Arthur Lydiard, 87

Every lazy, overweight obit-journalist typing with nicotine-stained fingers typed the same joke last week. Arthur Lydiard was the father of LSD, they said. Lydiard loved LSD. Lydiard got the world hooked on LSD. Very funny.

What's meant isn't lysergic acid diethylamide, but another addiction, one that doesn't involve butterflies crying (an experience of mine; I was 15). Last week, LSD meant Long Slow Distance. Running. Arthur Lydiard-who died of a heart attack last Sunday on a visit to Texas-was a prophet of the jog. He encouraged everyone to go out and buy a new pair of $200 running shoes with a squishy gel heel. And then run. Long and slow.

The idea is that running long distances-and steadily increasing those distances over weeks and months-ups the amount of oxygen in the respiratory system, and so gives more power to shorter spurts. It's also healthier. The objective, as Lydiard always said, was stamina.

Widely credited with grandfathering a worldwide fitness revolution, Lydiard's beginnings were simple enough. Born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1917, Lydiard didn't get up off his ass until he was 13. In his late teens-when he worked in a factory making women's shoes-he graduated from cross-country work to racing.

After serving in WWII, Lydiard dropped his second love, rugby, in favor of running full-time. Clocking 100 miles per week, he went on to win a number of New Zealand marathons; his fastest time was two hours, 39 minutes and five seconds.

In his 40s, Lydiard took his message on the road. Lectures and training seminars followed, then books. Jogging with Lydiard and Running the Lydiard Way-along with belated fame for coaching a number of New Zealanders to Olympic glory, including Peter Snell, who credited Lydiard with helping him break a few world records-served to increase his following.

Throughout the millennia, running was merely a means of evading predators and Nazis, but Lydiard believed it was the key to fighting the post-War trend of obesity that in our time has become epidemic. His primary methodology was embarrassment. "Look," Lydiard would say to the sedentary Dilbert types attending in his pricey, macho seminars, "you expect your wife to be slim and beautiful. How do you think she feels when she's in bed watching you get undressed?"

Lydiard knew what he was talking about. He'd been in a lot of beds. Married three times-including once to the Finnish Olympic gymnast Eira Lehtonen-he is survived by his wife Joelyne, whom he married when he was 80 and she was 32.

Was he long? Did he go slow? Could he go the distance? During their marriage, Lydiard suffered four strokes, stopped his own running and struggled with prescription drugs.