What does Brad Hudson have up his sleeve for me today?

Triathlon Forum
1

I bought this marathon training book by Brad Hudson, and am following his training schedule. Its a bit more macabre to some of the others for many of us older runners, and not so good ones, but I’m glad I bought it. It looks doable when you read whats in the little daily blocks, but when you are out there doing the workouts, and you don’t come from a serious track background with doing ladders and what not: it ends up being, “what the hell has he got me into today, god, am I going to die or what?”

But in the end, you appreciate it.

Here’s one.

10 miles easy. But he adds: 5 minutes easy/w 2 minutes 5k pace.

I sort of scoffed at this, and of course this is on the honor system, but I decided to do this seriously. It dawns on you that he wants you to run 5 easy/ 2minutes at 5k the whole 10 miles. For many of you who run 6:00 - 7:00 miles easy, this isn’t going to amount for too many little 2 minutes of 5k, but for the rest of us…

…you can get into quite a pickle.

After about mile 4, I start to kind of lolly gag those 5 minutes to recover for another 2 minute blast at 5k pace.

What you start to realize is, that the slower you go on the 5 minutes of easy, THE MORE little 2 minutes of 5k blasts you’ll have to do out here today, and hence the more pain you will be in. So, it behooves you to move forward as well as you can during that 5 minutes of “easy running.”

But if you just sit there hand over knees after each 2 minutes of 5k, or kind of ping pong jog recover, you aren’t cutting into that 10 miles, and you are going to be out there for quite some hell of a time, running many 2 minutes at 5k pace. So you need to move forward pretty good during that 5 minutes of running to get this all over with, or learn to adjust your 5k pace.

But, wait! the faster you run that 5 minutes, the more painful those little 2 minute 5ks are!

And hence the little diabolical conundrum. Easy here, well then its going to be harder here. Or harder here, its going to be harder next. Adjust this, or die here. Be stupid here, pay the price here in a few minutes.

Finally, it was over, and you know what? I think I improved. It makes you understand and regulate pace better. Of course, you have to run the next day.

He’s got all kinds of little things like that, including many hill sprints filtered in there, where when you see something, it looks doable, but goof it up by going to hard or too slow, the workout turns into a battle royale.

so, when you see something like, 22 Miles Easy for your long run, with no progressions or other complications, you go, “oh man, thank god.” Thanks brad, for giving me a nice day off. Whereas you might have dreaded something like that with the running group, this is a cinch.

But don’t get too happy: because you know the next weekend, you will pay up for this with a 16 mile long run at +10/-10 at race pace:

I really recommend this book for marathon training.

2

you haven’t posted here for a while. I enjoy reading your rants (I mean musings). Glad you/they are back

3

I’m totally with you. Running a marathon on March 7th, so I was doing a Pfitz plan. Friend told me about Hudson book so I bought it. Like the workouts. Much like the FIRST program by Furman Univ. Only three hard workouts a week for those of us who are Masters, but three very hard workouts indeed. I’ve been spinning on my off days and doing some P90X dvds, but the running days are very challenging. I’m on a Mon/Wed/Sat schedule for hard efforts that are modified Pfitz/Hudson. I like Pfitz for a bit more miles, but Hudson for the challenge.

I think it will pay off. Hudson is first guy IMO to put some thoughts behind what Masters should be doing (like skipping those recovery runs in favor of core/strength/xtraining). We’ll see if it pays off in a couple of months.

4

I reccomend nobody ever buy a GPS watch that can tell you your pace.

It will drive you made and cause you great pain

lol

5

thanks. I need to get back into triathlon.

6

I’ve learned that when he says easy, you’d better take advantage of it, although in the narrative part of the book he wants even on easy for you to try to run progressively faster, like other running books.

But yeah, no comparison to other running plans.

And, I think on this one, you pretty much know how should do in the race, with all of us race pace variations. There is no “hoping” what YOU MIGHT run, you pretty much know, or know what you CANNOT do.

7

Thats a problem then. No way does it make sense to have 2 runners, one with a 50 min 10 mile time and one with a 90 minute 10mile time, do a workout like you describe.

Either the 50 minute guy isn’t working hard enough or the 90 minute guy is working too hard.

I much prefer J Daniels plans. Most of his interval workouts are by time or 5 of weekly mileage. For instance the wo you describe would last 60 minutes (instead of 10 miles) or it would be for 10% of your total weekly mileage.

Styrrell