HADD training plan

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  • Brian61Brian61 ✭✭✭
    Hi Nick, Don't panic! What you are seeing is normal.
    I guess you've put a little weight on, and 3 weeks is enough of a break to lose fitness.
    All of your 12 weeks work will not have been wasted though, and it will come back quicker than it did prior to Xmas if you do the right things.
    If I were you I'd certainly do another 2 weeks at <75% and see where you are.
    Infact I would keep up the lower intensity until you reach the level of where you were before Xmas.
    My guess is this will still leave you at least 6 weeks to tackle some 80% (or MP) work, in prep for your marathon.
  • 80%=130bpm

    Last night on the treadmill 5mins easy then 50 mins at target HR 130bpm then 5mins easy.

    Recorded 5mins intervals and found that towards the end of my run I was running at my warm up pace,but with the HR at 130bpm.In fact I was only able to sustain my initial pace for 15 mins before seeing a steady decline.

    LONG way to go and have binned all races and club runs till late March.

    Just a moan thanks for reading LoL.

  • Brian61Brian61 ✭✭✭
    Roy, the HR will tend to rise more on the treadie than outside because of heat
    dissipation and subsequent dehydration. Try and do your 80% runs outside on the flat
    Canal towpath is ideal. Run out for x/2 mins turn and run back to the start point.
    Where x=length of 80% portion, in your case 50mins.
    There will be cardiac drift, always but after a few of these it will be cut to a minimum.

  • Brian,thanks for the advice.

    To be honest I have exhausted all my routes from home via 50/60/90/110min runs. So I went for the treadmill looking for consistency in this phase of training,which the treadmill would give.

    On the next 80% session on the TM I will take a drink with me and see what effect that has.

    I dont drink on any of my runs except long runs on sunday of 2 to 3 hours.The rest of my runs I try to hydrate a few hours before going out.This would change in the summer months when I would take a drink with me.

  • dprovandprovan ✭✭✭

    Time for a Sunday update:

     Thankfully my groin strain seems to be a strain and not an injury. It has restricted my walking the odd day but thankfully I never feel it when running and it feels no worse after running so that is a relief.

    Results on the plan so far as I enter my fourth week. Well firstly I have been a good boy and am finding it easier to run to the desired heart rate. I have managed to keep runs between 70-75%. I was interested to read earlier in the thread that some found it easier to run to heart rate on treadmill and that was my experience also. Running to the lower heart rate has definately helped me to up my mileage as I moved from running 18-20 weeks to a steady 35 miles each week.

    I have found that my cardiac drift is reducing. Today I went on my long slow run. I ran 14.3 miles at 10 min mile pace and my heart rate was within 152-160 the whole way. My max is 206 so closer to 75% but pretty steady I think.

    I know I need to trust the plan, but as others have said it is hard to imagine running faster for nearly double the distance I did today. Whilst I was not dead on my feet at the end I didn't have lots in the tank either. But as someone else said to me, if I was ready to run the marathon now there would be little point training for the next 14-15 years.

    I have avoided going out with the running club which is a bit tricky particularly when i met them this morning on my long slow run but it is necessary in this core period to ensure i build the slow miles at low heart rate.

    I hope others are getting on with the plan well.

  • Dprovan,

    You seem to be going along the right road, excuse the pun.I have also droped running with other people.This type of training seems to favour running alone       

    In the summer I chased a mate over a 14 mile route over the Brecon Beacons. Today I did the same route at 70%- 75% hr 115 to 120bpm, felt comfortable all the way and I was 4mins faster. On the summer run I worked really hard all the way.Today there was snow on the  beacons so I am sure I would have been even quicker.Last bit about treadmill for me, how was your pace did it fall off or was it steady all the time? 

  • dprovandprovan ✭✭✭

    Toy,I can relate to your experience. The straw that broke the camels back for me was running the same distance as today with a running mate and chasing her the whole way. I did the run 30 seconds per mile faster but struglled big time. I read somewhere else that if you are in pain count 300 strides and the pain will be gone. I can tell you i got to 500 and was still suffering big time on that run. I am a bit too competative and although i knew i wanted to run slower when i am with others i will try to at least match the others.

