Keep in mind that I am assuming you mean marathon training only: First, what you say about Lydiard is correct. He was often accused falsely of being in favor of tons of "aerobic" miles, but what he meant, and what you clarified, is that when he said "aerobic" he meant a good steady pace with some energy in it. I can dig up some of his quotes on this subject if you like. Let me also add that someone in recovery (like me), or building mileage for an initial base, like a first time marathoner, should use good judgment in this regard. Sometimes it's hard to do a long run at what Pfitzinger and calls "general aerobic" and Daniels calls "easy." If I were going to do a marathon, and I will have to do one at the end of this year to go to Boston next year, I will grow my long run as slowly as I like, for these three reasons: 1) I will do a mess of long runs, not just 3, 2) I will intersperse my long runs with medium long runs of 14 miles or so that include a lot of "wave" work, progression or tempo miles. My 20 miler is usually around 3 hours anyway, so I don't agonize about the pace too much, and 3) I am a masters runner, a really OLD masters runner. The theories about running your long run at a good pace may be okay for people in their 30's, but after 40 people need to use a bit more caution in running for 3 hours. You must acknowledge too Amy, that a plan you adopt will naturally be different for a first-time marathoner. Likewise, evanflein, CNYrunner and the like are also strong marathoners and would have a plan different from slower runners with less experience. No one plan here will work for everyone. You have incredible endurance and strength right now. I think Bob is right that for runners like you the long run should be at a good pace, maybe no slower than a minute per mile off your marathon pace, perhaps 9 minutes per mile, which would give you a nice 20-miler in three hours also, although you are faster than I am, of course. I don't like any of the 16-18 week plans, no matter who writes them, for the average marathoner because 1) they aren't long enough, 2) they try to do too many things at once, growing mileage and incorporating too much speedwork and 3) they presume that one plan will work well for everyone who reads the book. (Note that the exceptions to this point are the people who have been through the Higdon or Pfitz cycle two or more times. It is different for them. Breger, Perch and the Beers come to mind.) If I took over someone's coaching I would have them do nothing but build mileage safely as they could for as long as they could (NO speed!), and I would like to see them get up to 60 mpw and hold it there awhile until I knew they were okay there. Then, like Lydiard, I would add hills (4 weeks), and finally in the final 4-6 weeks, add speed, including 3 races. I don't like those VO2 max workouts in today's plans. I would throw them out and instead encourage the runner to race a bit more often at short distances. Nothing forges steel like racing. Now as to that 60 miles per week. Not everyone can handle 60- mpw physically. Not everyone has the time for it. Not everyone wants to run that much. That doesn't mean they can't run the marathon if they do less. Many of them do far less and run pretty good marathons. But I don't think they run the BEST marathon they CAN on less. In other words, someone who trains at 45-50 miles a week and runs a nice 3:40 marathon and is very happy with it is certainly a fine runner in my book. What I am saying is that that same runner has the potential to run a much faster marathon on more mileage. It is the single biggest and most consistent indicator of marathon success. I also have opinions about the Maniacs. I admire them greatly, you, JJJ, Evanflein and others. You do stuff I could never do. But one thing you all do is forego speed for the opportunity to run many races. So the final thing I will add here is objectives: what is it you want to achieve in your training plan? Do you want to rebuild a base and see how fast you can run one? That is an important call. Of course I am offering my opinions here on the approach Lydiard took vis a vis the new "scientists", and my own personal biases based on my own experience and observation of many runners over many years. Runners are getting slower, not faster. Shoes and poor training approaches are causing injuries. I like to post my position on these matters because they encourage discussion and debate, so thanks for this. Spareribs

Great topic Aamos. For Long runs, I'm of the opinion that you run them long enough to give a good stimulus (17-23 miles) and fast enough so that it is within 10-20% of MP and yet recovery is short. Short recovery means you are good enough for hard work Tuesday or Wednesday. If an LT run Tuesday and a medium long run Wednesday (10-13 miles), for example, feel good then you have not run the long run too hard. When you do multiple marathons how does that work? Base building after you already have a great base is confusing to me. Shouldn't you just keep a nice mileage, say 50's and mix a bit of LT and VO2max with GA(or MP) and recovery runs? Then close to the next race start to work harder workouts (faster tempo or repeats)? Or After a marathon maybe you should recover and then do short distance specific training to nail a 1/2 marathon or 10K to get a new VO2max PR and then build the marathon training based on the new VO2max? I'm also wondering what to do next (but I haven't signed up for the Grandfather Mountain Marathon either ) Steve

