NY Times writer does Hanson's marathon training - PRs by 16 minutes

not a slogan maker wrote:

Potential Hanson's marathon plan new slogans:

"You won't need medical attention!"

"Walk a lot the last 10 miles!"

You probably should read the article.

distance guy wrote:

Let's take it in order...

40-50 is NOT a lot if you work to that point gradually....

And as far as "taking over your life".

Despite the QOD (which I put up), I'm going to basically defend her 100%.

As someone who used to run 100+ a week, and now probably runs 10 mpw, I'm amazed that i used to get up and run 15 miles a day and it wasn't mentally challenging in the least. My grandmother used to say, "I can't imagine how awful it would be to get up each day and realize I had to do 15 miles." I'd laugh as there was no decision to be made. When healthy, It was just something i did.

Now I'm older and barely run, "How did I have time to do that?"

(I had time because instead of reading this thread and typing up a 15 minute response, I"d be halfway through a 6 miler)

Now to me, 50 mpw seems like a lot. That's 7 miles per day and I have probably run 7 miles once in the last year??

But think of it this way. 50mpw for 4:16 marathon (that's 9:52 pace) is basically the time equivalent of 75 mpw for your average male college runner as she's basically 50% slower. She races at just under 10 minute pace. So at a minimum she's running for 500 minutes a week which is 8+ hours. That's a lot. Actually, I just found another article where it looks like she averages 10:15 pace on her training runs:

Despite what people say, I'm willing to argue that 90% of college runners don't spend 8.5 hours plus per week actually running for the year counting tapering - certainly not if you count weeks off (they'd have to aveage 75 mpw). They should, but they don't.

So 75 mpw is a decent amount for a college runner who is their prime physically and College runners are all in the top 5% talent wise.

Take someone who is 32 who isn't a big natural talent and it's a big accomplishment and a big commitment.

As someone else said, a 16 miler is taking 2:45 minutes. How many of LetsRun.com's visitors have ever done a training run that long? I'm willing to say again less than 10%. Before my first marathon, I did a 30 miler to give me confidence and it took about 3 hours but most people aren't doing something like that.

I like football but only through it around with the kid across the street. I don't do d1 football practices.

Go easy on her.

I think the Hanson's 16 mile cap makes sense. People shouldn't be talking about miles per week. They should be talking about minutes per week of running.

For 4 hour plus people, they have to train less miles per week as they are slower. Then they go out and do a marathon which is the equivalent of a d1 runner running an ultra.

I ran 5 marathons, all falling short of my 3:30 goal. I had worked up to about 50 miles per week on my last 2 or 3 marathons, but still had a crappy last 3-5 miles, and missed my goal, with my best being 3:36. As you all know, 50 miles per week is barely enough to be considered enough volume for marathon training.

But for my 6th marathon, I did the Hanson's plan. I was probably over 50 mpw and maybe hit 60 for 2-3 weeks during my marathon buildup. Not a whole lot of volume increase compared to my previous marathon buildups, but it was a little increase. But running 6 days a week versus 4 or 5 days a week like a lot of the other plans have you do, really did make a difference. In my previous training plans, I was cramming in 50 miles into 4 or 5 days of training, including a 20 miler, then taking days off after every hard day and sometimes before AND after long runs; there was just too much recovery time in most of those plans.

With Hanson's, you have more steady fatigue in your legs week after week after week. The day off is mid week after your track workout, not before or after your long run. You run a 8-10 mile tempo on Thursday, 6-8 miles on Friday, and 16 on Saturday. It's a sweet plan and it scored my a 9 minute PR going down to 3:27, with very little volume increase, but running more on tired legs to kill those last 6 miles, which I did. I was on 3:30 (8 min pace) for the first 16-20 miles off all my previous 5 marathons, but couldn't hold on. But the 6th marathon I was on 3:30 pace until mile 20, then I was able to increase to 3:17 pace (7:35/mile) for the last 10k, for a big negative split and a big PR.

I'm not convinced that the author of the article, Jen Miller, actually read the book. The big misconception about the Hanson's Method is that the long runs are shorter than most plans. This is only true if you are slow. The principle is that much beyond 2 hours and 30 minutes for a training run is not beneficial. So if you are slower you might only go 16 miles. My long runs on the plan... and actually being coached by Luke Humphrey... were 20 miles or longer. It took me a year of using the plan but I went from a 3:06 PR to a 2:57 PR. I'm a 44 yo male.

Years ago I rn sub 3 hours on 40 mpw.

My long run was around 10 miles. The other 5 days were 6 mile runs with one day off or rest. No speed work during the week. Just steady running.

I focused on running the sub 3 hour equivalent race times for 1 mile, 5 miles and 10 miles. I did this training for about six months.

I ran 2:55. This was twenty minutes faster than I ran with a weekly 20 miler when training for my first marathon.

I never hit the wall. I felt good afterward even though I ran the race with everything I had.

I have used the Hanson plan twice. Once for London 2011, and once for Arizona RnR 2013. The goal was 2:45 both times. The results were 2:45:25 and 2:45:02. So obviously a complete failure.

In truth, of the 40 or so marathons that I have done, I have never felt stronger at the end than in those two efforts.

rojo wrote:

[quote]distance guy wrote:

As someone else said, a 16 miler is taking 2:45 minutes. How many of LetsRun.com's visitors have ever done a training run that long?...

Go easy on her.

I once got hopelessly lost with my college xc team in Florida and ran 2:47, navigating my way back to where my coach was waiting by finding a map and going every single place that had a bathroom marked on it.

But the point is well taken. When you're flying, 10 miles is nothing; when you're coming back from an injury or just not at your peak anymore, the minutes can grind by.

rojo wrote:

As someone who used to run 100+ a week, and now probably runs 10 mpw, I'm amazed that i used to get up and run 15 miles a day and it wasn't mentally challenging in the least.

Now I'm older and barely run, "How did I have time to do that?"

May I politely ask why? I'll never be as fast as you and probably won't run 100+ miles on a regular basis, but I can't imagine not running at least 30 miles per week barring serious injury, illness, or (really) old age. I'm sure there's time to fit 30 miles in every schedule. So, given that you obviously still follow the professional sport so closely, can you please enlighten us why you've almost given up running yourself?

She PR'd by 16 minutes over her marathon debut, which involved a ton of walking? Consider me unimpressed. Any program that had her run a reasonable amount of mileage and stay healthy would have gotten at least that good of a result. Also, for noobs that don't have a strong endurance background actually doing 20-24 milers would be quite helpful. Having such weak endurance that she had to walk a lot in previous marathons indicates that she needed to get used to the full 26.2 distance more than anything. Once her base isn't crap, then she won't need as much focus on those longer long runs.

a runner in my area never runs more than 17-18 miles in his marathon build-up training and averages about 80 miles per week consistently. BUT....all of his 15-18 mile runs are on trails and he covers between 2000-4500 feet of elevation gain per run

he ran 2:21 at boston and ran a 29:45 10k during his training

coincidentally, his longest runs usually take about 2 hours and 20 minutes to complete.....

his daily maintenance runs are 10-11 miles and run around 6:10 pace on mostly flat terrain

there you have it. if you are a talented runner to start, just follow this. haha!

ajran wrote:

I have used the Hanson plan twice. Once for London 2011, and once for Arizona RnR 2013. The goal was 2:45 both times. The results were 2:45:25 and 2:45:02. [ So obviously a complete failure.]

Looks like you were pretty close. Not sure how the weather was like for you in London but I thought Arizona RnR got pretty warm the second half (but then again, I finished about 45mins later than you too) and the fact they changed the course to be little hillier then the previous years (when it was totally flat)--I could see where you could have definitely reached your goal or done better.

As for the Hanson's method, I read the book. I haven't tried the plans. I've always been more of a mileage person and the thought of not at least running/training 20miles or more, doesn't give me confidence going into a marathon. With that said, I did less miles overall leading up to my training for my last marathon due to issues/minor injuries and did not meet my goal.

here's the plan wrote:

a runner in my area never runs more than 17-18 miles in his marathon build-up training and averages about 80 miles per week consistently. BUT....all of his 15-18 mile runs are on trails and he covers between 2000-4500 feet of elevation gain per run

he ran 2:21 at boston and ran a 29:45 10k during his training

coincidentally, his longest runs usually take about 2 hours and 20 minutes to complete.....

his daily maintenance runs are 10-11 miles and run around 6:10 pace on mostly flat terrain

there you have it. if you are a talented runner to start, just follow this. haha!

I think for anyone that is racing a marathon (running faster than their normal run) a good max long run should be your expected finish time.

If I remember correctly, Bill Rodgers said something to the effect of "Running a marathon for 2 hours is easy, I don't know how you guys do it for 4 or 5 hours."

Other above me have pretty much covered most of my thoughts. The one thing that is so odd is the idea that "accumulated fatigue" is some new ground breaking theory that this book comes up with. All decent plans accomplish the same thing, how it is pass off as and bought into as something new is beyond me.

dkakakdaak wrote:

ataglance. wrote:

I was really hoping this would be someone running a bit faster or someone that had actually trained hard before.

Read that Adam Cohen story linked above. He ran a 2:38 at age 41 using the plan, which was faster than he ran 10 yrs earlier at age 31, and close to his PR (2:36), which he ran at 33.

The plan sounds like it works for reasonably fast people as well.

You do realize he wasn't following the plans in the book, right?

I PRed using the Hanson method to run 3:01 at age 33 (This is marathon #14 or so). Starting at age 22, I have run marathons in 3:32=>3:20=>a string of 3:10's +/- 1 minutes=> then two 3:05s when shooting for a 3:00.)

So, using the Hanson method, I did 4 minute PR and felt great. This program really helped on my sustained ability to run at pace and "feeling/internalizing" the race pace. I was very happy with a 4 min. PR on a tough course (Cincinnati) as compared to easier courses (Columbus, Chicago).

The program still has about the same total mileage as other programs, it just shifts more mileage to hard days ("something of substance") and shortens the long runs a bit.

WhatNo. wrote:

This woman is crazy. I went from 4:18 to 2:52 in 2 years just by actually running and not jogging.

Because probably you have some sort of speed.

There are people with no basic speed at all.

Look at your local 5k. There are a lot of 25/26 minute runners that average 40-50MPW but only jogging. They don\'t try hills, tempos, 400m repeats, etc.

A lot of common sense and good information in this thread. My opinion:

- LR should be capped at 3h, no matter how fast you are

- 16mi LR will do the trick if overall mileage is high enough (>50)

I always would wonder when Brian Sell said he only ran 10:00 in HS and look at him now etc compared to the other guys (hall, ritz) and how fast they ran in HS. Did Brian Sell train in HS, or was he goofy off being the team clown? Improvements can have many variables.