     As for pace. My splits today where prety steady:

    mile 1: 10mins

    mile 2: 10.09

    mile 3: 10.03

    mile 4: 10.01

    mile 5: 10.09

    mile 6: 9.49

    mile 7:9.51

    mile 8: 10.08

    mile 9: 9.51

    mile 10:9.58

    mile 11: 10.08

    mile 12: 10.02

    mile 13: 9.53

    mile 14 9.37

    mile 14.3 8.24 (i tried a little sprint at the end to see if i could up the pace on tired legs)image

    I was tired at the end but had i been racing i could have kept going for a bit more. Roy when you say it felt comfortable all the way.. It may seem like a strange question but what does comfortable look like. The reason I ask is over 14 miles I have periods where i feel better than others. Some periodsm I  feel i could run as i am for hours other periods particularly near the end I am keeping myself going by focussing on a spot in the distance to keep going.

  • Dprovan,

    For me,comfortable means no laboured breathing, legs feel OK and I know that if I wanted to go any faster I could.The closer I get to the end of a run the more I want to speed up and have to stop myself from doing so,well in this type of training anyway.I understand the good periods bad periods thing,I just tell myself it will pass and get on with the run, I sometimes use the mantra[ look within ] if I am really struggling.

    Very consistent on your run, it looks like all the miles were flat.

  • dprovandprovan ✭✭✭

    roy, that it helpful.

    there were hills in my run, but nothing too steep, more gradual slopes, the sort that raised the heart rate by 7-10 beats but I could still keep a consistent pace. According to garmin i gaine 376ft and lost 389 so more down hill than up.

  • I'd just like to add one thing to Brian's excellent advice above. I was once told to expect one run in five to be absolute rubbish. Whether this is due to a low-grade virus, the wind being in the wrong direction, biorhythms or the curry you had last night is generally unclear, but I've found it to be true for me; a subtle improvement in fitness of a few seconds a mile must be very easy to lose in amongst all the other variables. The problem is that to demonstrate improvement over a moving average of tests would involve running lots of tests but doing very little training...

    ...so we're stuck with accepting the odd bad result and having to have faith in the system image

    First 'proper' run at 80% (160) for me today. 9:06 miling for 6.5 miles XC for an average of 156. Very pleased with that. It also took me over 200 miles for the month for the first time ever and I'm injury-free! image

    What does everyone feel about average HRs for an hour's session? My watch will only give an average for the whole session, which I suspect gets skewed a little because my HR is low in mile 1 while I warm up. Worsth an investment in a watch which gives ave HR each mile?

  • CH - I was looking for exactly the same functionality.

    I basically want to take the data from my session and "crop it" to eliminate the wonky first mile (or so) plus the nasty hill I have to run up at the end.

    I looked at Garmin Training Centre and couldn't find the feature in an easy to use format...ie cropping the graph visually.  I'm pretty sure the data is in there but it might need some Excel manipulation.

    For an "on-watch" option (ie not using training software) have you tried turning-off autolap and then treating the distinct phases of your run as laps?  So you would press end lap after you have warmed-up.  Would your watch then give you an HRAve by lap?

    Another thing you could try is to treat the post warm-up section as a separate session...ie end the warm up session and reset / start a new one once you are at steady state.  This is inelegant but should work on all watches.

  • Team,

    I’d be very grateful for some pointers for how I can transition my base building into preparation for a half marathon in just under 9 weeks (1st April).

    Ideally I’d like to turn in a decent-ish performance without totally ditching my current schedule which I’m nicely settled into.  At the same time (unless you recommend otherwise) I’d like to juice things up a bit before I get up to running 50 easy miles per week.

    Here’s where I’m up to:

    · 30 miles per week total distance across 5 sessions

    · 4 runs of about 5 miles each and a (growing) long run which is currently up to 10 miles

    · All runs for the last 4 weeks or so have been between 140-150 bpm (71-77% HRMax)

    · This morning’s  5 miler was at average HR of 140 bpm and an average pace of 10:00 m/m

    · Feeling pretty good overall and ready to step it up a bit

    Cheers

  • Cheers LC; I currently have to run with 2 watches; a Forerunner 110 (which is Mrs CH's, so I can't easily wear the HR strap) but it plots my convoluted and random routes well (I'm playing Fetchpoint on fetcheveryone.com, which is basically a GPS-based orienteering game) and my old Timex Ironman watch, which is very basic but has a decent HRM.

