@DopeyBadger: I've got a couple questions that I put here as some may be curious about the same things. First, what resources do you pull from when you build plans? You mentioned Hanson's, but I wonder what other influences you might have. Second, what information do you need to build a plan for someone? TIA
Great question. I build my training plans and racing principles based on the following influences:
Hansons - Principles of pacing, training plan design, during marathon carbohydrate calculations
Stephen Seiler - Principles of balance in training plans (80% Easy and 20% Hard)
Jack Daniels - Principles of maximum duration training per session, 5K training
Arthur Lydiard - Principles of Specialization
Steve Magness - Principles of Adaptation and Principles of choosing what type of training is best for an individual
Jeff Gaudette - Running technique (foot strike, breathing, shoulders, arms, eyesight), Principles of Aerobic and Anaerobic running and why warm-ups are important
Hadd - Principles of choosing what type of training is best for an individual
Pete Magill - 5K training
Samuele Marcora - Psychobiological Model (motivation and perception of effort)
Benjamin Rapoport - During marathon carbohydrate calculations
Timothy Fairchild - Western Australian carbohydrate loading procedure for pre-running carb loading
Typically I ask a set of questions like the following when someone approaches me looking for a training plan:
1) What is your "A" goal?
2) What are some of your other running goals?
3) What are your lifetime PRs?
4) What are all of your race times in the last year? If any of the races had extenuating circumstances (weather, sick, super hilly, etc.) as to why they are not a good judge of your fitness please include that information as well.
5) What went wrong in your best races? What held you back from doing better? Did you feel the reason you couldn't go faster was because a) you were out of breath, b) your legs felt dead tired, or c) some other reason/combination of the two?
6) Have you had any recent injuries or do you feel over the long term you are injury prone?
7) If you've suffered chronic or a recent injury was the cause running related (because we want to avoid it then)?
8) How many and which days are you willing to run each week? How much time on those specific days are you willing to devote to running?
9) What fueling do you do during runs? What fueling do you do after runs? What fueling do you do before you run?
10) Are there specific types of runs that make you feel more fatigued than others?
11) Why do you enjoy running? What is your motivation to run?
12) Why have you chosen the goals you've chosen?
13) What type of technology do you use to run? Treadmill, garmin, heart rate monitor, phone app run tracker, etc.
14) Are there any types of fuel pre-run, during run, or post-run that you like better than others? What led you to choose these items versus others on the market?
15) For races that provide splits, do you tend to be positive, negative, or even split? Why do you think that is?
16) What other training plans have you used in the past?
17) What kind of training have you been doing the last three weeks? Mileage, pace, etc?
18) If you run/walk. When you run about what pace do you do? When you walk about what pace do you do?
19) If I told you to run as slow as you can, how fast would you be running? This would be at a pace where you're barely breathing differently than normal walking. It feels like you're barely trying.
20) Most importantly, what is your upcoming race schedule? What/when is your next "A" goal race that you want to focus your training towards?
Hope this helps give you an insight into my methodology.
So here it goes!!
