Lydiard's "70-100%"

Hi folks,

Was skimming my Lydiard book last night and read the passage he has about running at 70-100% of your aerobic capacity for maximum improvement.  The way he describes aerobic capacity at first resembles VO2max (maximum oxygen usage, etc. etc.) but later sounds like lactate threshold (huge surge in blood lactate, oxygen debt, etc.)...  So, which is it?  It seems like running at 70-100% of your VO2max would be pretty damn tough, whereas running at 70-100% of your LT... more manageable, and more in line with what most of us do.  So, thoughts?

Based on what I'm seeing, it looks like the "maximum aerobic capacity" being referred to is in fact your lactate threshold, or the point at which you start going into oxygen debt and the exercise becomes anaerobic.  The bottom of page 4 in this gives a good description that makes the most sense to me of the ones I've read.

http://www.freewebs.com/velodynamics2/LydiardIowa99.pdf

That was my thought too.  It just seems like the initial description was somewhat unclear, so I wasn't completely sure.  I guess it does make more sense, though...  With LT as the 100% line, a 6:30 tempo pace would lead to 9:15 being the upper end of recovery.  Sounds right.