    I think I might have to buy an F110 of my own image then deselect the autolap, as you say...

    As for the stepping up of training, I think that the Hadd method is really geared for 'top' runners (i've said before that Joe in the example quoted was running "badly" at 8 min miling easy pace, which is my aspirational pace) so we mortals make of it what we will.

    If you're looking to run a HM in 9 weeks and you're not getting any HR drift or pace loss on your 10 mile run, why not move a couple of your 5 mile runs into the 80-83% band (I guess that's 160ish for you..?) I'm lifting this from the link that BN (?) posted originally, where one of Hadd's coachees explains the Hadd methodology... here. Of course, you may have to start with a couple of 15 min intervals of that pace to start with (a progression is shown in one of the posts in that link) and build up to the 5 miles (except that at faster pace, you could run furhter for the same time commitment image)

     Based on that training, there's no reason why you couldn't hold a higher HR than 160 ave if you race the HM as Hadd training gives improvements even at HRs that you've not trained at yet.

    Remember that I'm not an expert and have all of four months' personal experience; my knowledge has come from this thread and the two Hadd links!

  • Oh I'm sure I'm getting plenty of drift on my 10 miler.

    It's a while since I've looked at anything beyond the headline totals (distance, HRAve).  I'd say drift is in the order of 1min / mile from start to finish over the 10 miles...something like this anyway.

    I was thinking along the lines of introducing some 80% runs so will give this a go...maybe starting tomorrow morning.

    Cheers

  • Any joy on the 805 run, LC?

    I tried an 80%er today, but couldn't really get my HR up above 75%; it was about time I had a poor run, I suppose! Having said that, it was still just under 9 min miling  largely XC, so I can't moan too much about the speed. Don't think that it shows a fitness breakthrough though, more that I was knackered after yesterday's 10 + 4 mile efforts.

  • I did one on Tuesday, CH. 1 mile warm-up 5 miles @ 80% 1 mile warm-down.  In the meantime Brian has encouraged me to stick with the 70%-ers until I am logging more easy miles.

    The run itself was a lot of fun and the 80% bit can be broken down into 2 halves. 

    The first half felt great (like pleasantly hard work).  Actually getting up to 80% took longer than I expected. 

    The second half felt tougher and I found HR creeping up further than I wanted.  My self control was quite poor and I found myself revving slightly over the target 156 bpm.

    Still, I felt no after effect twinges and enjoyed myself sufficiently to look forward to doing these for real in 3-4 weeks time.

  • Hi All,

    Just to say that I am back after my 2 weeks of skiing, but have only managed 1 run this week because I returned on Saturday with a hacking cough and a stinking cold, grrrr!  However, the 6 miles I did yesterday felt great: 10min/mile pace at an ave HRM of <75%... so not too much degradation during my French sojourn image

    Taking today off (no point in overdoing it, unecessarily) then intend to crack in a 90 minuter tomorrow, with 70 mins at 80%(150, for me).  Really looking forward to seeing what pace that equates to.  Then intend to rest Saturday before grinding out a 17 mile LSR on Sunday, which is D-6 weeks (sorry, military speak, D=Marathon...)!  My plan thereafter is a mid-week mix of 70% and 80% runs on a ratio of 3:2, followed by LSRs of 18m, 20m and 20m.  That delivers me to the Rome Ostia HM at the D-3 week point, which I intend to run at 83% (156bpm - effectively a gnat's knacker off my MaraHR of 158).  I reckon that will give me an idea of what time I should be aiming for in the real thing.  Thereafter, I will do one more week of 'effort' (including one final run at 83% and an LSR of roughly HM distance, but at HADD pace), before tapering into the marathon on 18 Mar.  Phew image.

    If anyone has any suggestions as to how I might do things differently, please shout - as a 'newbie' I am always open to advice (indeed, without that which I have received to date, I wouldn't be writing this now...image)

    Ciao Ragazzi

  • Hello there,

     Lamb chop and Crash Hamster, with regard to cropping runs on the PC, there is some free software on the web called SportTracks that seems more flexible than Garmin's training centre for looking at data post run. You can copy and split runs or ask it to show splits that are different from the ones recorded (I use it with my Forerunner 305 data). 

