My run training odyssey which began with Maffetone Method, had tried FIRST training now became interested in “a renegade path to your fastest marathon” – Hansons Marathon Method. Looking back this is a little strange as I wasn’t interested in running a marathon. And the grammarian in me is distraught at the lack of an apostrophe in their title!
Brothers Keith and Kevin Hanson have been developing their eponymous method since Kevin’s first marathon in 1978. As he states in his foreword “What I found were cookie-cutter approaches … always including a long run that was usually 20 miles in American publications and 30 kilometres (18.6 miles) in foreign magazines. I came to find the reasoning behind this prescription was simple: These distances were round, even numbers”. As he goes on to say there wasn’t any science behind them and he needed to find a better way to train for the marathon.
Not only were the Hansons interested in rethinking how to run marathons they wanted to revitalise American distance running. To do this they decided to replicate what the Greater Boston Track Club had done in the 1970s by taking talented post-collegiate runners and giving them the opportunity to continue their training. The Hanson bought a house in 1999, recruited three athletes and provided them with the essentials to live and train together. When Brooks Sports came onboard as a sponsor they were able to buy a second house and recruit more athletes. Twenty years on, they support twenty athletes in four houses and have seen high level success. The most notable was Desiree Linden winning the Boston Marathon in 2018.
Their coaching isn’t only geared towards elite runners. They’ve helped thousands of novice and recreational runners to complete marathons along the way. Their book, authored by Luke Humphrey one of the their training group, is very well written and packed with information from physiology to nutrition, stretching, strength training and kit. And of course it contains two 18-week training plans – one for beginners and another for advanced runners.
The USP of their plans is the idea that a runner shouldn’t train further than 16 miles on their long run. Instead they go into it with tired legs by running on the preceding day(s). I’ve previously recounted the details of this in “The 20-mile myth” as well as how I used this principle method for my daughter’s first marathon where she never ran longer than 17 miles / 29km in training yet, on race day, was able to speed up from that point and finish strongly.
While regular running, six days per week, to build aerobically is key to their training, it isn’t just a long run and easy runs. There are two SOS workouts each week – Something of Substance. In the first half of the 18-week plans the first SOS workout has you improving your speed while in the second half the focus is on strength. The second SOS workout is a tempo run at your marathon pace which builds from five miles up to ten as the weeks go by.
I picked up my copy of their book at a time when I was just reading how the elite Kenyans approach marathon training differently to westerners. Traditionally western runners building their long run mileage up to twenty miles at relatively easy paces and then look to add speed in the last few weeks. The Kenyans take the approach of running at the pace they want to run their marathon and gradually increasing the distance for which they can hold it. So when I saw the Hansons were doing something similar with their second SOS workout increasing the distance, I decided to give their method a try even though, as I said before I wasn’t going to be running a marathon.
Principally this was the training method I used over the latter half of the year albeit with some hiccups and digressions. The first block ran for six weeks through May-June. I used the basis of their Strength workout progression each Tuesday and the Tempo on a Thursday. Where their Strength workout is a 7-week progression, I only did the first three weeks then repeated them at a faster pace. On the Tempos I increased the distance each week whereas Hansons tend to progress matters more gradually by only increasing it after three weeks.
There’s a reason I didn’t specifically stick with the detail of their plan and it’s that I quickly found myself getting faster by the week. This raised a question I couldn’t quite see how to resolve. When you begin a Hanson training plan, you decide what your target marathon time will be based on a recent race. But when you see yourself getting quicker at the shorter distances and the workouts are becoming easy, it seems pointless to continue training at this. So this is why after three weeks, I went back to the beginning and stepped up the paces. While all the training suggested I was going to be in a better place, race results said otherwise. I had run a 41:43min 10K in early May before I started the training and ran a 41:24 10K at its end on a hillier course. It seemed to me that for all the hard work and miles I’d put in this was a poor return especially given I’d run quicker 10Ks previously.
Consequently, given my disgruntlement at the meagre 20sec improvement, I went back to working on my speed with short intervals. Then I picked up an injury doing something stupid (won’t detail that!) and managed to rebuild my fitness for a 1hr37 half marathon in mid-September.
Coming out of the half marathon, I went with another block of pseudo-Hansons. The first three weeks I did the Strength work intervals at 7:10/mile and the Tempo at 7:25 then moved them up to 6:55/7:10 for a second block. Allied to running fifteen miles on a Sunday, by the end of these six weeks I was beginning to feel fatigued and once again I changed direction as I had another 10K coming up in December. Through November, I peaked and come the 10K I broke 40mins for the first time – 39:57.
My view of the training was it could be a good system to follow for a marathon and certainly it helped in the run up to my best ever 10K. The idea of longer tempo runs lasting up to an hour is now one of the key tenets of all my training plans. I’ve also continued to use the Hansons Strength workout progressions particularly when I’m training for a longer distance race.
My only significant doubt about the Hansons book is their Beginner programme peaks at 57 miles which is perhaps fine if you’ve got a decent running base and its your first marathon after many other races but is too much for anyone who isn’t going to run close to 3hr30 in their marathon. Even then I’d say it may be too much. I reckon 45-50 should easily be enough as a peak for a slower runner and only once they’ve built up to it.
While I was very much into training to pace at the time I’ve gradually moved away from it and now work more often based on feel. There are obvious problems with working to pace if you can’t find a flat course or it’s windy but those weren’t my concern. While training to pace worked well for me then, I found if I misjudged it because I lacked a recent race time, it was either unachievable or at worst could lead me towards overtraining. I don’t want to blame Hansons for that as I think it can be a feature of all pace-based training if you get the volume / intensity wrong.
I also passed on the Hansons ideas to a couple of sub-3 marathoners who tried an Advanced version of the training. This was in the days before I was coaching. This isn’t the Advanced programme in the book but a bought plan which has a little more variety and really doesn’t look much like what is in the book. Being designed for faster runners it doesn’t have the 16-mile limitation on the long run. Both runners profited off the training and were racing quicker as the weeks went by. One of them who had a previous marathon PB of 2hr37, took two minutes off his half marathon time and three minutes off his marathon. If he hadn’t gone into it with an injury he picked up in the last week, he would likely have run close to 2hr30.
What you can learn from Hansons training is good ideas about how often to go out running and what sort of distances to cover. The idea of doing frequent runs at expected marathon pace is a great one as are the demonstrations of how to progress sessions by extending the distance rather than trying to run faster.
While you can buy a copy of the Hanson Marathon Method or their Half Marathon Method for a few pounds or dollars and follow their plan which is designed to apply to millions of runners – if you would like more personalised coaching I’m here to help. I will identify where your strengths and weaknesses lie, what will be achievable and how best to fit training to your lifestyle and circumstances. Sprint over to the Contact page and drop me a line!