The tempo run has no single inventor, and half of what people think it trains it doesn't. The thread runs from Hill and Lupton's lactate work to Iglói's "fresh swing" and Lydiard's steady-state — three different ideas wearing one name. #Running #RunningHistory #Tempo #TheLongRun

"Comfortably hard" wasn't always the definition. The tempo run started as a precise pace target, then two vague words turned a measurable workout into a feeling. Nobody agrees where the threshold actually sits anymore. #Running #RunningHistory #Marathon #TheLongRun

"20 minutes at threshold pace" is the tempo run everyone repeats. But dig into the physiology and the pace most runners actually hold rarely sits at the lactate threshold it's named for. The label outran the science. #Running #RunningScience #TempoRun #RunningHistory #TheLongRun

The "tempo run" gets sold as one clean workout at one magic pace, but the phrase "comfortably hard" is doing a lot of hiding — nobody fully agrees where that line sits. And lactate isn't the waste product the story makes it out to be. It's fuel.

#Running #RunningHistory #TempoRun #TheLongRun

How does a race let an 8-year-old and a 72-year-old both win? New episode digs into the Dipsea's radical handicap system—up to 25 minutes of head start—and why the first runner across those 7.4 Marin miles is almost never the fastest. Give it a listen. #Dipsea #Running #RunningHistory #TheLongRun

America's oldest athletic club started running one of its strangest races because two members couldn't settle a dinner argument at the Dipsea Inn in 1904. A two-man wager became a race still run over a century later. #Running #RunningHistory #Dipsea #TheLongRun

The Dipsea rewards the runner who knows where the trail turns cruel, not the one who blows off the start line fast. Those infamous steps aren't the finish line's challenge — they're the trap that sorts the two apart. #Running #RunningHistory #TrailRunning #TheLongRun

The Dipsea has no set course. Runners pick their own line across Mount Tamalpais, and the shortcuts they invent are legal — the trail you choose is part of the race, not cheating around it. Route-finding is a competitive skill here. #Running #TrailRunning #RunningHistory #TheLongRun

The Dipsea's handicap doesn't just level the field — it inverts it. Head starts scale by age and sex, so a 72-year-old crosses first while the fastest runners chase from behind. It's the rare footrace where being young is the disadvantage.

#Running #TrailRunning #RunningHistory #TheLongRun

New episode: How a German doctor in a tiny town built a training system on going slow. Ernst van Aaken kept heart rates near 130 and paces conversational—and called it "pure endurance" back in 1947, while everyone else chased intervals. Listen now. #running #LSD #RunningHistory #TheLongRun

The Dipsea hands out head starts by age and sex, so the fastest runner rarely wins. A 72-year-old man has taken it. So has an 8-year-old girl. The handicap is the whole point.

#Running #TrailRunning #RunningHistory #TheLongRun

"Long slow distance" wasn't Ernst van Aaken's phrase. He argued the physiology in a German spa town; an American magazine editor packaged it, stamped it with three initials, and sold it to a generation. The idea and the acronym have different fathers. #Running #RunningHistory #LSD #TheLongRun

"Long Slow Distance" wasn't a coach's breakthrough — it was a name Joe Henderson put on what runners were already doing. Mid-'60s Americans piled up slow miles instead of hard intervals, and the times dropped anyway. #Running #RunningHistory #Marathon #TheLongRun

Long slow distance training didn't come from a coach — it came from a doctor. Ernst van Aaken ran his clinic in tiny Waldniel and argued, against the interval orthodoxy of the 1950s, that easy aerobic miles beat hard reps. The sport still runs on his heresy. #Running #RunningHistory #TheLongRun

New episode: the very first Boston Marathon, 1897. The winner wasn't even from Boston—John McDermott of New York walked several times in the final miles and still won by nearly 7 minutes, beating the local favorite on the Newton hills. Only 10 of 15 finished. #Running #RunningHistory #TheLongRun

The slow-running gospel didn't come from a coach — it came from a German physician, Ernst van Aaken, who argued high mileage at low heart rates beat the interval training everyone swore by. The establishment took decades to stop laughing.

#Running #RunningHistory #LSD #TheLongRun

The man who won the first Boston Marathon in 1897 walked part of it. John McDermott stopped on the late hills and still finished under three hours. Fifteen started; ten made it in. #Marathon #RunningHistory #Boston #Running #TheLongRun

The first Boston Marathon wasn't the tidy 26.2 we picture — 15 men ran 24.5 miles, trailed by cyclists, wagons, and motorcycles kicking dust off an unpaved road. John J. McDermott won in 2:55:10.

#Running #Marathon #RunningHistory #TheLongRun

The first Boston Marathon in 1897 wasn't 26.2 miles — it ran 24.5 unmeasured miles from Ashland. The winner, John J. McDermott, wasn't a Boston hero either: he was a New York City lithographer who clocked 2:55:10.

#RunningHistory #BostonMarathon #Marathon #Running #TheLongRun

Boston's 1897 marathon wasn't a fresh American idea. It was a straight copy of Athens two years earlier, right down to honoring Spyridon Louis — a Greek water-carrier who'd never raced the distance before he won it. #RunningHistory #Marathon #Boston #Running #TheLongRun