29 Quotes by Arthur Lydiard

Your aerobic development is a gradual thing. It takes years and years of marathon-type training to develop your aerobic capacity to the fullest.

Athletes need to enjoy their training. They don’t enjoy going down to the track with a coach making them do repetitions until they’re exhausted. From enjoyment comes the will to win.

There are champions everywhere. Every street’s got them. All we need to do is train them properly.

I have a saying ‘train, don’t strain.’ The Americans have the saying ‘no pain, no gain’ and that’s why they have no distance running champions. They get down to the track with a stopwatch and flog their guts out thinking that it’ll make them a champion, but they’ll never make a champion that way.

It’s just a matter of understanding what’s necessary and discipline yourself to do it.

They’re very tenacious. They’re dedicated. Once a woman decides she’s going to do something, she’ll probably stick to it. The only problem with women is if there’s anything wrong with them, they won’t tell you. They’ll get out there and run on one leg. They don’t moan and groan like a lot of men do.

If you want to be a successful runner, you have to consider everything. It’s no good just thinking about endurance and not to develop fine speed.

I discovered years ago that the best results in this respect could be gained by running 100 miles weekly at my near best aerobic efforts and that, supplementary to this, running as many easy miles as I could.

The idea that you can’t lose contact with the leaders has cut more throats than it has saved.