Forums >Racing>Anyone else disappointed with Hansons Method?
not bad for mile 25
I disagree - I think a canned plan is over-rated, but having a plan (generally) is important. I can also say too many miles is over-rated. But most people do not hit too many miles.
I disagree - I think a canned plan is over-rated, but having a plan (generally) is important.
I can also say too many miles is over-rated. But most people do not hit too many miles.
I'm certainly not saying that a plan is useless, but to elaborate a little, too many people have the mindset that the body is a machine, and if you plug in the right program, you'll automatically get the desired result. There are lots of uncontrolled variables when you're talking about human beings.
Yeah, most people don't get anywhere near DB miles!
I used Hansons for my first marathon this year. I followed the Advanced plan and averaged 55 mpw for 12+ weeks. My peak week was 71 miles, but that was a few miles over the standard plan. Many people look at the plan and think it is a 50 mpw plan, but they have 3 to 6 miles of warm up and cool down on 2 runs each week that don't show in the plan miles so that's another 6 to 12 miles a week above the numbers in the plan.
I was using 3:50 as my fairly aggressive goal time, and ran a 3:48:09 on a decently tough course. I thought it was a pretty good plan and felt that it prepared me pretty well.
Age: 50 Weight: 224 Height: 6'3" (Goal weight 195)
Current PR's: Mara 3:14:36* (2017); HM 1:36:13 (2017); 10K 43:59 (2014); 5K 21:12 (2016)
Leave it to one of folks here who actually knows me to dig in to the data. Thanks, Dopplebock. But that sounds right based on my recollection of the day.
Actually, I don't think I ever really got down to 7:15 pace with any consistency. I took it out early a little slower than that purposefully because I knew I was in the first corral of Wave 2, and my suspicion was that some folks excited about being FOP (at Boston no less!) would fire off the line. I didn't want any part of that. But at some point I needed to get down to goal pace and it just wasn't happening. I knew I was on that 3:15-ish pace though, and would have been happy with that. I bled some time through the Newton Hills but felt like I was coming back strong (relatively speaking) after Heartbreak and was still in the game. But somewhere after Fenway it started falling apart.
Nutrition? I pretty much followed the same strategy I had for Chicago back in October (3:20:43, missed PR by 2 seconds). Night before dinner of spaghetti carbonara, race day breakfast of oatmeal, energy bar, though I didn't get a chance to have a coffee until I got to the athletes village. I will say on the morning of 4/15 I felt pretty dehydrated and I drank a lot of water. By the time my wave was called I had been to the POJ three times so I'm pretty sure I had made up whatever hydration deficit I had been suffering. I felt good walking to the start and relaxed in the corral. In-race fueling strategy was the same as Chicago...Stinger gel every 5 miles through 20, water every 2 miles, Gatorade post-20. I kept one Stinger in reserve, which in retrospect I wish I had taken around 23.
There may have been something physically wrong. Two days after the race I came down with a really nasty virus that knocked me out for nearly three weeks. So I do wonder if the dehydration was related to onset of an incubating virus that just hadn't shown any outward symptoms yet. In any case if my body was trying to fight that off and run a marathon, maybe something had to give.
One other data point: for Chicago, I trained a mere 11 weeks. I had come off a summer duathlon and had a pretty high base fitness level because of it. But it left only time for a very compressed marathon training cycle. I followed nobody's plan, did my own thing by feel. Hit 20 miles or more twice. One thing that really surprised me though, looking back, was that my average daily mileage for Chicago was pretty close to the miles Hansons had me doing. On race day at Chicago, despite the excruciating miss on the PR, I had probably my best marathon ever. My splits were even throughout the race. If anything, when I finished I felt like I had left too much in the tank.
I am not what anyone would call a high-mileage runner. Once I hit 70 mpw things start to go wrong for me; i.e., injuries, fatigue, etc.. Perhaps it is from the years of hitting 90 mpw as a college runner. But for whatever reason I can't do those numbers anymore. For that reason, I used the Hansons beginner plan but really strove to train at somewhere between beginner and advanced. As I said earlier I followed it pretty closely and yes, I did pay attention to the easy paces, although I will say the "Easy A" and "Easy B" thing was confusing. For me those two paces should have been 8:15 and 8:49 but it seemed many of my easy runs would start at the slower pace, pick up as I loosened up, and I would average somewhere around 8:25. My other comment is on the speed workouts, I found the focus on the same pace every track workout to be monotonous. I like to hit the track hard, that's just me. I will say I liked the MP (i.e., "tempo") runs though. The last one, done 10 days out for 11 (plus mile warmup and cooldown), felt like a time trial and I nailed it, which left me feeling really confident heading into the short taper.
