All of the following is found over on the mile split boards written by "peteq2" who was at some point a pupil of the late John Walsh (Hadd).
Recently I've combed through the world wide web looking for posts and info from Hadd as I loved reading his thoughts on training. He knew what he was talking about.
I'm posting this in case someone that would find this useful actually stumbles across this little corner of the web...and admittedly for my own reference since things tend to disappear on the interwebs.
"Those of you who have visited the Letsrun board for several years will have read some training discussions involving someone calling himself "Hadd." His real name was John Walsh, and he lived with his wife in Malta, and recently passed away of a heart attack during his regular morning run, at age 56, the same age his father died of heart disease.
I had the privilege of calling John my friend and coach since about 2002. He was a very private person, which is why his identity never became known to the web until he passed on. His nickname, "Hadd," is Maltese for "nobody," which reflects his desire in life to be considered as just some guy, nobody of importance.
From my experience working with John, and watching him guide others, I can say I think he was a brilliant coach, with adeep understanding of the scientiic principles of distance running, and, more importantly, a clear understanding of the practical application of these principles in training and racing. He also had a tremendous talent for clear communication, and made ample use of brilliant metaphors in his detailed explanations.
Over the course of a few posts, I will try to elaborate what I think I learned from him. Much of this has direct relevance to the other long training thread, but I'd like to avoid the details getting buried in the multiple lines of discussion in that very interesting thread.
For today, I'll just write one initial post with some basic principles to establish general context.
John's training is deliberate and methodical, and progresses from very basic, simple easy running (at first) and progresses through to unbelievably hard training.
99.9 % of his training as about training to train, not training to race. Distance training is a long road, and reward the patient. There's nothing sexy about the long, hard road of building the basic aerobic foundation for good distance runners, just a lot of seemingly mind-numbing repetition of the basics.
Two main metaphors are sprinkled liberally about his writing: squeezing from the bottom of the toothpaste tube, and, not pulling up your potatoes to see if they've grown. The first means you start with the easier efforts and master them before moving up to harder efforts. The second means you train until you'e ready to race, without checking your fitness every week, worrying that maybe it isn't improving.
Concepts like "peaking" and periodization have less emphasis in Hadd training, at least the way I experienced it, than in other familiar systems.
The first, and most important, focus is to develop a proper aerobic foundation. He invented a novel approah for this, replying on the heart rate monitor.
More later....
Ran out of time yesterday. Before a substantive post, a few out of context "Hadd" quotes that reflect the training philosophy:
"... try and not think of hard/easy, but hard/easy/easy (and even hard/easy/easy/easy if your body says so). "
and
"Always protect what you've got before you reach for more. "
and
"... training MUST NOT BE hard (for the large percentage), ... It will become "hard" in later Phases, but that hard will be carefully controlled at all times and always be well within your current capability."
and
" role for them (coaches); holding back the good runners from doing more than is good for them."
and
"If there is one constant with just about everyone I have ever coached it is that I begin by getting them to train slower than they ever have before. Without fail."
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On that last note, I'd like to introduce his "base training," or what he called "Phase I," which is the initial approach to developing a proper aerobic foundation for later training and racing.
This "Phase I" was originally described in a long thread on Letsrun back around 2002. The thread included a lot of back and forth over questions from readers, and has since been somehow deleted from the archives, but several people, myself included, managed to take copies of the guts of the thread, and Hadd's main essay describing "Phase I" can be found here:
www.angio.net/personal/run/hadd.pdf
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