The Roadkill Racing Training Circle

In the beginning Lydiard created the Pyramid and he saw that it was good. 

Pretty much everyone else saw that it was good as well and for 50 years the Lydiard Pyramid reigned as the go to geometric shape for distance runners.  But recently some new coaches have taken the running world by storm with their wacky new idea about training.  Each looking for the perfect geometric configuration that will propel runners to the finish line faster than ever before.

Lydiard Pyramid
Lydiard Pyramid

In a fit of innovation that can only be described as sublime in its beautiful elegance, Simmons has turned that iconic model on its pointy little head. Behold the Simmons Diamond!

Simmons Diamond
Simmons Diamond

The basic idea behind this new cosmic shift in thinking is to start out slow and short, and work up to fast and long.  The extra shading in the middle is a nice touch as well, if 4 shades of green are good then 4 shades of green broken into 14 small slivers is really good.

Not to be out done by Simmons, Hudson has done some radical thinking of his own. I can hear his thinking as clear as day “everyone always wants to turn old ideas on their head, but what if I turn them on their side!” And eureka the Hudson Arrow was born.

Hudson Arrow
Hudson Arrow

As you can see from the Hudson Arrow diagram above, not only has he tipped the pyramid on its side, but he has add a number of small circles and put a triangle inside the triangle for emphasis.  In a nod to convention he has left in 2 shades of green, but in a final fit of madness has added a bit of yellow.  As to the actual training represented in the Hudson Arrow, it appears to be pretty much the same as Lydiard.  Long easy runs with hills building toward faster and faster race pace efforts.

Not to be outdone by the likes of Simmons and Hudson, McMillan unleashed a torrent of imagination and brilliance not see since the advent of those wiggly belts for weight loss. “If triangles are good trapezoids must be even better, I mean 4 is bigger than 3 right… and if 1 trapezoid is good, 3 of them of different sizes stacked on top of one another and then capped with a triangle will be unbeatable!” Or at least that is what I’m told he said, while having drinks one night with a friend, by a very reliable source.

McMillan Tetradecagon
McMillan Tetradecagon

McMillan’s Tetradecagon of Pain, is really just a slight rearranging of Lydiard’s Pyramid,  flip-flopping the speed and strength periods of the training cycle.  One must admit though that it looks impressive.

Here at Roadkill Racing we pride ourselves on not only our running and beer drinking prowess but also on our towering intellect.  We got to thinking that this triangle, trapezoid, tetradecagon stuff is all well and good, but where does it end?  I mean what’s to stop someone from coming up with the Jone’s Triacontakaipentagon of Power, or the Smith Hectakaipentacontagonlydodo?

I’ll tell you where it ends, it ends right here.  It ends with the Roadkill Wheel of Fire.  As I’m sure you are well aware, a circle has infinite sides (or no sides depending on who you talk to, but you are talking to me and I say a circle is polygon with an infinite number of infinitely small sides.) We have come up with the untoppable training diagram that will lead us, and you if you choose to follow it, to beer & glory.

Roadkill Circle of Fire
Roadkill Circle of Fire

Now I know what you are saying, “but Josh, there isn’t any training represented in that image, it is just a circle of fire.”  But you are wrong, there is an infinite number of training ideas packed into that image, like so many slices of pie.  Unfortunately because there are so many of them, the ink has all been squashed together and you can’t read any of it.  I assure you, however, that this is the greatest training plan ever devised and no amount of turning it upside or on its sides (all infinite number of them) can improve upon it.

And speaking of infinite slices of pie, you should run the Wa Wa Wally Waddle 5k next year, we give away pies to overall and age group winners.

Wally Waddle Pies.
Wally Waddle Pies.