Training Advice Post 1st Tri Experience

Call it whatever you want:

LSD (long slow distance)
Base training
The Cult of Kicking A$$ (our nickname for it)
Z0/Z1 Heart rate training
Drinking the Kool-Aid

Bottom line is that long and slow is the way to train.  Most training plans you will see are going to call for the vast majority of your work to be in this category.  Build build build.  Add gradually.  It works.  And you will have the least chance of injury, burnout, etc. as mentioned above.  IMO, the only thing about this that can be debated is if you try to put an upper limit on it.  If you tell someone they only need to max out their LSD runs at X because they are training for Y, then you'll probably get an argument.  I think most people will find their maximum distances on their own in accordance with how much time they have to train.  But yes, IMO, other than ironman distances you should be doing the distances in your races, regularly, and at a much a slower pace than "hard effort" to build long term endurance.  By regularly I mean one LSD run per week, for example.  I'm not talking about going 13 miles 3x per week while training for a half ironman.  But once per week helps a lot.  You will automatically see your speed at shorter distances come up.  Now if you want to add speed training to that when you are training for a specific event, more power to ya.  I went from a 26 minute 5K to a 20:40 minute 5K without really ever doing any significant speed training.  Just the occassional time trial to see where I was at.  It takes a while, it's not fast and its not meant to sound easy, but it is easier ON you than going hard all the time.  And it pays off.  You are doing long distance races, you need to take a long view point of view to training.

Top Sprint/Oly AGers train as much as those competing at the 70.3/HIM distance...

Unfortunately unless you have the right genes it will take you a while to develop endurance speed and you need to JFT and be very consistent

OK, I'm going to bring up a point of clarification.....

It's not "Long Slow Distance".  It's "Long STEADY Distance".

Yes, it will be slower than race pace.  Most of your training should be slower than race pace.  So in that sense, it's "slow".  But I think there's a connotation with slow that may be somewhat misleading.  What's a good pace?  Depends on the person.  Without going technical, I would say that it should leave you pleasantly tired, but ready to go do it again.  If you notice that you can't do similar pace in the next day's training, then you're going to hard.

I'm not faulting anyone in any way.  It's a terminology issue that I think has gotten lost over time, but I feel that it's an important distinction. 

I like slow better.  Bite me.

I hear you taste like chicken...... 

Although both terms apply the way I do it.