Arthur Lydiard always entertained the idea of international coaching symposium. As out-speaking and almost forceful salesman (with his ideas) as he was, after Rome Olympics where his runners’ sensational performances drew world-wide curiosity and attention, he travelled through Europe and shared his ideas and opinions (whether you want to hear it or not!) as freely as anyone could expect. Even back in New Zealand, he didn’t worry much about petty jealous by keeping his training principles, which was quite unheard of at the time, to himself and his small group in Auckland; but rather, he would go around the country and shared it with as many people as possible. If his idea was good enough to have produced Olympic champions and world-beaters with a handful of young runners around his neighborhood, it should be good enough to entertain the middle distance and distance running dynasty with this tiny island country 
from Down Under by preaching the “Lydiard Method” around the country… Of course, it didn’t work out that smoothly because of other people’s petty jealousy. But his idealistic view was heard by some and created a herd of great middle distance and distance runners in All Blacks uniform with John Walker, Rod Dixon and Dick Quax in the 1970s along with perhaps some lesser known runners like Tony Polhill, Richard Taylor and Kevin Ryun… Then in the 1980s, road races around the world were filled with names like Anne Audain, Allison Roe and Lorraine Moller.
Through his effort as a national coach of various oversea countries, he had brought numerous foreign runners to New Zealand for their training camps. Coupled with ideally suited environment as well as the opposite season, many top level international runners had enjoyed the visit to run black iron beach on the north of Auckland or through bush tracks around Lake Rotorua. It was one of Arthur’s dreams to create an international coaching conference and training camp site north of Auckland or in Rotorua.
Yoko Shibui’s training camp in Flagstaff, the home turf of Greg McMillan’s team, has turned out to be one of the greatest opportunities for this international training ideas exchange. Greg is such an open-minded coach who is always more than happy to welcome the opportunity to learn. And coach Nabe is, unlike some of Japanese corporate team coaches who might view sharing training idea is some sort of “leaking the corporate secret”, very open to discuss what they do with training. The way Japanese marathon runners train is some sort of mystery to a lot of Westerners. There had been so much misinformation out there, thanks to convenience of internet. There are a lot of generalizations but the truth is; there’s no secret to it. They do basic Lydiard training; not being blinded by numbers but follow fundamental principles, applied to suit the individual, environment, situation, and culture.
I don’t understand why it is so hard for some people to admit; particularly at some internet message board, there seem to be a handful of die-hard Lydiard haters who are determined to deface Lydiard. I’m almost inclined to say ALL the most successful Japanese coaches would tell you that they “do Lydiard”. Yoko Shibui’s coach, Nabe, is a prime example. He, like myself, went all the way to New Zealand and in fact stayed at Arthur’s house for a year in 1995 to learn the “Lydiardism”. He worked under coach Suzuki (detail story here) as an assistant coach and in fact executed the actual hands-on coaching of runners like Reiko Tosa and Shibui for years. Now, as the head coach of Mitsui Sumitomo team, he manages one of the best female distance running team in Japan, winning the Annual Ekiden Road Relay Championships (42.195km, the marathon distance, run with 5 runners per team) 6 times in the last 8 years with second place twice. Incidentally, the teams that had beaten Mitsui are Shiseido, led by coach Kawagoe, and Toyota, led by legendary coach Koide; both of them being a strong Lydiard advocate as well.
As much as Greg interested in learning from coach Watanabe, Nabe himself was also interested in the fact Greg worked with Dr. Rosa with Discovery USA program. Nabe brought a copy of an article on a young Italian coach, Dr. Rosa’s right-hand man, Claudio Berardelli. “When you worked with American runners on Rosa’s program,” Nabe asked, “how did they handle such continuation of quality workouts?” “They didn’t,” Greg answered. It is easy to give any talented athletes incredibly hard workouts, such as the ones runners like Wanjiru or Lel or Bekele would do. But real question is; how do we develop the athletes so they can handle such hard workouts without killing themselves.
Now it’s Greg’s turn to ask a question. “With all the good marathon runners in Japan, with such a depth, what do you think we Americans lack in training?” Nabe’s answer to that was simple – and quick: “Volume (or “lack of”).” A several years ago, I asked Nabe about Tosa’s training. Right before Osaka World Championships trial at Tokyo marathon, she had series of nagging foot injuries and couldn’t 
complete the ideal preparation. According to the leading running magazine in Japan, she couldn’t do 30~40k tempo runs as they’d hoped and “only” did several 20~25k tempo runs. With that cold print, it almost appeared her training lacked “volume”. “So how do you apply ‘Lydiardism’ in your team’s training plan?” I had asked. “We always tell our athletes that the aerobic development (=volume) is the most important thing in training,” he said. “What media pick up are only tips of iceberg,” Nabe had told me. “Tosa regularly ‘jogs’ up to 2 hours in her morning workout.” The day after they arrived Flagstaff, one of the girls, Eri Sato, did jog for 2+ hours… Well, it’s mainly because she got lost (as open-field as it is, we couldn’t figure out how she even got lost…); and other two girls did 1:30 “jog”.
One of Greg’s girls who loves to do the volume and with whom Greg is experimenting with “Japanese style” training program is Paige Higgins who, for the first time, made the US marathon team for Berlin World Championships (more story on Paige here). One morning, Greg and Paige visited us (over French toast breakfast which I prepared! ;o)). Yoko and Paige did a ceremonial uniform exchange and a quick match-up photo session like boxing title match press conference (see photos), we had a chance to discuss some training matters. One of the greatest lessons came when Paige asked Yoko: “So how many miles a week do you run?” Yoko looked at me (for the translating purpose) and looked at Nabe and said, “I have no idea!” A couple of nights later, Greg, Nabe and myself got together at the near-by ski lodge restaurant (over a couple of beers) and had a round-table training discussion. Nabe explained: “We never chase mileage. We only do what’s necessary to perform well. The weekly mileage is only the end-result.” And he added, “Joggers chase weekly mileage.” I see soooooo many people making the weekly mileage, or some particular workouts, the finish-line. They are 
satisfied to fill in their training log with some magic numbers at the end of the week; or satisfied to have done some tough workout. Invariably, they are too flat to perform on the actual race day. It turned out, Yoko runs approximately 150 miles a week; about 1,000km a month. “It is Zen, man!” I said to Greg and Paige with a grin.
We could have gone on and on…and on; there’s so much more to share, just as Arthur would have loved to see. Even after I left, Greg McMillan made a gallant effort to communicate with the Japanese (after all, his new house is only 2 blocks from where they are staying!). But once I get back there again at the end of July, there would be more late nights and round table discussion (over a couple of beers???) on training. Dr. Dave Martin is so very keen on what we are doing with Lydiard Foundation because, he said, he had never seen any one organization with so many experts in various fields from variety of regions around the world. We are very proud of this versatility and seriousness and genuineness of our information. This day and age with the availability of internet, there are so much misinformation provided by some irresponsible self-claimed “experts”. We provide it as close to from “horse’s mouth” and “on site” as possible. And you can be assured that there would be much more to come right here on this site as well as other locations where we would conduct running clinics and symposiums…
Three Lydiard Musketeers (not "stooges"!), from left to right: Greg McMillan, Nobby Hashizume and Shigeharu Watanabe, with the beautiful sunset over Wing Mountain in Flagstaff behind them
* Image of Pekka Vasala, 1972 Olympic 1500m champion, doing hill bounding in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1973: from "Run--the Lydiard Way" (Auckland Star)