Restoring the Legacy of Arthur Lydiard

Aug. 28, 2020 — When I started running in junior high school, I had heard plenty about this coach from Down-Under. Then I came across his 1978 version of “Run — the Lydiard Way” while I was an exchange student in Australia and was deeply impressed with its “make-sense” approach to training. But, little did I expect I would actually meet the man and develop friendship in the following several decades to come.

I obtained his mailing address in the spring of 1981 while attending college in Washington State. I wrote a letter to him, via snail-mail, and he sent me “Arthur Lydiard’s Athletic Training” which has been reproduced with his permission with my footnotes here at our website (Noteworthy). I remember reading it over and over, underlining and highlighting all over the place. Arthur later asked me to use this as the clinic manual for his 1999 and 2004 US Lecture Tour which I had organized for him.

Throughout my running life, I was never a runner I wanted to be. It has always been a search for the “right training program”. And I had realized every one of us, fast and slow, young and old, is the same; looking for the right training program so he/she would “run well”. I realized, with my own experience to learn directly from Arthur Lydiard and all the other “Arthur’s Boys”, and then as a professional corporate running team coach in Japan, I’m in the perfect position to share what I had learnt with all of you.

When I was in New Zealand, it was the year of Los Angels Olympic Games. New Zealand had a wonderful display in various sporting events but in particular men’s kayaking. Led by Ian Furgason, NZ team won several gold and silver medals. I watched some of the events with the man who was responsible for the feat — Arthur Lydiard. He explained to me that NZ’s kayaking team worked on their aerobic foundation building first by some of them actually kayaking up to 100-miles-a-week!! “When you have a strong foundation,” Arthur explained to me, “you can do more event specific work…”. On October 11th, they had a big banquet to welcome athletes back from Los Angels Olympic Games and congratulate accomplishment of them. Arthur was also invited and, there, he was presented with this silver plate that reads: “In Recognition of Outstanding Service to New Zealand Sport.” When I stopped by at his house to say good-bye to Arthur in the following month on my way back to Japan, he handed this silver plate to me. “This means more to you than me,” he said. But I took it as him handing the responsibility to keep on his legacy to me. And, believe me, when he came to visit my house in 1999, he did remember this plate and asked me if I kept it. Thank God, I did and had it displayed in the living room!!

So this is my inspiration of founding “Lydiard Training & Academy” — to restore the legacy of the Old Man; Arthur Lydiard. He had taught me his training method and I can see how it works for the young and the old, the fast and the not-so-fast ordinary runners without undue stress and to get hurt with frustration. After all, one of the biggest gifts Arthur Lydiard had left with us is “Joy of Running”. As someone had put it; with Arthur Lydiard, now running is a “Part of Life”. In Chapter 1 of my Japanese book, “Lydiard Running Training”, I wrote: “…back in the days when only elite athlete ‘train’ in public, but as Lydiard started this ‘jogging boom’ and now anybody, at any fitness level, anywhere any time receives FREEDOM TO RUN…”

This weekend, I went Minneapolis downtown with my wife, walked around Guthrie Theater — Stone Arch Bridge — St. Anthony area…. We saw so many people jogging, riding a bike, or, like us, simply walking. I’m not saying, without Arthur Lydiard, nobody would be doing this…. Probably without Lydiard, sooner or later, this “urge to get out and exercise” would be ignited. There was Frank Shorter winning the Olympic gold medal in 1972 Munich Games Marathon; there was Dr. Kenneth Cooper and his book “Aerobics”; and there was Jim Fixx’s “The Complete Book on Running”…. Even before Lydiard, a small town of Waldeneal, West Germany, had Dr. Ernst van Taken, starting “run long, run slow, run everyday…” slogan. But if Arthur Lydiard didn’t ignite this fire; he certainly turbo-charged this movement.

These are ALL Arthur Lydiard Legacy. Along with “teaching” what I had learnt about Lydiard Method of Training, I intend to “restore” Arthur Lydiard’s Legacy through “Lydiard Training & Academy”. I truly believe it is worthy of project. — Nobby Hashizume