Progression Runs / Brad Hudson

I have that book, but not with me. Hard for Hudson generally means something like 5K/10K pace, which is to say slightly above threshold, and 20 minutes at that pace, in a seven mile run, seems strange. It seems less strange at the end of a long run of 12-14 miles. 20 minutes hard in a seven mile run, for a good runner, is the second half of the run.

In answer to your question, "last 20 minutes" in this context means last 20 minutes of the seven-mile run. It doesn't mean another 20 minutes tacked onto the end of a seven mile run.

That usually means that you run the last 20 minutes of the seven mile run hard, not another 20 minutes on top of the seven miles.

Thank you!

Hudson's book is largely based on Renato Canova's methods. The progression run you are referring to would be the Sunday run in this plan (from a Canova thread here on letsrun)

Mon - Long run at 70%. The goal is to increase duration. Start from 1 hr 20, adding 5-10 min every week, using the same HR

Tue - 30:00 easy + Sprints uphill for increasing your mechanical engine. May be from 10 x 80m to 20 x 80m. You must use max speed. Don't care about recovery. After some rest, go for 2-3 km fast.

Wed - Easy regeneration. Go for 1 hr - 1 hr 20, very easy.

Thu - Long fartlek. Start with 20:00 warmup, then you go for 5 times 5:00 at 90% of max HR, recovering 5:00 at 60%. The evolution of this training is to add 1:00 of test every week till when you arrive at 5 x 10:00 at 90%. When you reach this goal, work for enhancing the speed of recovery, going at 65% - 70% - 75%. In this way you can build quantity and intensity at the same time.

Fri - Easy regeneration again.

Sat - Very long, using progression. From 28 to 34 km in about 6-8 weeks. The first time, stay about 60% of your HR because this training has the goal to buils muscles, tendons and ligaments for the duration. After, start to qualify, running at 80-85% of your HR, the final 10:00, then 15:00, then 20:00 and so and so.

Sun - 30:00 easy + fast run at 85% of your HR. Go from a minimum of 5 km to a max of 10. Run till your HR doesn't raise too much.

I did this for a while a long time ago when I was still young. Because of the requirements of my job I had to move, got very very busy, and was never able to continue on with the training. I can say that I was getting in phenomenal basic shape and felt that I would see big jumps in ability if I'd have been able to keep at it. I am using a similar (but scaled down) basic pattern to train my daughter in the off season for XC/track. We'll see what happens in September ;-)

On the Sunday run (your original question), I would run 30 minutes very easy at 150 HR which at the time was about 7:15 pace. I describe the effort level of 80% max HR as "able to continuously run without ever opening my mouth to breathe if I wanted to" Then when I hit 30 minutes I would immediately accelerate to 165-170 HR and hold there. The first week I did 20 minutes at this pace, then added 5 minutes a week until I was doing 40 minutes at this pace. This is the way you are supposed to do it. 150 HR was 75-80% of my max and 165-170 HR about 85% of my max. In reality to be more precise you'd want to use a lactate meter to get the proper ranges but Canova had recommended using HR since back then not too many people knew how to do lactate monitoring correctly. At 165-170 HR I'm still breathing very controlled but definitely have to breathe through my mouth, whereas 180 HR at that time would be the pace where you feel like you are breathing hard but steady (think 10k - 10 mile race effort breathing). So the pace you're looking for is going to be nicely fast but shouldn't be super taxing. And by starting at 5k and building it up to 10k, you are basically starting with a nice easy warmup 30 minutes, then over a period of 8 weeks or so you build up to a very nice long tempo run.

Great

Do you have an outline of Canova training?

I’ve sen isolated posts. Did anyone compile his advice?

Many thanks.

I have been running for 30 years (sometimes more, sometimes less) and have a lot of time for training, but I will soon be 50, so I have to organise my strength a little.

I want to run a hilly marathon at the end of October and I'm starting to prepare for it now. I'm currently following the marathon plan level 1 from the book.

In the long term, however, I would like to create my own plans according to Hudson's principles and therefore learn as much as possible about them.

You're welcome.

Hudson's book is basically an outline of Canova training. But there are a ton of threads here and you can ask Canova himself right on this board.

What happened to Brad Hudson? never hear him mentioned much.

btw

Think his book is excellent

Good question