I haven't quite decided to give Hansons another try yet. I might in the spring. For Marine Corps though I may fall back on another DIY plan, at least that's how I am leaning right now. That's driven in part by the 18 weeks needed for a Hansons cycle. I'm healing up from a minor bike crash right now and am 2 weeks away from being able to even ramp back up on the running.
Bottom line, I should have 14-16 weeks and I know at least how to get myself to 3:20 shape. But I would really like to get off that damn plateau. I probably won't gun for 3:10 again, at least not this time.
By looking at your race splits, you lost it at mile #16, so never mind 1st 16 miles in 1:57:26 ~ 7:20, but really 7:22 - 7:24 when you add on not hitting the tangents (Extra amount at the end) Mile 16-22 = 7:47 ~ 7:50 with missing tangents If I see 16 @ 7:20 next 6 @ 7:47 then death at end. I would say you were likely in 7:27 shape = 3:15-3:16 and ran too fast the 1st 16 miles. So, as far as the Hansons, I will have to agree with most posters, too little total mileage to convert the training into a race time. But, if you hit every run exactly how the book / program told you and ran the right number of miles the book had you run, the plan was insufficient for a 3:10 marathon. I would say it does appear it was sufficient for a 3:15 marathon.
By looking at your race splits, you lost it at mile #16, so never mind
1st 16 miles in 1:57:26 ~ 7:20, but really 7:22 - 7:24 when you add on not hitting the tangents (Extra amount at the end)
Mile 16-22 = 7:47 ~ 7:50 with missing tangents
If I see 16 @ 7:20
next 6 @ 7:47
then death at end. I would say you were likely in 7:27 shape = 3:15-3:16 and ran too fast the 1st 16 miles.
So, as far as the Hansons, I will have to agree with most posters, too little total mileage to convert the training into a race time. But, if you hit every run exactly how the book / program told you and ran the right number of miles the book had you run, the plan was insufficient for a 3:10 marathon.
I would say it does appear it was sufficient for a 3:15 marathon.
Why is it sideways?
I think it's hard to draw any general conclusions about a training approach or method from the result of one runner applying that method and failing. I have had generally sound build-ups to a marathon result in a crappy marathon. It sounds like this marathon fell within the range of your general capabilities.
Hansons and Pfitz are tried and true plans. They both work. And by "work" I mean that if you choose the appropriate level, and execute according to principles, and adapt those principles appropriately to your own life and physical and mental strengths and capacities, and pace and fuel appropriately, and have good weather, and the marathon gods smile on you, then you might have a good day on race day.
If you're into that sort of thing. I think people tend to over analyze easy pace whether it's Hansons calling it easy or Pfitz calling it GA. Its funny that both Pfitz and Hansons use really rough numbers like 1-2 minutes or 15-25% and people want to drill down on what that means. It means keep your easy days easy. This ain't rocket science.
If you're into that sort of thing. I think people tend to over analyze easy pace whether it's Hansons calling it easy or Pfitz calling it GA. Its funny that both Pfitz and Hansons use really rough numbers like 1-2 minutes or 15-25% and people want to drill down on what that means.
It means keep your easy days easy. This ain't rocket science.
Sure. But the point is, Pfitzinger makes a distinction between easy and general aerobic. Maybe I wasn't running them right, I don't know, but personally I found quite a contrast when I switched from Pfitzinger, bread-and-butter runs ("general aerobic") at 7:30 - 8:00, to Hansons, bread-and-butter runs at ~8:45. Pfitzinger has easy ("recovery") days too. I liked that distinction. To me, easy means if you're working hard at all, slow down. GA is going out for a nice, solid run, without actually doing speedwork.
This is a useful distinction, and I think it has grown more useful as a certain type of confusion about easy running has grown up with the development and popularity of technologies that monitor pace and heart rate, etc.
Before GPS and heart rate, your main option for monitoring effort on easy runs was just to run easy and pace was a consequence of the effort.
I also think there has been a "cultural shift" in running that for some reason has people fixated on running slow as a means of improvement so that for the first time you actually do have some people running their easy runs "too easy" so that this is a legitimate training issue.
