Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon: How to Be Your Own Best Coach Paperback – July 29, 2008

Although a long time runner, I thoroughly enjoyed Brad Hudson's book that in a highly readable and efficient fashion relates his training programs for virtually all runners. His theory of adaptive running makes great sense and he constantly adjusts for abilities, current performance levels and common sense such as always pencil in workouts to adjust for how the runner feels today. His book focuses on balancing the human body with a combination of muscle training, aerobic and anaerobic combined with self assessment leading to an individualized plan. What I particularly like about this book is that it simply does not lead you into how to run a marathon but to a verity of race distances from 5K forward. He proves a variety of workout plans based on abilities and age at various distances. And what is somewhat rare, he has an excellent program for masters runners at different distances and, as he conveys that rest is needed, he builds in more rest time for masters runners in the form of cross training and core body workouts. His workouts are truly building block encouraging the athlete not to try to set PRs in practice or increase the load too soon but shy from injury and then work toward specific peak race workouts. He doesn't spend a lot of time on masters but what he says makes a lot of sense about different needs and recovery. For instance, for older and injury prone runners, he encourages more hill work over track workouts and hill work is a major part of all his training. I particularly like the 8 second sprints uphill that improve neuromuscular fitness. I am in the first 1/3 of the masters program, adding one extra day of running as opposed to 3 since 1 is a long social run, and I like the variety and a long range peak plan. Also, has great words of wisdom such as when cutting back for a recovery period, keep some intense workouts on the agenda since getting away from it too much makes a longer climb to get back in shape and increases the potential for injury. Great side bar articles on athletes he has coached with pictures. Dathan Ritzenhein just broke the American 5K record with a 12:55 and he was the 4th non-African to break 13:00. He currently is coached by Alberto Salazar for the past 3 months but Salazar credited Hudson for bringing Ritzenhien to such great shape free of the nagging injuries Ritz has had historically. This is a great book for all and particularly for HS coaches with four ranges of workouts based on class year/ability.

Hudson (the book seems to be written entirely in Hudson's first-person voice) seems to have a lot of experience coaching elite runners, and particularly elite runners with chronic nagging injury issues. His plans are built around nonlinear periodization, with a focus on as-you-go adjustments based on feel ("adaptive running"). The book is well written and mostly succinct.I don't think this is a great choice for a beginner, unless you're experienced with high-level competitive training from another sport. He tries to accommodate all levels, but his experience is clearly with elites, and his approach reflects that. For example, in one paragraph, he has a random example of a goal--the actual goal time and distance is incidental to his point--and he uses a 37:00 10k. That's quite a bit quicker than most Amazon shoppers will ever run a 10k, myself included. This is probably not the best book to get you from a 5-hour marathon down to a 4-hour marathon.Hudson also emphasizes max-effort hill sprints for strength training and injury prevention--probably not a great approach for beginners fresh off the couch, without a long background of aerobic training.The book places equal emphasis on all "long" distance events--5k, 10k, half, marathon--which is a real plus if you are serious about a distance other than the marathon.I'm a 43-year-old wanna-be getting back into running, and have never run an organized 5k outside of a triathlon. My theoretical PR, from a decade ago, is around 23 minutes. I'm hoping to break 20 minutes with this book.

This book has lots of useful information Hudson has learned from years of coaching elite athletes ages ~18-35. Other than saying we recover more slowly, I don't think he has much insight into the typical marathon runner, even a competitive one given how many of us are in our late 30s and older. All of the examples in the book are of elite athletes and I strongly suspect Hudson has never coached a Masters runner. Of course, some of the information Hudson and Fitzgerald provide applies to runners of all ages which is why I am rating it four stars instead of three stars.I'm 42. I've been running off and on, always recreationally, for 25+ years but got more serious about it in my mid and late 30s. Thus, I still think I have opportunity to improve and almost all of my PRs were when I was over 40. However, I was always injury-prone and, at this age my body cannot handle even close to the amount of quality work Hudson suggests is necessary in a training plan. That said, I have improved a lot by adding easy mileage and my body does seem able to handle that as long as the vast majority of those miles are quite slow.I doubt most actual Masters runners conform to the authors' views of what a Masters runner is. They authors conceive of Masters runners as essentially formerly very competitive runners that have used up their bodies and are now just trying to hang on to what they can. Obviously, every runner is unique (the point of the book), but given the demographics of marathon finishers, I suspect the far larger category of Masters are people that now have more time to train than they did in their 20s and so can still improve.Alas, I can't seem to find a good book specifically oriented towards how to design a training plan for a Masters runner. The key issue to me is that, if it takes you 2-3 days to recover from a workout, you can probably only handle one speed session and one long run a week + some easy days. That fact would suggest significant differences in training than a typical plan in this book.Thus, I wish Hudson had worked with a coach that regularly works with competitive Masters runners to write a book more geared towards that demographic so the book would be more useful for us.