From Googling, he seems like quite a sensible chap. For example:

http://www.runningahead.com/groups/LOWHRTR/Forum/4576d26fd8114f29a7fe...

Incidentally, Eddie, how's your own running going? I have been hoping to
see a report from you of a fast time over the marathon or shorter distance.

Best regards,

Jon C.

--
Jonathan Campbell www.jgcampbell.com BT48, UK.

Training has been going really well, January 1st I end my aerobic base
building and begin with the hill resistance phase and will continue with
the rest of the phases so I can peak at the very end of March or at the
beginning of April for a 5 or 10k. Then in the last 6 months of next
year I'll run a half or full marathon to see how my 5k and 10k times are
translating into my marathon times, as the relationship can tell you how
effective your base building phase/aerobic conditioning was as far as
quality.  This is going to help me to understand a bit more if what I've
been doing the past 1 and 9 months or so during base building has been
appropriate as far as training my aerobic system.  I've been training
pretty consistently 2-3 times a day no less then an hour each session
with a couple of long runs each week.

I initially became interested in Van Aaken after Nobby Hashizume
mentioned him in the forums over here:

http://www.lydiardfoundation.org/forum/ForumTopic.aspx?TopicID=181

He mentioned him again in an e-mail so I decided to do a little
investigating.  I ended up buying his book the Van Aaken method:

http://www.amazon.com/Van-Aaken-Method-Ernst/dp/0890370702/ref=sr_1_1...

Still waiting for it, but from all that I've read--like you said: "he
seems like quite a sensible chap".

Cheers,
Edward

We've been discussing him on rec.running so I don't have to repeat
myself here is a few snips:

-------------------------------------------------------------
...
Anyway at the time I was still fresh legged and hadn't read that many
books, basically I was just going out and running at whatever effort I
could sustain to get the miles in.  Later on as I educated myself I
thought that perhaps even though I was running at a high heart rate for
my own runs, that maybe when you do that repeatedly you get good and
comfortable at that heart rate and your heart becomes efficient at
running at that heart rate and as you become more fit and are able to
cover more distance within that specific rate it doesn't mean that over
all you are making your heart effective and efficient at all the rates
below it.  (I think I said that right.)  Anyway, as I continued to do my
runs at my normal pace and did hers as well at the lower rates, I found
that overall my comfortable 170-180 heart rate began to drop and running
in the lower heart rates became comfortable. What I found was that
overall working the higher aerobic rates and the really low heart rates
(and the middle ones too) provides a lot more quality short term and
long term aerobic development then just settling into your comfortable
pace each run.  Of course this probably isn't a huge secret to you long
time runners out there, but at the time nobody could really explain it
to my satisfaction.

That's the biggest reason I continue do 2-3 session days, each session I
will focus on a specific heart rate and hold that pace till the run's
over, of course I don't wear that damn heart rate strap anymore I
learned to go by feel.

Needless to say when I was reviewing Aaken's method it helped to
solidify my seemingly illogical training habbit's and I've come to
believe that those so called junk miles are not so junky after all, it
also explains why my comfortable aerobic cruising paces had dropped so
quickly since I started running.
...
Edward
-----------------------------END-----------------------------
I would be interested in what would the results would be if instead of
Lydiard's aerobic base building you did Aaken's and then topped off the
cake with ALL of Lydiards final phases, especially the structured hill
resistance phase, I think most people these days when following the
Lydiard schedules except for maybe the die hard Lydiard geeks, skip the
hill resistance phase and instead run a lot of hilly courses during base
building as a replacement for that work which I think can sometimes work
against you depending on how hilly the course is and how far over the
aerobic threshold you go.  (I have a tendency to think that out of all
Lydiard's phases the hill resistance phase is the most crucial.)

I was planning on running as usual till the end of December then doing
the final Lydiard phases starting on the 1st of January which would last
for 3 months then doing a small series of 5k's and 10k's within the
first 6 months of the year to see where I'm at and then doing a half or
full marathon in the later part of the year to see how my 5 and 10k
times are translating over to my marathon times.  Usually this is a good
way to see how aerobically fit you are vs. how aerobically fit you think
you are.

Last night I went out on the trails and using the MAF 180 formula which
is 180 minus your age, mine is 154, I strapped that piece of crap heart
rate monitor on and kept my heart rate below 154 for about an hour and
15 minutes, I felt really good afterward, I felt like it was a very
effective workout, the kind of workout where when your done you kind of
smile to yourself and you're like... all hell yeah!

Along the way I found some kinks in my form which slow running tends to
expose a little more so it was effective in the learning sense as well.
  I think for the rest of the year I'm going to aim to stay below that
heart rate for my daily sessions to top of my aerobic tank.

Tomorrow or Sunday I'll be doing a 26-27 mile training run with my wife
and I'm going to keep it below 154 the duration and see how that feels
in the following days to decide for sure if I want to finish out the
year with that type of conditioning.  Ideally from what I've read so far
you'd want to stick to low heart rate training for a bit longer but I've
been base building for a year and 9 months now and it's time to put the
icing on the cake.
...
Edward
-----------------------------END-----------------------------
Anyway so I've been thinking about what Lydiard had to say about base
building and comparing to them to Aaken, what sticks out the most in my
mind is that while Lydiard wasn't a fan of LSD's, his guys while they
were doing 100 miles a week at their best aerobic efforts were also in
addition to that doing a lot of supplementary miles, and I'd guess they
were at alot lower heart rates.  Clearly there is something to training
at lower heart rates of some significance whether you call them recovery
miles or whatever there is definitely a training effect.

I have some ideas as to why this is, but I'll need to read Aaken's book
before I could say for sure, but basically I like to think of the heart
as a engine, once you get the engine up to full speed, say on a flat
road with no resistance you could probably stop a few of the cylinders
and it would be able to maintain the speed, but if you went up a hill
that would require some torque which 1 or 2 cylinders would have a hard
time providing in other words you'd have to cross into the anaerobic
zone the "red line" and risk over heating the engine just to make it
over the hill with out slowing.  I think what training at lower heart
rates does is provide the extra cylinders to not only cruise at high
speeds aerobically but to also provide that torque to get over hills
fairly aerobically instead of relying completely on the other energy
systems which are less efficient then the aerobic system when things get
though.

So whether Lydiard knew of the true benefits of those "supplementary"
miles or as some like to call them "junk miles" we'll probably never
know, but he did say in his book that adding supplementary miles will
give you even better results.  So clearly he knew there was some benefit
to them.
-----------------------------END-----------------------------