’s been practised in training – it can be effectively deployed from the start or part way through the race. And it can be modified: 8min/2min is the model, but 4min/1min is the same thing proportionately, and it may be that 9min/1min is just enough for some runners. Other variations are allowed – but the key thing is the granting of permission, the ownership of the plan.

Do you enjoy cycling now in retirement?

I really like cycle-touring and have done a lot of this with Ellen Ann. I love going from one place to another place. We’ve done a lot in Holland – it’s just so easy to get to (and flat, and great camping); Denmark and Sweden, and some Germany. Because of my shoulder issue I ride a recumbent bike, so I look for places I can get to by ferry (recumbent bikes are a bit awkward in terms of boxing up for a flight!). I’ve ridden from Santander down to Faro in the Algarve, and back again – Ellen Ann was doing a tri camp there – that was 1000km and 10 days each way, lots of hills. And just before the covid period started we cycled down the Rhine – we took the train to Strasbourg.

We also like long distance walking. In the past I’ve done the Camino Santiago across the north of Spain, and together we’ve done some of the French GR routes – I’ve done the GR10 across the Pyrenees from Hendaye on the Atlantic to Banyuls on the Mediterranean. Actually, I’ve done both the French and Spanish routes across the Pyrenees. So we may do some more of that too. There is an organisation called ‘Slow ways’ <www.slowways.org> who are trying to get existing off-road routes between towns in the UK comprehensively mapped – I love the idea of just finding a walk/run route from (say) Durham to Leeds! It’s kind of mediaeval, that knowledge of ancient paths.

Tell me about the origin of Allan Seheult’s track sessions

For newer members of the club, Allan Seheult was a former highly esteemed coach at Elvet Striders. Many of Allan’s sessions are still used on Wednesday nights at Striders [Ed: Tamsin].

Allan’s track sessions are largely based on the work of a New Zealand runner and running coach called Arthur Lydiard. Allan was a big admirer of Lydiard. I am also very interested in Lydiard coaching techniques. I am a Lydiard Level 2 running coach and am currently doing their Level 3 course. As part of this course, I was on a zoom call with three of Lydiard’s athletes, one of whom was Barry Magee (Magee is the only runner in the world to have sub-3 hour marathons in every decade of his life, from his 20’s to his 70s!). It was very interesting to hear their experiences of being coached by Lydiard.

Tell me more about Arthur Lydiard

Arthur Lydiard ONZ OBE (1917-2004) is recognised as an outstanding athletics coach. Lydiard’s training methods are based on a strong endurance base. He said you can’t train speed unless you have the stamina under the speed. He also believed building a strong base was essential to avoid injury. So his runners did a lot of slow miles in their first phase. This was followed by a strength phase, then a speed phase, then a short phase of training specifically for the race they were entering. The idea of periodised training wasn’t quite new, but Lydiard refined and developed it, and he was a master at getting his athletes to peak at precisely the right time.

Lydiard believed there was a big reservoir of talent in any locality and that you could apply his methods anywhere and produce an elite runner. He started his coaching career in the 1950s by being a local town coach just outside Auckland. His runners were just local people, they weren’t drawn from across all of New Zealand. It would be the equivalent of inviting people just from Newton Hall you know, or whatever your local area is, and his methods certainly seemed to work! The young athletes he coached then started to do really well. They included Peter Snell, Murray Halberg and Barry Magee. When it came to the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Lydiard wasn’t on the NZ coaching team, he was just ‘the guy who coached those runners from near Auckland’. The powers that be didn’t like him because he was a bit of a maverick and had ideas of his own.

So his runners were running over to the fence surrounding the stadium passing notes back and forth to him – they could really have done with a mobile phone (he laughs). But when his runners won two gold medals in the same evening, that was a big wake up call to the powers at the time; maybe you should listen to what this guy is doing, because everyone else wanted to know what he was doing (he laughs). Peter Snell won gold in the 800m, Murray Halberg won the 5000m, and Barry McGee won bronze in the Marathon. He was then accepted into the fold and became the New Zealand coach for a time. In the 1964 Olympics, Peter Snell won the 800m and 1500m, with John Davies 3rd in the 1500 as well.