Thanks for taking the time to write on this topic. I had a few reasons for asking: 1) As I mentioned, I recently read some Lydiard (in the course of preparing one of my running columns on long distance running)--I started wondering, are there some questions you could develop that would help you figure out whether you, an individual runner, needs to do more speed work, or needs more mileage, or needs strength and hill work, or needs to run the long runs faster. 2) long runs seem to mean different things to people. Even here--Steve and Bob seem to put more emphasis on running the Long Run at a pace just reduced from marathon pace, while Ribs and Dale are less concerned about the pace, or so I interpret them (and Dale does say add some pace into the LR toward the end of training, in the last 2 lines of his post.) And Pfitz says 10-20% slower--well, for a 3:30 marathoner, that's a wide range, no? Help me with the math, but wouldn't that be running at 8:50 to 9:40 pace for long runs? 3) I agree that you need to put in mileage. Some coaches call for you to run more than 26 miles in your long run (Galloway, for one). So, if you run a marathon a couple of times a month and call it your long run, why does that mean you sacrifice speed? If anything, running a marathon makes it easier to achieve 60 miles a week! This assumes you don't run each marathon full-tilt. 4) I'm leery of schedules as the one time I got seriously hurt was when I was following a training schedule, training for a specific marathon, and doing regular speed work sessions. It seems that when you train to run your fastest, you are flirting with injury, whereas dialing back the speed a little bit allows you to run healthy. (Please feel free to debunk this thought.) 5) I'm taking suggestions. I should finish up the states soon, by the end of this year or early next, and no way and I doing that again! So, since I'll be in a new age group come spring of 09, I wonder if I want to consider focusing on a particular marathon and see what would happen if I trained more traditionally for it. It could be fun, or I could crack up Geez, we need a nice bottle of wine so we can sit around and really discuss this! grins, A

Hey Amy - good question and good comments so far. I only have a second, but just wanted to mention the McMillan website. He has nice article on his philosophy about alternating slow steady state LSD's with long runs in which you run the first half to three quarters at steady state and then run the rest at race pace.

On the other hand, Dane Rauschenberg ran a marathon a week in 06 and I believe his times got steadily better. Let's see if I can get him to chime in here.

That makes perfect sense, and as Erika suggests, it is the decision of the runner in what they choose to do, rather than some impediment to speed. As I view it, the MM's simply love the idea of travel, meeting old and new friends and the fun and adventure of it. Aamos for example is doing the 50-state thing. Those people aren't looking at PR's as their objective is different. What a great year you had Erika. Spareribs

Hmmm...all these responses are great and thoughtful. Mustang Sally---you do too know what you are talking about and just experienced it in Eugene---I am glad you chimed in! Aamos, thanks for the question in the first place. I have only my own experiences and trial and error to serve me. Boston 2008 was my 29th marathon since 1987, but I have never run more than three in one year, so I may not be the best to throw in two cents. I do know that I used to run my LSD runs too fast and as a result didn't recover as well and had more injuries. That was when I was in my early thirties and didn't want to acknowledge a loss of elasticity, speed or anything that comes with getting older. I had major surgery in my middle-late 30s and had to take six months off completely. Maybe it was the combination of forced time off and finally getting a wee bit smarter about this that changed the mix. I now run my long runs at a much slower pace in the first weeks of a marathon training cycle and don't include tempo paces or fast finishes until the middle to end of the training cycle (20 weeks usually). I should say up front that goals are a big driver and while I don't have the time or the body to get back down to my fastest times, I do want to drive down my masters times. I have often wondered where the red line is for me at this stage. I am not a marathon maniac and money and time would prevent that anyway. I do run 20 plus milers (up to 24 miles) on consecutive weekends and also run midweek long runs of up to 16 miles with embedded tempo miles in consecutive weeks. Perhaps the difference is that I am not racing a marathon when I am training each week, but seem to have the capacity to add more miles without crumbling. For the last four years I have tried to hit high 60 and 70 mile weeks and will try hitting at least three weeks of 80-plus miles if my body can stand it for a fall '08 marathon. I know that after years of building a base, running unstructured LSDs and scaling back between marathons, I can now handle structured LSDs and quality work outs during the week as long as my non-workout runs are relaxed and by feel. I think I am way off the trolley as far as the original question. Aamos, it seems to me that your almost consecutive weekend marathons don't slow you down and yet is there a 3:15 in there if you focused on just one marathon and trained exclusively for that?----using a combination of long SLOW distance runs and structured LSDs. Karin