JMR wrote:
Just wanted to pass on my sympathies to the family and friends of John "Hadd" Walsh. I'm sure there are a huge number of people who read his guidelines and appreciated his words of wisdom. Thanks for what was, imo, the best explanation of why aerobic training is so necessary.
I exchanged some emails with John after I tried his system, which didn’t initially work for me, and he was kind enough to go through in some detail the errors I had made. I last contacted him at his yahoo email address in late 2008, but think he must have closed that down as there were no responses from 2009 onwards. I hadn't even realised he was from my home city of Glasgow until reading other posts.
So, in the spirit of sharing the wisdom of John to help others, please find attached below his advice for “ST types” wanting to run a good marathon.
"Hi Jamie,
Sorry for taking some time to get back to you... some other queries to deal with promoted by the Cabral/Hadd thread and just plain old life getting in the way.
Where to start? You've obviously got some useful talent there, and are someone I tend to class as "more-ST" as opposed to "more-FT". In other words, it looks like you do not have a high ability to create lactate (you are not an 800-1500 guy), and that your performances will get better as the distance lengthens (this keyboard sucks, so excuse any typos - it's a borrowed machine...).
Yes, in the absence of intense training your HRmax will fall. I had one athlete whose HRmax dropped from 196 to 182 (over a 5-year span of too much attention to marathon training). So always keep some intensity in the week.
Yes, there are 2 thresholds (you must have got good advice), we call them LT (lactate threshold) and LTP (lactate turnpoint). The former relates to and correlates best with your Mpace, and the latter (aka: OBLA or MLSS) correlates better with HM/10k/5k performances.
My whole long thread from 2003 was to encourage people to move the LT. Phase IIa (not yet discussed online) works at improving LTP.
ST's like yourself have to be wary not to do too much sub-LT work without a healthy dose of LTP and faster work. In your case, it would certainly be true that long slow running makes long slow runners.
The first thing you want to do is develop the ability to run 45-60 mins at ~140-144 and see the pace is steady (ie: you do not have to slow to stop the HR rising).
However, you should also include some faster work every week. This can either be in the form of 6x150m AFAP (As Fast As Possible - without doing any damage) with a long-ish recovery 3-5 mins WALK. And you can do these after an easy run.
Or you can plug some short quick aerobic capacity work into your week like 8-10 x 300m (at slightly faster than 3k pace) with 100m jog in 45 secs. (So this is a continuous run).
At the same time, go long on sunday... maybe alternate 1hr45, 2hrs, 2hr15 (repeat)
So you might get a week like this:
Tue: 8-10 x 300 with 100m jog in 45s (jog 8 mins) 10k at 135-140 HR
Fri: 3x20 mins building to 60 mins straight at 140-144 HR with steady pace
Sun: Rotate Sundays as above - look for hilly routes (1hr45, 2hrs, 2hr15 (repeat))
All else easy at 65-70% HRmax and build up mileage to a good level (depending on work, etc, and target event)
I like to see ST's get in 3-5k shape before going for marathons. And that would generally mean that to be in sub-2:25 shape you have to get in sub-15:30 / 5k shape FIRST... then just add on Phase IIb training which aims at improving fat-burning and last 6-8 weeks pre-marathon.
Hope this gives you some ideas of where to start.
Feel free to write back if you have other questions.
I hope to expand on some of the topics here on the Cabral/Hadd thread... but it might take some time to get there.
Keep training, it sounds like there is more to come off that Mtime.
Thanks for writing,
Hadd"