Opinions on different Marathon Training plans

Out of interest what's the JB Plan A they mention in that link? It's not in my edition

Interesting thought on Hanson. Why would you consider it not marathon specific, given that it probably contains more marathon paced workouts than any other plan (that I've seen anyway)? Also, it front loads the speed work in favour of more tempo-like speed work in teh second half, again with the view that these 'strength' sessions are more marathon focused.

Well if you take a Daniels plan as an example. You might see a session like 4M easy/8M at marathon pace/1M Threshold/2M easy. To an elite athlete that's probably a total of less than 40mins at marathon pace and less than a total of 90mins running all in. Working off my head here so forgive me if I'm a little off. Take that same session for a beginner and it could mean 80mins at marathon pace and more than 2.5hrs running. So you have a beginner working wayyy harder than an elite in a session.

Hal Higdons plans, especially the beginner plans ,are more geared towards the novice runners. So the sessions are probably working on the assumption of someone running much slower paces.

You just need to be very careful when choosing a plan. I had to get my calculator out when choosing the 2Q plan.

Not sure if any of this was even your question but I think that's the point of ecolis post.

I haven't read specifics on Hanson plan in quite some time so completely open to correction on many of these points.

First though I wanna preface this by saying that this is my opinion and there are plenty of examples of successful approaches to this type of training (Molly Seidel of the US being on which sticks out in my mind)

From memory format approaches with Speed early week, M Tempos of 6-10 miles later and steadier long runs of 15-16 miles (for the most part) at weekend consistently. As I said previously its highly successful in making a very strong runner (and in fact I think most people would improve from 5k up on training like that) however for me marathon specific refers to preparing you for the latter half of the race. The old adage of it being a 20 mile warm up and a 10k battle rings true. Fact is if you are feeling anything but comfortable in the first 10-12 miles of a marathon you are in trouble.

This format heavily relies on cumulative fatigue which does in build a lot of strength but you are still effectively running Marathon tempo's like the early stages of a race rather than the latter. Yes fatigue is there but from a fuel perspective and muscle fibre exhaustion aspect they are not fully replicated. This is why the big long run sessions play a role in simulation. 2 miles @MP is going to have a very different effect after 10-15 miles already done compared to as part of 10 mile tempo.

There is the risk though of these big long run sessions and injury/ overtraining though and that is why they need to be balanced and tailored to the athletes level or they are a recipe for disaster,

This is the point trying to get across with it being good plan for strength building but not marathon specific. It does not mean that it is inferior in any way as I would put many 10k runners on 60mpw running strength based work in better position than others doing say JD 40-50 mpw plan

I am not sure if it is in the newer JD versions but I remember he previously advised that the distance is based around 6 min/miling being the baseline. If you are running slower than that you should go with the assumption of 6 min work for every mile prescribed. Tends to be overlooked by many leading to either people being scared off the training or getting injured

That is very good to know..I missed that!

Those are all very good points. My own experience with Hanson is that those M tempos, because they're on the back of fairly hefty speed (5k pace) or 'strength' (10 secs faster than MP) sessions, do quite effectively simulate the second half of the race. Having used the plan a few times I'd say it suits me anyway, more so than the likes of P&D which I've also used a few times. But that all could just be a recency effect with more M experience and conditioning leading to better results anyway! There's an excellent Hanson thread here where a lot of these points have been mulled over. Most people balk at the lack of 20 mile runs (in the non-elite versions of the plan) but I've never felt that to be a shortcoming personally. I'll probably move on from Hanson next year for the next block but more out of a desire for different approaches every so often than any feeling that the approach is lacking.

Hopefully that works. I followed the Novice plan in 2019 & really enjoyed it. Having very little running background I found it a very manageable plan & was more than happy with my 1st marathon. Definitely worth a look.

I'm not a coach or particularly well read or anything, but based on my own experience running for longer than like 2.5 hours is pointless. If you're John Tracey, sure, knock out a few 30 milers. For non-elite athletes, especially those in the masters+ category, the damage done from super long runs (18+ miles?) in a classic marathon plan is awful, requiring multiple days to recover and ultimately dominating the training schedule. The last few times I did LSRs over 2.5 hours I ended up semi-injured and didn't run well at the target marathon. For a novice marathoner I think it can be useful to do one or two runs close to marathon distance to get a feel for the distance, but generally I think consistent mileage and regular work on 10k-HM pace sets up a good marathon as opposed to a bunch of gigantic Sunday 20+ mile LSRs, for most people. Running training runs over 3 hours is brutal on the body for most of us.

Another point I'd make. People have correctly mentioned that the training plans are predicated on accumulated fatigue (some more than others). If life etc. may mean the training is inconsistent for you, you may not accumulate the fatigue necessary to make the prescribed training have the desired effect.

There are some mitigations you can do which IMO should be endurance biased as that is more or less the quality trained under accumulated fatigue.

1: After missing some training: add lenght to the prescribed sessions until you 'catch up' with the fatigue. Be biased towards the endurance sessions as I indicated.

2: If you've time, insert a short 'endurance block'. Could be a long easy run then easy day, or a marathon paced run followed by long run then easy day. This predetermined block could be inserted in after a few days/week where the training was suboptimal. Its a quick pill catch up on fatigue that would also target endurance.

On your first point. Surely that is dependent on why training was missed? Adding length to prescribed sessions after say an injury break or illness is surely high risk?

Personally I would not be of the opinion to change dynamics of a designed session by adding length as it changes the injury/ recovery dynamics of the session in relation to the overall plan. I don't think you can replicate cumulative fatigue simply by overtraining. Would be more inclined with the second approach.

I’m a relative novice marathon runner . The big questions I had before picking a plan was what mileage I could do :

1. around my lifestyle
2. around how much my body could handle

I looked at Hal , my clubs generic plan and a plan that a friend had gotten from a PT ( a well known Irish marathon runner )

Hals was a bit dull with no little /variety in paces. The club one was better but the mileage was low and there were no 20 mile runs ( my training partners couldn’t cope with this - seems to be mental training for lots of people .)The third plan was great but the mileage was way too much for me and involved 6 days running which would have broken me .

In the end I went with the club schedule but used Hal’s weekly mileage to tweak it . It suited me perfectly and I loved every bit of the training .

I have them all saved down and paces added for a sub 4 marathon if your interested I can share - no idea what your targets are.