Thinking about replacing one of my weekly easy runs with... (Read 279 times)

...sure, the Hansons have a book and all, but PLENTY of professional coaches disagree with them

I don't know that this is true. There may be some differences in the details but I would say there is much more that's similar than different between the Hansons and other pro coaches. Honestly the most "renegade" thing about Luke Humphrey's book is the title. That, and what I would call almost a gimmick of capping the long run at 16 miles, which, by the way, Neither the Hansons nor Humphreys actually recommend for the high mileage / faster runners they coach.

I say "almost" a gimmick because there is a method to the 16 mile limit--most beginner and intermediate runners put too many of their weekly miles in the long run, so by capping it at 16 miles they are keeping it closer to the ideal percentage of weekly miles.

To the question at hand, I generally don't log runs much over 60 minutes as "easy" unless I'm in a period of pure base building and doing no real workouts. In most cases, you're better off doing two 40-minute runs than one 80-minute run on an easy day.

Another way to think about the Hansons 16 mile long run is that this is their way of giving other marathoners the same type of workout they would give their elite athletes.  The type of workout is based on effort and time, not the number of miles covered.  This is the way a friend of mine who used to run for the Hansons elite team explained to me.

The Hansons elite guys would do a weekly 20 mile long run at about 6:00 pace.  In terms of workout effort, this meant they were running for right at 2 hours on the faster end of easy pace (their marathon pace of 5:00-5:15 was significantly faster than this training pace).

Now, consider an "advanced" marathoner running 2:50.  To replicate this easy-fast long run, he would also need to run  significantly slower than marathon pace for right at 2 hours.  For him that's somewhere around 7:30 pace,  which at 2 hours comes out to . . . 16 miles.  If he were to run 20 miles, it would take him 2:30, which is a notably different workout.

And of course that's faster than average.  Many more runners following the "advanced" training plan would need 3 hours to complete the 20 miles, which is a very different workout.  My friend noted that Hansons would never assign their elite athletes a workout that long, because they believed the beating the body took and the necessary recovery time that came with it outweighed the benefits.

Love this conversation.

 

I give up. 

Fair enough, thanks for your advice.  I just want you to know, I'm not trying to be bullheaded; I've always respected your expertise and it would be insane for someone at my level to argue with you.  I just honestly don't see anything in the book that indicates a time cap for the easy runs, and if it's there, I don't know any other way to work it out in my mind than to bring up the points that seem to conflict.  I'm sorry if I came across as trying to be difficult or, more likely, stupid.

Like I say, I will heed your urging to shorten the easy runs some, and run them slower.

LsGary - yeah, that sounds about right re: the long runs.  Their recommended pace for me (based on most recent race result) is 8:01.  A 16-miler at that pace would be two hours and a bit of change.  'Course, I might have been guilty once or twice of letting bravado add a mile or two to those in the past, but based on the conversation here, I think I'll try to keep that in check.

 

I tell you not to extend all your standard easy runs to a likely unreasonable 80+ minutes, which is exactly what your log reflects you do...more often than not.  Then you pull a few examples of specific examples when Hansons indicates you may run extended easy runs occasionally...such as weekends when you aren't doing a long run.

 

They have you do it once in awhile, in specific circumstances.  You do it practically every time. What exactly is in conflict here???

Well, the first point is what I'm saying I'm going to adjust, based on the conversation here and re-reading the guidelines in the book.  At first I thought you were giving 80 mins. as a cap for any and all easy runs.  That was my fault for making an assumption and reading it into your comments, and I'm sorry for that.

The conflict I'm referring to - and I use that term in the non-confrontational sense, as in, you seem to be saying something different from the Hansons - comes in adding miles, and I guess, how detrimental it is to do that with the easy runs if it puts the run much over an hour.

The pace they recommend for the easy runs is 1-2 minutes per mile slower than marathon pace.  They clarify that 2:00/mile is recommended for easy runs that are up against a workout (maybe just the day after; I can't remember exactly and don't have the book with me), and 1:00/mile is okay for other easy runs, if it feels easy.  They do talk about experience level, effort level, listening to your body and such, and not going MP+1:00 just because you think you're "supposed" to.  All of that is the part I'd been forgetting for some time, that this conversation reminded me of, and that I intend to change going forward.

I'm pretty sure I recall correctly that Mondays after the long run are almost always 6-milers, the shortest easy runs, as written in the plan. So, 2:00/mile slower for that one.  Which for me is a 9:30/mile pace, so 6 x 9.5 = 57 mins..  So far, so good.

Then they get to the part about adding miles, where they indicate the second-best option for doing this (behind running on the rest day) is to add 1-2 miles to each easy run.  So, if I add one mile to that 6-miler: 7 x 9.5 = 66.5 mins.  If I add two: 8 x 9.5 = 76 mins..  Still not quite 80 mins...but pretty close, and, if I understand you correctly, longer than you would recommend for a recovery run.

And that's what I've been getting at, in my apparently clumsy, offensive way...it's not my intent to challenge your expertise, and I'm certainly not suggesting that the way I've been training for my marathons is the best way, for me or anyone else.  It just doesn't seem to me that they're that concerned about going to almost 80 mins. on recovery days, you're telling me they don't recommend it, and I'm trying to figure out if it's something (else) I'm missing from the book, or if I'm just (still) misunderstanding you.

But I do understand that I'm prolonging a discussion that you sound like you're done with, so I'm fine with taking the info I've already gleaned and going on with the cycle, if that's what you'd prefer.  Thanks again for your comments.

MTA:  Something "clicked" this morning in the shower, and I think I get what I'm missing...dug the book out, and the last sentence of the paragraph on adding miles to the easy runs is, "We have successfully used this approach with a number of competitive men and women who run in the low-and-sub-3:00-hour range."  Plugging the pace of, say, a 3:05 marathoner in to the math I went through above gives an 8-mile run at 72 mins...closer...and a 2:55 pace gives around 53 mins.  That's the connection I wasn't making (even though I quoted that sentence earlier), the difference in pace bringing down the time.  Looking back over your posts with that in mind, that's what you were saying, and I apologize.  The only explanation I can offer is I had difficulty going from a read which almost totally mileage-based to the discussion here, which was time-based.  Leaving my comments here in this post for any other doofuses who may have the same hang-up.