Reader’s Question: Master’s Running, adjusting the program.

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Below is a question from our Hanson’s Coaching Community Page on Facebook. This week’s question asks about Masters running and ways to adjust the schedule.

Don S: How can non-elite-runners in their late fifties adapt the beginner program in the book to a five day a week marathon program after training with a three day week marathon program for several years. Also can you reduce some of the tempo run mileage if you’re just trying to complete the marathon in 4:30?

Let’s tackle the first part of this, which is going from 3 days to five days per week of running. Personally, I think that’s great! Ordinarily, I’d like to see you try to get to that 6th day of running but I won’t push on that right now.

After reading the questions, my takeaway is that the primary concern is the amount of recovery with the increase in volume.What will propose below can accommodate both of your questions. As I mentioned, I think we can “spread” things out a little bit without sacrificing performance. There’s a couple of ways to spread the schedule out and I discuss in Hansons Marathon Method in the “modifying the schedule” section, but will discuss another approach that I took this spring.

The Alternator:

The basic premise of this schedule is to alternate your major weekend run with either a straight up long run or with a longer tempo. I typically do it with a 6 day per week program but I think you could easily adjust to a 5 day program.

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