Long Slow Distance - The Running Boom

The Running Boom

During the 1970s running boom, many recreational runners used LSD as a basis for training. One of the "fathers" of the Honolulu Marathon, cardiologist Jack Scaff used a long slow distance approach to train runners in his marathon clinics. Scaff advised his runners to follow the "talk test", an idea that had originated from Lydiard in which runners should be going slow enough to be able to hold a conversation. According to sportswriter John Brant in his 2006 book Duel in the Sun, almost every serious distance runner in the early 1980s used Lydiard's system of building an endurance base with many miles at an aerobic pace before running shorter distances at an anaerobic pace.

Starting out with an hour run three times a week and building up to weekly averages of 40 to 60 miles a week for the last three months, thousands of graduates of the program have found that they could complete the full Honolulu Marathon which is held every year in beginning of December. The clinic’s approach can be seen from its original Rules of the Road, now referred to as the "basic set of rules that lay the foundation for your training."

The rules:

• No fewer than three runs per week
• No more than five runs per week
• No less than one hour per run
• No farther than 15 miles on any run
• One run per week lasting two hours or more (after month 5)

A variant of the LSD approach is to combine running slowly with walking breaks.

"It has been found that average runners will have more success if they take regular walk breaks.

"The strategy is unusual in that it doesn't involve simply walking when you are tired. Walk-break runners force themselves to stop even at the beginning of a run when they are fresh."

An example of such an approach is provided by the running clinics organized by Jeff Galloway In running circles, John Bingham aka the Penguin, is a well-known practitioner of LSD combined with walking breaks.