I think before this cultural shift people just sorta figured that in order to get faster you gotta train hard and read "easy running" as an aspect of this hard training and so naturally ran their easy runs at solid enough paces unless they were bone-tired and a solid pace was just not a reasonable option.
For example, I never heard of the concept of recovery running until around 2005.
Pfitzinger makes a distinction between easy and general aerobic.
Does he really though? He uses the term "easy" to describe both GA and Recovery runs during the early chapters. And according to Pfitz my GA runs should be 7:30 to 8:08 pace while my Recovery Runs should be at 8:00 pace if I'm in 6:30 MP pace.
My read was always that GA = Easy. In the schedules he seems to use Recovery whenever the run is short run (like 7 miles or less) and General Aerobic whenever it's an 8-10 miler and Medium Long whenever it's 11-16 miles.
And anyway how did you get a GA pace of 7:30 to 8:00? Using "15-25% slower than MP", I get 7:49-8:30 as your "GA" pace from your PR marathon.
Runners run
Like with all this stuff, though, the whole "experiment of one" thing applies, I would think. What works really well for Bob may not work at all for me and vice-versa and the same is true for all of us I think. Not until we actually try different plans would we know what works for us, and perhaps not even then because there are other outside influences.
Life is just a completely random chain of events, I tell you.
Are we there, yet?
I'm not sure how relevant this is to the issue being discussed, but many runners talk about a training plan, even a marathon training plan, as if the 16-18 weeks of the plan was all that's under consideration. All I know about Hanson's method is hearsay, but I was quite happy with most of my marathon results topping out at 16 miles for a long run while consistently putting in 50+ mpw year round, not just in the few months leading up to the marathon. While I didn't deliberately run at MP in training, I did race frequently at a variety of distances and included a fair amount of quality speed work, so my training was probably closer to Hanson's than to the other programs being mentioned. If I had a race that didn't meet expectations it was due to race day execution, not my training.
2024 Races:
03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles
05/11 - D3 50K 05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour
06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.
Interesting. It was in my initial mental landscape of important training concepts in 2004, when I started running and read Pfitzinger. 1st edition was published in 2001.
Good grief Mike. First the GPS and now all these numbers in your posts. What the hell is going on around here?
I also ran a marathon. In Skechers.
Up is down.
Like with all this stuff, though, the whole "experiment of one" thing applies, I would think. What works really well for Bob may not work at all for me and vice-versa and the same is true for all of us I think. Not until we actually try different plans would we know what works for us, and perhaps not even then because there are other outside influences. Life is just a completely random chain of events, I tell you.
Yeah, I got some sort of injury everytime I tried to use a plan to train for a race, be it Hanson or Phitz, so nothing seems to work for me..
The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff
2014 Goals:
Stay healthy
Enjoy life
I used the Hansons method to train for my first marathon and had great success. I tweaked the plan a bit and created a hybrid of the beginner and advanced plans. My longest run was the 16, and my peak weekly mileage was 61. Leading up to the race I sustained a couple minor injuries (neuroma, strained glute, achillies tendonitis flare up) and was actually thinking about pulling out of the race because I was doubting myself and the training.
I ended up running a half marathon 3 weeks before my scheduled marathon and did a 1:23:00 which was a PR by a minute. The half actually gave me the confidence I needed and I went ahead and ran a 2:53:58 in my marathon.
While I'm very happy with the results, it wasn't perfect. At mile 22 I went from averaging 6:35 pace to 6:42, 6:43, 6:51, 7:05, 6:52. Next time around I will add more easy miles to bump me up to 70-75 miles a week.
I think it's hard to draw any general conclusions about a training approach or method from the result of one runner applying that method and failing. I have had generally sound build-ups to a marathon result in a crappy marathon. It sounds like this marathon fell within the range of your general capabilities. Hansons and Pfitz are tried and true plans. They both work. And by "work" I mean that if you choose the appropriate level, and execute according to principles, and adapt those principles appropriately to your own life and physical and mental strengths and capacities, and pace and fuel appropriately, and have good weather, and the marathon gods smile on you, then you might have a good day on race day.
A question, asked just for fun: are there any tried and untrue plans out there? I mean, plans published and popular for some decent interval since the 1970s - but now thoroughly discredited? Higdon Hansons Furman Fitz ... with the exception of Galloway it seems to be all of a piece (and that makes sense). 2-3 workouts a week, then as much easy as you can manage (ranging from 0 to 6). The hard part as always is knowing when to quit (for the mile, the day, the week).