Hansons Marathon Method

I used it once, last summer.

I came off a long surgery recovery and did pretty typical training for a winter race, in which I ran a disappointing 3:18. I tried Hansons for my fall race to try to get some speed back. I wasn't tired all the time, but it's a brutal plan to complete over a hot summer. All of my marathon-pace tempos were in the high 80's to low 90's with massive humidity, and that was complete misery.

When race day came, I had perfect weather, and ran exactly what my paces had predicted: 3:12. Which I didn't love. I wanted to somehow be much faster, given the amount of work I'd put in (I'm a low volume runner, and the advanced plan was a lot of miles for me).

Besides the mediocre finishing time, my speed for short distances had vanished. It took me 8 months to get it back. And then in January I straight up ran a marathon with almost no training, just one 16-miler, because I won a free entry. It was hot on race day and 100% humidity and I ran ...3:12. So apparently I can run 3:12 in terrible conditions with no training or after struggling through Hansons. Conclusion: Not a huge fan.

I used Hanson's Advanced Plan with some modifications for my recent BQ marathon (3:09) from a 4:12 last year in LA Marathon. I did cross training with Orange Theory Fitness (HIIT boot camp class with treadmill, rowing, weight training) 3 times a week which I did on MWF (Easy and rest days). I subtracted the miles I did on the OTF treadmill from the Easy miles to be run. I added a few repetitions to the interval training. I also went faster on the tempo runs (somewhere between HMP and GMP instead of GMP) and I also did some longer long runs up to 20 miles and added easy miles here and there to get to 70-80 mpw. I am doing the same modified plan at faster target pace (6:50) going for sub3 in Chicago. It seems to be working out for me but we will see how Chicago goes.

So you basically did your own plan.

Naw man...the only thing changed was the easy days, the interval days, the tempo days, the long runs, and the weekly mileage. Everything else was by the book. It really works!

Out of curiosity...what the heck were you doing when you ran 4:12 that meant you could handle so much work the following year, but could only run 4:12 last year?

Of course, it's difficult to know 100% for sure and I'll say that there was probably more than one factor.

That said, in the post-race analysis my coach did agree with me and even apologized to me for not suggesting a more conservative pace.

We agreed hydration and fueling didn't seem to be an issue. Mental toughness is more subjective but I didn't get to the point where that even came into play.

I even pulled back into a conservative mode halfway through and couldn't even run 8:30's, which should be nothing.

Basically, I hit the wall, but I was able to at least somewhat hang in until I hit the 20 mile mark.

My feeling is I was just on the wrong side of using up my glycogen stores (although a part me still finds it hard to believe less than ten seconds per mile can change everything).

I could have seen running something like 3:35 but to fall all the way off to 3:43, I don't get it. It doesn't make sense to me that there was no middle ground. If my pacing was off, I would have thought I still would have been able to get a lot closer to the end before I started to have problems.

I read Luke's article in the middle of training and it didn't really clarify for me one way or the other.

Is your coach a Hanson's coach? Or are they just giving you the workouts straight from the book?

You hit the nail on the head here. You hit the wall because running close to 20 miles at even less than ten seconds per mile faster than the pace you're trained for WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING.

Well.. I ran a marathon training program from my local running club and peaked around 35 mpw for that 4:12 marathon. I trained with the 9:00 pace group with a goal to go sub-4. After that disastrous race where I hit the wall at mile 20 and was passed by everyone as I struggled with 13-14 minute pace, I decided I needed to make major changes. I went on a diet and lost 33 lbs. I ran a series of half marathons and got my time down to 1:24. And I did the modified Hanson's plan. I considered doing a Jack Daniel's plan and a Pfitzinger plan but the Hanson's plan worked the best with my cross training.

Yes, my coach ran in the 2016 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials and did pretty well. Possibly and up-and-comer.

I had about 9 weeks of base-building, 13 weeks of focusing on speed and then the marathon plan (not in the book) was their advanced 9-day cycle plan (running 6 out of 7 days, with a hard workout every third day).

That's the same plan my coach and some of the other elite athletes uses.

Well, even though I felt great, did everything according to the plan and had a great race day to work with, I only held the 8:00 pace through 14.5 before realizing I had to start making adjustments. If it had been a situation to run 8:00 pace for as long as I could I think I could have made it to 17.

I think the problem is my coach misread the signals that Hansons was giving and I paid the price. And I did raise issues along the way but in the end took her advice.

Let me ask you a question that I asked her. When you input your training runs into the daily schedule, one of the things is to include your effort level, with the higher part of the scale as follows:

4, 5, 6 - Moderate

7, 8 - Hard

9 - Very hard

10 - All out effort

Given that scale what kind of effort should I have been putting in to achieve successful workouts? You don't have to choose an exact number, if you think something in-between would be an appropriate answer.

And then I'll tell you what I ran pretty much all of them at and her response to my question.

My answer would be so that it takes focus, but not so much that your toast at the end. Like...every workout should be finished feeling like you could have run one more mile, one more rep, etc...but you don't really WANT to. So...i guess that's a 7? 8?

I am having a hard time following your situation. Do you live in Michigan and are you coached in person by one of their HCS folks?

Well, all of the workouts took focus, that's for sure. I was probably somewhere in-between being able to do another rep/mile and not being able to do one - depending on the day.

I graded almost all of my workouts as a 7 (including tempo and long runs).

Shouldn't a tempo run (or a marathon pace run) be "comfortably hard"? In other words, maybe a 6.5 (if that) on the scale?

But my coach said no, it feels harder because you're constantly fatigued by the workouts. And then you'll get the benefit of being fully rested for the race itself.

No, I'm in Tucson and did e-mail coaching for $75 per month (did it for eight months). At this level, there are basically unlimited e-mails but athlete-initiated (meaning the coach isn't really proactive but will respond to anything you bring up). And no phone calls either.

BLtheKid wrote:

But my coach said no, it feels harder because you're constantly fatigued by the workouts. And then you'll get the benefit of being fully rested for the race itself.

Well, I somewhat agree with your coach here in that at least the longer tempos (8-10 milers) should feel pretty hard. To answer your question, the easy days on the plan should definitely be in the 4-5 range, speed work/intervals around an 8, maybe 9 for longer intervals, tempos 7-8, long run 5-7 (Hanson's still recommends running your long runs at 1-2 min slower than goal race pace).