Everything Matters

Brad Hudson's Targeted Training

Get Nervous

"The bottom line," Hudson explains, "is to teach the nervous system to run race pace." The final four weeks, when the majority of training is at race pace, are specifically aimed at this, but he often starts it much sooner. "If trying to run a 15 minute 5K: 72 second [per lap] pace is the pace. We would bring 72 second pace in very early, might be 200s or 300s, might be 400s sets. We’d start with those paces early, we’d bring the nervous system in on those paces, and eventually that becomes 600s, 800s, 1,000s. If you can do 5x1,000 at that pace, you’re pretty much going to be OK."

Mix It Up

In the end, Hudson says, "One of the things I’m sure of in training is to always change your stimulus. We’re always trying to throw things at the nervous system: Even on a long run, we’ll do a minute on, minute off, running harder at the end, we do tempo runs uphill. . . . Too often people are just doing the same training all the time."

Pointing out that most running injuries are overuse injuries, he suggests that runners often get caught into running the same pace, or the same mileage. He recommends mixing in fartlek, hills, and changing from high, medium and low mileage weeks: "The biggest thing is always change your stimulus, all the time. Every day, a different system you are working." Not only will stagnation lead to injury, it will fail to produce results as well. The same training you did last year won’t have the same effect on the body this year. "You have to change from year to year. You have to find ways to stimulate the body to get better; it will not get better if you don’t change the stresses."

Everything Matters

Hudson ends many sentences with the phrase "everything matters." This references both his theme that you need to consider all systems and that planning the right workout for each runner requires considering every variable. While he acknowledges that younger runners and those starting out must work more on the extremes, building their aerobic and muscular bases, those who have built the bases and are working toward a specific goal need to carefully balance the work they do to tune their bodies’ ability to run that pace. At a certain level, it is nearly a zero-sum game: "The more you go to specific strength, the more you hurt your aerobic system, but the more you’ve gone just aerobically, the more you lose strength. And so that’s the whole balance of training."

That balance will be different for each runner: "Some will need more endurance, some will need more speed." Finding the right balance to achieve a specific goal is the art of coaching, and it is here that Hudson, though steeped in science, truly excels. It is here as well where he advises runners not to blindly follow a schedule but to pay attention, to learn, adapt and tailor their training to their goal, their body, and their specific needs. Everything matters.