Kevin and Keith Hanson are coaching fixtures in the running world. Since 1999, they’ve coached countless Olympic Trials qualifiers, 3 Olympians, and numerous members of World Championship teams. That’s quite a resume in itself, but they really started out as running store owners with a training plan to help people train for a marathon. You know these plans as the fixtures of the Hansons Marathon Method.

As the brothers trusted me with putting the plans to actual print, I experienced from all of the readers how much the plans helped them, but I also saw a lot of negative response. Most of the negativity was from people who never even tried the plan, but saw what it consisted of and instantly balked at the idea. Other people were just plain intimidated by the plan. Isn’t it funny- some people thought the plan was a joke because it didn’t have any 20 mile long runs and others thought it was so hard because you ran 6 days per week? Truth be told, the HMM plans are demanding and I think that’s good. We are big believers in not just surviving a marathon, but to train and perform well. In other word, my personal goal is to get a person that wanted to run a 5 hour marathon and get them to realize that with just a small change in training, that they could be a sub four hour marathon! However, given those lofty dreams, I also realize I have to meet people where they are at.
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With that said, where are we at in the US and our marathon running?
In 2016, average marathon time for males was 4:22 and for women it was 4:47. Compare that to 1980 and the average time was 3:30 (data on women was not collected and less than 10% of finishers were women.) We can also look at it from the standpoint of the gold standard- qualifying for the Boston Marathon. Let’s go all the way back to 1980, where the standard for qualifying were probably the toughest. For males aged 18-39, you had to run under 2:50:00 to qualify. If you were over 40, you got a break and had to break 3:10:00 to qualify. For women, you had to run under 3:20:00, regardless of age. Fast forward to now and the fastest qualifying time is 3:05 for males under the age of 35. For males aged 40-44, you need to run under 3:15 and women of the same age group need to run under 3:45:00 for the marathon. The Bottom line is, to qualify for Boston, you don’t need to run as fast as you would have had to in 1980.

Now, as much as the data confirms that we are slower now than 30-40 years ago, there’s probably more to really consider. One of the main thing is that just so many people are running now. Over 500,000 people alone in the US complete a marathon every year. 40 years ago, it was a fraction of that. What was once reserved for hardcore runners, has become a sport that is inclusive of many goals and abilities. Naturally, the more people you add to a sample size, the more the numbers are going to disperse.

The other item I have noticed is the training that has gone into the marathon. In September 2016, Outside Magazine published a bunch of data based on data that Strava collected for 4 years and included 1.8 Million marathons. Some interesting data showed that sub 3 hour marathoners posted weekly mileage of about 50 miles per week. Those running 3-4 hour marathons put in about 35 miles per week, and less weekly mileage for those running over 4 hour marathons. Couple that with the idea that between 40-50% of runs were under 5 miles, and you can conclude some interesting ideas. If most of of the runs completed during the week are under 5 miles and the average weekly mileage is 35 miles per week, then there’s not a lot training going on. What that tells me is that the average person is doing a big long run on the weekend and then running a couple shorter runs during the week. While, I don’t want to get into training philosophy, I do think this is a very tough way to train for a marathon.

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