Their plan works. Followed the workouts/pacing as prescribed, qualified for and ran a PR at Boston. I highly recommend it for both 1-2 and full marathon.
Thanks for the review. I'm currently week 16 of the beginner plan, prepping to run Edinburgh 26.2 at the end of May. There's not a lot of information out there on the Hanson's plan, but all the reviews I've seen have been positive. It is a tough plan and the cumulative fatigue is a real thing. I was glad to hear that I'm not the only one suffering at this point of the training. Thanks again and good luck.
Just around the corner now, good luck out there! Like I mentioned in the video: I felt bad basically every day until race morning, so it can all come back together for you. And as @stephenscullion262 put it: "You only have to run 26.2 miles at marathon pace ONCE, and that's on race day", so don't worry & be ready to send it
Thoughts from a BQ-15 & Ironman World Championship Qualifier: For triathlon you’re pretty much keeping Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays but swapping biking for the easy run days. Then you figure out how to best schedule 3 swims. Gym workouts are the toughest to fit in and often omitted, especially if your swimming needs a lot of work.
HMM worked for me. Took 30 minutes off my late-life (over 65) PR. I used the advanced plan and while I thought it was pretty aggressive at the beginning, I adapted well, and smoked the race. 16 miles or 3 hours max worked for me, probably because of the Friday/Saturday lead-in to the “long” Sunday run, the cumulative fatigue idea works! Try it!
Great review of a great book! I’d have to agree with the overall structure of the plans -while very good and perhaps serving a more tenured athlete better, it’s worth checking out as a beginner as well. It’s funny you should mention Run Elite. I’ve found Andrew’s book to be very helpful and benefit from his YT content as well! Thanks for doing this!
Thank you for your detailed review. As you mentioned, there are not a lot of good, detailed reviews of the program. Congratulations on your achievement when using the Hanon's program. Having watched your review, I feel much better able to assess if this will be a good option for me and, possibly more important, what I can potentially watch out for in certain points of the progression.
Hi there , I started running in november 2023 , i did a training half marathon in 2:26 and since then have done 3 trail half marathons and 5 road half marathons with 2 best times of 1:45 and a pb of 1:42 and a fastest 5km (last 5kms in the 1:45) of 22 minutes. I am almost 50 , weigh 83kg 175cm tall bit of a dad bod haha , vo2 max of 48 , i also work rotating shift work 1 week mornings 1 week arvos and 1 week nights. I have signed up for my first full marathon for early april and have a target of sub 4 , probably 3:52 to be safe , with my age im not sure if its a good idea to do this programme as so many sources say my age group should not run 6 days per week. And of course night shift certainly gets my garmin telling me im not in good shape to train. Just wondering if people in the comments etc reckon i should do this programme or another one. by the way my longest distance ive ever run is 30kms and i did that in 2;59 , its daunting to think i have to find a way to run another 12km in 59 minutes but admittedly i set out on that run as an easy run in my recovery heavy old kayano 30s whereas when i race im using either carbon plate shoes or more likely my asics superblast.
Well, I'm not a running coach... and there probably is validity to needing more days off of running as we age. Totally depends on your body and what it can tolerate... however, I think the general principle still applies that higher volume & higher frequency, for you, is something worth exploring at a rate which you can tolerate. I think the idea that increasing your foundation & limiting the training stress of any given hard session to a smaller percentage of the overall training load (i.e. you run easy a lot in between your hard days) is the goal of the HMM. If you can only run, say, 4x a week, then maybe a longer cycle of 1 interval day + 1 long run every 10-14 days, instead of 4 interval days & 1 long run every 14 days in this plan... but that doesn't mean that increasing your volume over what you have done before is necessarily going to lead to an injury. Recovering from the progressive workload on a shifting sleep schedule is likely the harder thing to work around. Get it in when you can, it will help!
Their plan works. Followed the workouts/pacing as prescribed, qualified for and ran a PR at Boston. I highly recommend it for both 1-2 and full marathon.