Lydiard then coached other New Zealand runners who have done very well such as Rod Dixon, John Walker, Dick Quax and Dick Taylor – there’s a few big medals in that lot! He was also a good runner himself. He competed in the Men’s Marathon at the 1950 British Empire Games in Auckland, finishing 12th in a time of 2:54:51. Later he went off to Venezuela, Mexico, Finland and Japan and became a celebrity coach basically. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1962 for services to sport. In 1990 he was appointed an Order of New Zealand, New Zealand’s highest civil honour.

Lydiard’s Training Methods and how Allan’s Track Sessions derive from this

Lydiard’s method was that you began with a long endurance phase which consisted of running a lot of very slow miles. This built up a huge reservoir of resilience, and put you in a good position in terms of the strength of your whole skeletal system, making it robust and strong for the strength and speed work that would come later on. One thing noted about Lydiard runners was that they suffered very few injuries, attributed to the fact that they had built such a good strong system first. It comes down to the impact on landing as that’s where so many of the running injuries come from. Even if you are a good runner and have good form there is a lot of weight that goes through the landing phase; and if you are, say running at 180 steps per minute, or of that order, that is a lot of potential damage every minute. As soon as you take the speed out of it the impact is extremely reduced, and so you get the benefit of resilience building, plus you build a great fat-burning running engine. Another more recent presentation of this training method is the 80/20 method. When you look into the kinds of intense sessions elite athletes are doing – they spend very little time training at intense levels, but they spend lots of time at the easy level. It won’t just be 80/20, it may be more like 90/10 for some athletes, and it means that they have this huge reservoir of robustness. They can generally rely on their body not to fall apart. Injuries and weaknesses in the body are one of the main limiters in athletes – a weak hamstring, a constantly recovering achilles etc – but if you have built a strong resilient body first, then when you do the 10% (the intense efforts) – when they do press that button, they hit it with a hammer. And if you’ve been running like that for 2 or 3 or 4 years then all of that is cumulative – there’s a huge reservoir of resilience.

The Maffetone method of training also plugs into this general approach – you’re restricted to a relatively low heart rate for training which makes you run quite slowly in terms of pace, but you build this more efficient engine and reduce injury risk. Even in a 1500m race there’s a lot of aerobic running, around 90%, so good well trained fat-burners will use that energy system for part of the race, and have more carbs available for the later stages of the race.

So after this long base phase, there’s a strength phase then a speed phase, with these later phases laid on top of that solid base phase. Lydiard’s runners all did this, no matter which distance they were targeting. After this, from the group of athletes he had when preparing for the major NZ races, he’d have a meeting round his kitchen table and say “Okay you guys can go for the 800m, and you guys, you go for the 1500m, and you guys can do the 5k” and in this way he shared out the medals amongst his group of runners (he laughs). The training would end with a very short phase of race-specific training for each athlete. The idea of 800m and 1500m track runners doing high mileage went against the prevailing coaching norms, but his runners could turn up on the big day and turn it on. And in the Rome 800m, Snell had the endurance to survive the heats, semi-finals, and then the final which were all packed into a couple of days. The big favourite, the Belgian Roger Moens, was inconsolable after the race – nothing had prepared the Europeans for the arrival of the New Zealanders.

Lydiard’s strength training involved hill reps, but with a difference. His approach was not to be concerned with time and pace, the focus was on form when doing the reps. He would instruct them to run up hills using an exaggerated form, using the hill as resistance. We are talking about 1950s New Zealand; there were no glitzy gyms and centres with kit and equipment, you had to use what was available, and they had plenty of hills! The hill forms Lydiard asked for this training progressed from Steep Hill Running, to Hill Bounding, and then to Hill Springing. They all used an exaggerated degree of normal running form – the forward lean (provided by the hill itself), the straight-through-the-body drive from shoulders to toe-off, the high knees and mega-arm-drive. He was not looking for speed, he was just looking for the good demonstration of the particular exaggeration of form during each drill. Lydiard would use hills of different gradients so you could then regulate the load you put on. As his athletes became stronger he could use longer segments or steeper hills. It was a kind of functional Plyometrics, and was very effective. This type of training enabled his runners to have the strength to maintain their form in the latter part of races, where often runners can lose their form. This means his runners could maintain efficiency, keep up their speed, and avoid the injuries that arise from poor form under pressure. You can see these Hill Running techniques demonstrated here: