Results from Hadd's approach to distance training?

Doesn't anyone find it strange that Hadd only presented one example case (Joe) and that person never went on to run the marathon.

I think there are merits to the approach but I still believe the thread was a hoax.

Been following the approach fairly religiously all year, after sort of following it half assed last year.

PRs prior to last year:

5k - 16:48

5 mile - 27:50ish

10k - 34:40

HM - 1:16:40

M - 2:44:52

New PRs last year (during half assed approach):

5k - 16:36

5 mile - 27:35

HM - 1:16:22

M - 2:44:46

(I know, nothing stunning, but pretty consistent improvement)

New PRs this year (fully on the program):

1500 - 4:26 debut, followed by 4:25 and 4:18

road mile - 4:30 debut (slight net downhill, I call this 4:35)

5k - 16:13

5 mile - 26:42 (same course as previous PR)

10k - 34:21 (hilly ass course)

still waiting on the HM and M...

I know many other folks who have set some pretty decent PRs this year following Hadd's advice.

I should mention for those who don't know me, I'll be 40 next summer, so I'm not getting any younger, but Hadd's making me faster.

was sort of up and down with it. i got very strong and finished a marathon, for what that's worth. having only ever been a short distance runner, it was not a given for me that i'd make it through a marathon at a fast pace. it was beneficial for me to start slow and build from the bottom rather than try to keep doing what i was doing and go farther.

i will use some of it next time around, but i will do more lactate threshold work and mix it up a bit more.

No, it wasn't a hoax. Hadd never gave his full program. The whole point of his big thread was to point out that many people overlook their aerobic conditioning. When you look at most people's 5K/10K PRs vs their marathon PR, isn't it hard to arrive at any other conclusion.

Whatever anyone may say about him, he's his own guy in that he could care less what someone on LR says. I certainly am glad I ran into his stuff here on LR.

JEH wrote:

No, it wasn't a hoax. Hadd never gave his full program. The whole point of his big thread was to point out that many people overlook their aerobic conditioning. When you look at most people's 5K/10K PRs vs their marathon PR, isn't it hard to arrive at any other conclusion.

Whatever anyone may say about him, he's his own guy in that he could care less what someone on LR says. I certainly am glad I ran into his stuff here on LR.

If he never gave his whole program then how did you get it? Where is it available?

Hadd himself said that he never gave the full program:

"At that point, and not until then, you can decide whether to aim for a marathon, or to build on top of this aerobic base to aim for some shorter race distances. It should make sense that if you are a young runner the best time to begin this build up is soon after your main competition period of the year. Those who aim for two marathons per year might adopt it as the early part of their 20-week build up towards their next marathon. Note that it was always a Lydiard belief that even middle distance runners should be capable of a fine marathon before turning to speed."

http://www.ffh.us/cn/hadd.htm

- See Part VI, second to last real paragraph

sundog wrote:If he never gave his whole program then how did you get it? Where is it available?

He has shared it elsewhere. It's not widely available, so far as I know, but the basic gist is that after you complete Phase I (which he described with the Joe example), you move to Phase II, which has two subcomponents, IIa and IIb.

Phase IIa involves shorter intervals which are guided by pace rather than HR. Mostly 800s to 2000s with some (very few) sets of 400s. Towards the end it's mostly 1200s and 2000s. You work through all workouts progressively, building each time out, trying to improve the pace, and/or shorten the rest between intervals. You do each workout so you finish feeling fresh, knowing you could have done more at that effort. The progression, and mix of workouts, depends on the athlete (ST vs FT muscle type) and their race distance focus. I PR'd at 1500 to 10k during and after completing Phase IIa this year.

After Phase IIa you move to Phase IIb, which is basically the same approach as Phase I, working on aerobic threshold (AeT). I'm about 11 weeks into Phase IIb right now, preparing for a marathon.

Phase I gets you ready to train hard in Phase IIa and IIb. It works on improving AeT, moving it closer to anaerobic threshold (AnT).

Phase II gets you ready to race at a wide range of distances. In Phase IIa you work to improve AnT, moving it away from AeT to give you more room to improve AeT. In Phase IIb you get back to working on AeT, now having more room to improve it, since you've improved AnT.

Phase I can get you ready to run a decent marathon, but won't generally help you run a fast 10k. Phase IIa gets you ready for a range of races (1500 to 10k or HM), and then Phase IIb polishes it off, and is necessary to optimize the marathon performance.

Now, some folks will say that Phase IIa stuff looks pretty good - that's all you need to do to get faster. And to some degree that's true. You can get faster by just doing the interval stuff. But there's a limit to the improvement you can make because you haven't developed the aerobic foundation. That's the message at the heart of Hadd's thread. Phase I type work is essential, and the most important element of the training. If you skip it or cheat on it, your improvement will stall fairly quickly.

A guy I know went from 2:55 to 2:31 off Phase I training only (mind you, he wouldn't have been ready to PR at 5k or 10k, but that's a healthy marathon PR, don't you think?).

There are a number of other important considerations.

Proper fuelling is paramount. The body won't respond if you don't keep the legs fuelled. The workouts drain glycogen from the legs, so you have to refuel quickly and often.

Always a couple of days between hard efforts (races, workouts or long runs are all hard efforts). The workouts are very important, and you treat them as such, adequately recovering and preparing between each one.

Usually no more than two work sessions and a long(er) run each week. I've had a couple of weeks with three work sessions, but either preceeded or followed by a week with only one or all easy. The workouts really do take a lot out of you if you're doing it right, even though you work to finish feeling fresh.

Every fourth week or so, you drop all the workouts to let the body adapt to the work you've done.

If you do it right, you will see steady (though not linear) improvement over time, and every six weeks or so you'll get a "holy shit" moment where you'll have to ask yourself "OK, where the hell did THAT come from?"

That's been my experience so far, anyway...

I see I made no mention of the particulars of Phase I, which is the most important part. That's probably because it's second nature to me now, but in fact it's the hardest part to accept, and many folks here probably haven't read the original Hadd thread, which is here:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=91048&thread=91048

)

The basic principles are that workouts and easy runs should be based on appropriate effort, rather than pace, and effort is measured by watching the heart rate via a heart rate monitor. The body adapts based on how hard the heart is working, not what speed the legs are moving. The heart isn’t aware of external factors (heat, humidity, wind) the way the legs are. Adaptations in the muscles are dependant on the rate that the heart is pumping and rate of lactate accumulation and dissipation.

Phase I (where you should begin) concentrates on aerobic base development. It makes you stronger than an ox, and ready for Phase II. Both Phases are mostly easy aerobic running, with (normally) two work sessions and a longer run each week.

Here's the gist of Phase I:

Buy an HRM and learn to love it.

Determine your HRmax plus or minus a couple of beats. You MUST know this number to get to work. Don’t guess or use textbook formulas. They’re useless. If you don’t know your HRmax, go to the track and do a good warmup. Run 800m all out. Suck wind for maybe 30 seconds, then run 400m all out. The highest number you see on the HRM during this workout will be close to your HRmax, within a couple of beats.

Start running at 75% of HRmax, or less, every day until you work up to being comfortable running 50 miles per week of easy mileage. At this point, you will begin to add in aerobic work sessions. These work sessions will be guided by HR, not pace. Don’t worry about pace, but track it so you can see the improvement over the year. Keep the HR within the intended zones.

Space the work days two or three days apart. The body needs this recovery time to be able to adapt to the work you’ve done. A “work day” would be either a workout, long run, or race. Never do more than three work days in a week. Often (ie. when on is a race or particularly hard workout) you will only do two work days in a week. Sometimes you will do one, or none.

During Phase I, you concentrate on aerobic work sessions, and the idea is to "lock in" each HR range until you could run at that HR all day (well, 60 to 75 min) without slowing down. You do this progressively, starting with lower HRs and shorter "intervals," and over the weeks ratchet up the duration of intervals, total duration of work, and working HR levels, or maybe shorten the rest between intervals.

But don't move up until you've mastered the level you're already working at.

So you might begin the program (after getting to 50 mpw of easy running comfortably) working at 80-83% of HRmax on Tuesday and Friday, and stay with that levels until you can comfortably complete an hour of work without slowing down, and knowing you could keep on going at that effort and pace. As the pace-HR relationship gets locked in, you can up the second work session to 82-85% of HRmax.

So week 1, maybe you do 2 x 20 min @ 80-83% Tuesday and then 30 or 40 min @ 80-83% Friday. Next two or three weeks, maybe stay at that HRs, but get the sessions up to 2 x 30 then 60 min continuous for 80-83% work, and then maybe start to ease in something like 2 x 12 min, 2 x 15, 3 x 15, 3 x 20, 2 x 30, 60 continuous for 82-85% for the second workout, instead of something at 80-83%.

Over the following weeks, work up into higher HR ranges, with similar interval progression.

Again, don't move up until you've mastered the level you're at, keeping HR and pace steady, and finishing knowing you can keep on keeping on. You want to finish every work session feeling fresh, like you’ve worked but you know you could continue at that effort. If you feel spent at the end, you’ve gone too hard, and need to ease back.

Work at this until you're at about 85-88% HRmax for 60-75 min continuous at a steady pace feeling like you can keep going, and you're an aerobic monster, ready to tackle Phase IIa. It will probably take anywhere from three to eight months to get to that point, depending on many factors.

In Phase IIb (after IIa, which I won't try to describe in more detail than the previous post), which is similar to Phase I, you get back into aerobic work sessions, but you should see the pace has improved at every effort, and you're working toward locking in the pace-HR relationship at up to 88-90% HRmax, which is what a well-trained (aerobically well-trained) athlete can expect to average for the marathon (someone without the aerobic development might expect to average maybe 85% HRmax for the marathon).

A couple of other notes:

Hadd likes doubles when the mileage starts to creep up there. Instead of running 13-15 miles on an easy day, maybe run 7 in the morning and 7 at night. Try it once a week and see if you can manage to add more.

The warm up and cool down for Phase IIa work sessions or races should be much better. For warm up, do three miles or so, and include 6-8 minutes at about 82-85% HRmax, and run three or four 75-100 m strides at the end. For hard workouts (say a fast set of 400s) you might want to cool down for up to 45 minutes easy running to clear the lactate, but definitely cool down at least 20 minutes after Phase IIa workouts or races.

You will find that pace at certain HRs will vary depending on conditions. If it is hot and humid, expect to run 10 to 30s/mile slower than you’d like or expect. Don’t worry about it – that’s just the way it is. On these days, stick with the target HR and don’t worry about pace. The heart has no idea how humid it is outside or what pace you’re running, and it doesn’t care either.

As a final note of caution/advice, the one thing that's easy to underestimate is the whole psychology of getting on the program.

I found it EXTREMELY difficult to buy into the concept cold. There's just too much about it, to me, that's counterintuitive... running slow to get fast, yeah, sure! The thing is, you work hard every week, but preserve yourself most of the rest of the week so you can give the work sessions an honest effort and get the maximum gain.

The other thing I found is that it's VERY difficult to get into the program and stick with it without always thinking "gee, this slow running is probably making me slower, I better do some fast running" and then cheating the program. Don’t cheat by throwing in some extra fast runs. It will hurt you, not help you. Last year I cheated quite a bit. I improved at all distances, but not very much. This year, I have not cheated at all, and have made more substantial improvements.

So you can't underestimate how difficult it is to START and then STICK WITH the program. But if you do, you’ll be pleased by the results.

Damn, one more thing...

Lotsa folks, especially younger runners, find the pace at 75% HRmax to be intolerably slow in the beginning. Hadd will let people start out their easy days at up to 80% in the beginning (if, say, 75% means 10 min miles). But this is done with the full intention of moving the easy stuff down to 75% as the pace improves over time, and then keeping it there.

Over time, 75% HRmax should give you M-pace plus 75-90s, or thereabouts, which is easy, but not ridiculously slow.

Great info, Pete. Thanks.

I've been following HADD's approach for about 5 weeks now. I had a decent base before I started, so the runs haven't been that painfully slow (except at a hr of 145). In fact, as of late the runs at a heart rate of 160 (my hr max is the same as "Joe's," about 193), have been feeling pretty quick. The weather is getting cooler and I'm really working to keep my hr up at 160. My breathing is not labored, but I'm having trouble getting my legs to move fast enough to hit and maintain a hr of 160.

Anyone else experience this? How did it work out?

Totally agree with Pete who was kind enough to summarize the phases beyond the initial Phase 1 that everyone critiques from Hadd's LR posts.

Patience is the key.

I haven't even really moved into Phase 2, but feel stronger than I have in several years (I'm 46) and feel I can run Chicago as a long steady base run at 6:30 pace ( a pace that felt like tempo this summer) merely to get ready for Phase 2 and Club Nats in XC.

Comfortable tempo pace for 10 miles is at 6:00 now. I KNOW that is humbling slow compared to where I was a few years ago, BUT I know it's far faster than I was only two years ago when I was doing more traditional interval work.

We need to get Hadd's stuff from his other phases out there in print!

I have been cheating the program the last year, and have found that it can work, but I can not seem to stick with the program because I feel as if I have to run faster because it is what I am used to. You have motivated me to get with the program and stick with it, and see where it takes me. Thanks

hadd newbie question wrote:The weather is getting cooler and I'm really working to keep my hr up at 160. My breathing is not labored, but I'm having trouble getting my legs to move fast enough to hit and maintain a hr of 160.

Anyone else experience this? How did it work out?

This is a very clear signal that you're not fully fuelled - low glycogen in the legs. You gotta put fuel in the tank if you want the car to run.

It's kind of paradoxical, but you can fool yourself into thinking you've made a big leap just by forgetting to eat. If you have trouble getting the HR up where you're used to getting it, you might be tempted to think you've made a bit of a breakthrough, but it probably means you are glycogen low. But if you know you were properly fuelled, then maybe you have made a bit of a breakthrough. They do tend to sneak up on you.

Pete big thanks for clearing up the Hadd training. I have 1 question about the long run for anybody that knows hadd training.

Do you do the long run every week? Is it always the easy pace? Is the long run usually the same distance? For instance if I go 17 this week should I have a down week on the long run every 3rd week & the rest try to raise the long run?

The "long run" as an essential element of distance training is actually underemphasized in Hadd's approach, in favour of quality. He will suggest long-ish runs every week, but this might be 1:30 to 2:30 easy, depending on where you are in your training, or it might mean 1:45 with 60 minutes at, say, 82-85% HRmax (as an example).

Another vote for Hadd's system - I know it seems illogical at first but it really works - training slower can make you faster.

Think of it this way - when Tergat ran his WR his blood lactate was very low and yet he was running well below 5mm pace. To train specifically for a marathon you have to train to run fast AT LOW LACATE PRODUCTION not just to run fast period, otherwise you are training the wrong system.

I was running almost all my miles at 7:30 or slower and was able to jump into a 10K and beat a 14yr old PB in 35:21 - 5:40 pace which I had not done even once in training. Was comfortable too.

And it is NOT all easy running. 14+mile sessions on the track doing 5K reps at MP twice a week is NOT easy.

Pete wrote:

A couple of other notes:

Hadd likes doubles when the mileage starts to creep up there. Instead of running 13-15 miles on an easy day, maybe run 7 in the morning and 7 at night. Try it once a week and see if you can manage to add more.

.

I thought what he said about doubles was that up to 80 miles you should do singles and then anything over you can add 8 miles in morning 10 miles at night?

Pantman wrote:

Another vote for Hadd's system - I know it seems illogical at first but it really works - training slower can make you faster.

Think of it this way - when Tergat ran his WR his blood lactate was very low and yet he was running well below 5mm pace. To train specifically for a marathon you have to train to run fast AT LOW LACATE PRODUCTION not just to run fast period, otherwise you are training the wrong system.

I was running almost all my miles at 7:30 or slower and was able to jump into a 10K and beat a 14yr old PB in 35:21 - 5:40 pace which I had not done even once in training. Was comfortable too.

And it is NOT all easy running. 14+mile sessions on the track doing 5K reps at MP twice a week is NOT easy.

I was not aware that Tergat was getting blood taken at regular levels during the marathon. You are assuming (rightly in all likelihood) that the lactate levels were low. Even if lactate was measured at the end of the run, the result of a low lactate level would be more related to substrate availability. At the end of a marathon muscle glycogen levels are going to be low; lactate comes from glyocgen.

The system is illogical only for people who lack knowledge of physiology. The rationale behind the "slow" pace training is to develop aerobic capacity and the enzymes, capillary beds, mitochondria, etc that come with long "slow" distance running. I also believe (intuition) that the miles help develop running economy.

Distance running is an aerobic sport! Even the 5K at WR pace is 86% aerobic (see New Studies in Athletics and also Gastin's review of the literature).