     Hope this helps.

  • Will check it out...thanks Slow Coach
  • Crash, A very familiar problem that.... ahem... can't get it up! I'm gonna put my coaching head on here (do as I say not as I do): you should be fresh for your 80% run. Ideally following 2 easy days, but definitely at least one. I have done track on Tuesday, and easy day on Wed, and then still felt fatigued on the Thursday and tried to do an 80% run. It becomes a bit of a chore, and ends up being very laboured. The run is not wasted, it is just a pointer that maybe you have overcooked the week, and maybe need to review your sessions.

    To be honest, I had the same situation yesterday. Took me probably 2 miles before I hit 80%, and after 3 miles the towpath seemed to fill with treacle. Better conditions than last week, less muddy, less windy, ok a bit colder, but I was 7s/mile slower! I am cutting back next week.

    Laureate, Dare I say it, you have planned with military precisionimage Hope the skiing went well, and that you are well rid of the lurgy.

  • Thanks Brian, lurgy just about gone (sinuses a bit blocked, but they clear pretty quickly once I start running...).  Skiing was fanbloodytastic!   Plenty of sunshine image great snow image and not too cold image.  All in all, really did not want to come back to work... Ho hum, I suppose one has to justify the odd jolly!
  • Brian,just a update about my treadmill run. The fade off was not so bad as last time ie from 1.2 to 1,0 k.  I drank water throughout the run.                                                                                                                           I am looking at a new route when its light in the evenings  which is as flat as possible. Its not safe at all in the winter to run but, not so bad in the spring/ summer,I will use that for my upper HR runs.

    Thanks for the help.

  • L33 that sounds like an excellent plan to me. I'm beginning to think that 80% is a good target marathon HR for me for April; I can't see I'm going to have the time to get my HR up any further before then, so I'm glad you've reached a similar conclusion!

    Slow Coach, thanks for that tip!

    Roy, glad that went better!

    Brian, that's what I thought, alittle tired after the exertions of the day before. The run definitely wasn't wasted and I'm happy to keep operating at that level of fatigue. Tonight I was fine; 8.66 miles at 74% MHR at 8:38 min miling. It was cold, but a lovely starry night. Thanks for the advice!

  • Just north of 16 miles for me today at an average of 141 (70.5% for me) in 10:13 min miling and no drift; very pleased with this as it was XC in the slush and mud. Something's working image
  • Thanks Crash, glad you approve of my plan!  Actually, at this stage of the game, I am reasonably confident of being able to maintain 80-85% for marathon distance.  What I need to do over the next five and a bit weeks is turn that HRM into my best pace over the ground.  If you'd have asked me on Sunday to predict what that might be after a not particularly enjoyable 15 miler, I'd have said I would be lucky to achieve a sub 4.5hr... Problem was that having had the best part of three weeks off running (and still with a residue of flu), I struggled to get my aching quads to move at anything better than 10:15 minute miles - and that was at 80%+ HRM.  However, yesterday I cracked in a cheeky 7 mile run at sub 10min mile pace and under 80% HRM.  It just goes to show how relatively quickly one goes backwards at this point of the training following a break in the regime...  However, hopefully I am now back moving in the right direction.  This weekend's 18 miler will be very telling (particularly on the back of a day out in Rome, on Saturday, at the Italy vs England Rugby Match image.
  • L33, Enjoy the rugby  (and the 18miler).
  • I experienced a similar dip recently L33.  My numbers (pace for a given HR) went right down the chute after an enforced Christmas layoff.

    Its coming right back now though.

  • Thanks Lamb Chop - that's reassuring to hear!
  • Blimey L33, that 18 miler the day after the rugby will hurt a bit! image
    I wonder if you were entirely recovered when you had your relatively poor run?

    I'm feeling a little insecure at my ability to run a marathon at 80%+ MHR; I guess that if I do the training, I shouldn't pull my potatoes up yet to find out. Maybe my 1/2M time (racing in early March) will give me a clue...

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