Thoughts on the Hudson Plan

After I trying Hansons marathon training plan for the 2015 California International Marathon (CIM) in December and being disappointed with my time, I decided to try a plan in Brad Hudson and Matt Fitzgerald’s book, Run Faster From the 5K to the Marathon: How to Be Your Own Best Coach.

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My Deviations and Mistakes

Before critiquing the Hudson plan, I want to acknowledge my own deviations from the plan and outright mistakes since they could have impacted my training and result.

As far as deviations, there were a few big things I changed:

• In general, I thought endurance was missing from my training for CIM, so I added more mileage to my long runs.
• I doubled a few times to keep my mileage up even though Hudson doesn’t have any two-a-days.
• It snowed during Week 6 and Week 9 and I didn’t run as much as planned.
• I tripped during Week 15 – during peak mileage week – and couldn’t run as hard as I would have liked.

In retrospect, I see three potential mistakes but there were probably more:

• I may have started training too quickly after CIM.  My first week was actually Week 4 of the plan so I didn’t do a base building phase.
• I could have been more aggressive with my paces.  As I’ll mention below, my perception of “moderate” and “hard” pace might have been too slow.
• In Week 16, I ran 70+ miles two weeks out from the Boston Marathon, including running long after the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler.

My lesson from CIM training was to set reasonable goals so I was sticking to paces based on recently races.  For example, I had been using 7:31-7:42 pace for my half marathon pace during training however, I ran the RnR DC Half Marathon in 7:25-7:29 pace (Garmin vs. official).  So, I probably could have trained a little faster.

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Thoughts on the Plan

With my deviations and mistakes acknowledged, here are some of my thoughts on the Run Faster plan.  Specifically, I followed the Level 3 marathon plan.

The Workouts

Long Runs.  The longs in the Hudson plan were progressive – unlike Pfitzinger Advanced Marathoning, where the mileage varied a lot from week-to-week or the Hansons plans where the mileage built and then stayed steady for weeks.  The long runs went from 18-20 miles at reasonable paces until the sharpening phase where the mileage was 20-24 miles.  I thought it was a bit too sharp of an up-ramp.  In any event, I felt my endurance was where I wanted it to be going into my goal marathon even if the final long runs were rough.

Progression and Threshold Runs.  Progression runs were a regular feature in this plan.  The aim was to work a little hard running into the schedule without exhausting the runner.  But, I thought they were most useful for forcing me to run hard when I was already a little tired.  The paces at the end of the progression were “hard” or “moderate”, which should have been 15-30 seconds/mile slower than marathon pace.  I liked them because I think they helped build my confidence that I could run fast in the latter stages of a marathon.  The plan also featured faster threshold runs done at half marathon pace.  They didn’t beat me up as much as the Hansons weekly marathon pace run but I suspect there weren’t enough of them to elicit the proper training effect.  Despite these two types of workouts, I wasn’t running a lot of medium to long runs at faster paces.

Speed Intervals.  Overall, I enjoyed the speed work in this plan even though there wasn’t much of it.  The plan doesn’t prescribe a lot of speed work for marathoners.  The beginning of the plan had fartlek workouts, which is something I haven’t done a lot of.  I felt like the speed intervals were too short.  I don’t necessarily feel I need to be eased into speed work.  The distances got longer later in the plan but I don’t think they were particularly taxing.  I think the hardest was 6 x 1 mile @ 10K pace + 5 sec./mile w/3-min. active recoveries.

Easy Runs.  The easy runs were a little longer than I would have liked – 8 to 11 miles – so this was one of the regular modifications I made to the back-of-the-book plan.  I cut them down to 6 miles and either tacked the excess miles onto other runs of ran the daily mileage as a double.  I may run my easy runs too hard so guidance beyond “comfortable” might have been more useful.

Hill Sprints.  I’ve been battling piriformis problems for years and finally started to feel some reprieve this winter.  I attribute the let up to the only thing that was very different with this plan – the weekly hill repeats.  I did 6-10 repetitions of 8-10 seconds on a hill that was about 6-8% gradient.  Rather than irritating it, it seemed to engage those muscles again.

The Structure

Cutback Weeks.  I felt pretty beat up following the Hansons plan, so I appreciated the recovery weeks in the Hudson plan.  I scheduled a cutback week every 3 weeks.  The book suggests cutting 20 to 30% of the load, which seemed like a lot to me so I didn’t cut quite as much.  Still, I think easing off the intensity just a little bit gave me a bit of a physical and mental break that was lacking in my training for CIM.

Tune-up Races.  I liked the inclusion of races in the training plan.  The authors recommend them not only for the the fitness gains they create but also because it gives a marathoner the opportunity to run well at events other than the goal race.  Having trained for a marathon that was cancelled (2012 New York City) or had very bad weather (2012 Boston Marathon), I like racing other distances during my marathon training cycles so I can potentially PR at other distances.  The plan I followed had a 10K a few weeks into the schedule and a half marathon about a month out from the goal marathon, which seemed just about perfect.

Taper.  I thought this was the weakest part of the plan.  The taper is only mentioned once in the book and the guidance isn’t very specific.  It says not tapering properly can lead to a disappointing peak race and that some runners do best with a modest taper (whatever that means) and some do better resting 10 days to two weeks out.  The advice to the runner is to modify the taper based on past experience.  That’s it.  I realized too late that my mileage was pretty high close to race day – two weeks out and I was still running 70 miles a week!

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Take-Aways

I would definitely follow the Hudson plan again.  I didn’t run particularly fast at the 2016 Boston Marathon, but I attribute most of that to the heat.  I saw a slight improvement in my times for shorter races and felt good for most of the training cycle.  If I could do it over again, I would push myself a little harder during the long and progression runs.  But, here’s my general advice to anyone thinking about following the plans in this book for their next marathon:

• Don’t be afraid to deviate (or not deviate) from the back-of-the-book plans.  I stayed away from this plan for so long because I was afraid of the self-coaching aspect.  But, the back-of-the-book plans are pretty solid and I could have followed them as is.  I think (or hope) the philosophy is really about making small adjustments to your training plan here and there rather than being a “COACH”.
• Know how to run by feel rather than pace.  The pace for a a lot of the workouts is “moderate” or “hard”.  Running by effort is difficult for me because I can convince myself that a certain pace is whatever I want it to be on that day.  The book gives some guidance about what those efforts should be based on race paces but I sometimes wondered if I was running too fast or too slow.
• Pay special attention to the taper.  The book doesn’t give any real advice on this critical area of marathon training.  I didn’t notice how high the mileage was leading into my goal marathon until it was too late.