Thanks for the review. I'm currently week 16 of the beginner plan, prepping to run Edinburgh 26.2 at the end of May. There's not a lot of information out there on the Hanson's plan, but all the reviews I've seen have been positive. It is a tough plan and the cumulative fatigue is a real thing. I was glad to hear that I'm not the only one suffering at this point of the training. Thanks again and good luck.
Just around the corner now, good luck out there! Like I mentioned in the video: I felt bad basically every day until race morning, so it can all come back together for you. And as @stephenscullion262 put it: "You only have to run 26.2 miles at marathon pace ONCE, and that's on race day", so don't worry & be ready to send it
Thoughts from a BQ-15 & Ironman World Championship Qualifier: For triathlon you’re pretty much keeping Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays but swapping biking for the easy run days. Then you figure out how to best schedule 3 swims. Gym workouts are the toughest to fit in and often omitted, especially if your swimming needs a lot of work.
HMM worked for me. Took 30 minutes off my late-life (over 65) PR. I used the advanced plan and while I thought it was pretty aggressive at the beginning, I adapted well, and smoked the race. 16 miles or 3 hours max worked for me, probably because of the Friday/Saturday lead-in to the “long” Sunday run, the cumulative fatigue idea works! Try it!
For someone in week 2 of the Beginner Plan, this was a really good insight. Thanks a lot!
Dude, these are the two books I am comparing!! Nicely done!
That's rad. I'm sure you'll find them both helpful in getting you to the next level
Great review of a great book! I’d have to agree with the overall structure of the plans -while very good and perhaps serving a more tenured athlete better, it’s worth checking out as a beginner as well. It’s funny you should mention Run Elite. I’ve found Andrew’s book to be very helpful and benefit from his YT content as well! Thanks for doing this!
Thanks Patrick, great video and great running!
Great video. Thanks for the insight!
Did you do any longer than 16milers?
Thank you for your detailed review. As you mentioned, there are not a lot of good, detailed reviews of the program. Congratulations on your achievement when using the Hanon's program. Having watched your review, I feel much better able to assess if this will be a good option for me and, possibly more important, what I can potentially watch out for in certain points of the progression.
I was there with you. Nice time. I completed in 4:07. Hoping to get a 3:40 in 2025.
Hi there , I started running in november 2023 , i did a training half marathon in 2:26 and since then have done 3 trail half marathons and 5 road half marathons with 2 best times of 1:45 and a pb of 1:42 and a fastest 5km (last 5kms in the 1:45) of 22 minutes. I am almost 50 , weigh 83kg 175cm tall bit of a dad bod haha , vo2 max of 48 , i also work rotating shift work 1 week mornings 1 week arvos and 1 week nights. I have signed up for my first full marathon for early april and have a target of sub 4 , probably 3:52 to be safe , with my age im not sure if its a good idea to do this programme as so many sources say my age group should not run 6 days per week. And of course night shift certainly gets my garmin telling me im not in good shape to train. Just wondering if people in the comments etc reckon i should do this programme or another one. by the way my longest distance ive ever run is 30kms and i did that in 2;59 , its daunting to think i have to find a way to run another 12km in 59 minutes but admittedly i set out on that run as an easy run in my recovery heavy old kayano 30s whereas when i race im using either carbon plate shoes or more likely my asics superblast.
Well, I'm not a running coach... and there probably is validity to needing more days off of running as we age. Totally depends on your body and what it can tolerate... however, I think the general principle still applies that higher volume & higher frequency, for you, is something worth exploring at a rate which you can tolerate.
I think the idea that increasing your foundation & limiting the training stress of any given hard session to a smaller percentage of the overall training load (i.e. you run easy a lot in between your hard days) is the goal of the HMM. If you can only run, say, 4x a week, then maybe a longer cycle of 1 interval day + 1 long run every 10-14 days, instead of 4 interval days & 1 long run every 14 days in this plan... but that doesn't mean that increasing your volume over what you have done before is necessarily going to lead to an injury.
Recovering from the progressive workload on a shifting sleep schedule is likely the harder thing to work around. Get it in when you can, it will help!