About Us...

We are a Dunedin-based training group specialising in middle-distance and long distance track running, cross-country, and road-racing. The coaching philosophy is grounded in the theory developed by Arthur Lydiard in the late 1950's and 1960's that contributed to a decade-long domination of middle- and long-distance running by New Zealand athletes including Sir Murray Halberg, Peter Snell, Barry McGee, John Walker, Rod Dixon, Dick Quax and Dick Taylor.
Lydiard preached the development of a profound aerobic base through marathon-type training for all his athletes even for 800m and 1500m/mile specialists such as Snell. This was controversial: the training volumes of Snell's contemporaries were much lighter.

    

Lydiard has often been cited as an advocate of long-slow-distance (LSD) training centred around the 100-mile week. This is a misrepresentation of Lydiard theory. While Lydiard did advocate a period of aerobic-base buidling that included several months of running at least 100 miles per week, he argued very clearly in books such as 'Run to the Top', that these were to be run at what he called "near aerobic best".

    

Our training philosophy borrows from Lydiard, the idea of the development of a 'profound aerobic base' through a mixture of long tempo runs supplemented by long easy runs for recovery, with a target of 160-180km per week during the base-building phase for adult athletes. Many of the athletes have joined the squad as 12 or 13 year olds and for these athletes their training is based around a planned progression from around 30km per week to 160km over a 7-year period. The principle behind the training schedules is that the body responds to work but the load must always be within the stress tolerances of the athletes.