Marathon Training Plans: Bakoulis, Daniels or Higdon?

Factual Questions
1

Dearest Mod, I think this post is of a General Questions nature but if you feel it should be in IMHO, please feel free to move it. Thanks.

Howdy Dopers!

I’m taking a marathon training class and have been tasked to choose between four training programs as a foundation around which my own personal plan will be built. I am seeking opinions and advice about which to choose.

A little about me (I’m not perfect; I’m working on it so be kind, please.): I’m 5’5" and weigh 152 pounds. I have been running pretty regularly for about a year, averaging around eight miles a week over that year. In the last three months the average has gone up to about fifteen a week and I’m still building. Last week’s total was 21. My longest recent distance was a 10 mile training run last Saturday. The longest race I’ve completed is a half marathon; I ran a 2:21. My training pace is around ten minutes per mile.

The choices for training programs are Bakoulis, Daniels, Higdon and Galloway. I have eliminated Gallloway’s program as a choice because I do not want to do walk breaks in training or during the marathon. I know all the good things about his method and perhaps after I finish my first marathon I will consider it, but I will not feel like I actually “ran” the marathon if I take walk breaks.

So, the choices are between Gordon Bakoulis, Jack Daniels and Hal Higdon. I’m leaning toward the Daniels because I think it might have something to do with whiskey.

Any Dopers with experience in any of these programs? Suggestions? I know that Higdon has a web site, I’ll be checking that out.

Thank you in advance for help!

2

I had never heard of Jack Daniels. Here is a website that has a good description of his plan. Sounds like it’s mostly about pacing.

For your first marathon, I think the more important thing than the speed of your run is putting in the miles. Getting used to running really really far. I’m not sure this is the way to go, but that’s just MHO.

Bakoulis has a book that you can view here , and this is a book that some of my training cohorts own. I myself have not read it, but at least I’m familiar with the fact that it exists.

www.halhigdon.com looks like a great website. Lots of stuff there. He’s pretty focused on the length of long runs (and the fact that you should be training slower than marathon pace - more on this later), and has a training plan of how far each long run should be. I think that’s the important part of marathon training. You can’t run a marathon without the long runs.

I’m not sure anyone’s “method” is any better or worse, and depending on who you ask, you’ll get different opinions, depending on how their marathon went after the training. And that may not have anything to do necessarily with the training. Someone who had a junky marathon because it was hot & humid may be put off by their training program because they had a horrible marathon.

I’d make sure you’ve got a good plan for distances on your long runs. That’s first and foremost.

As for pace: at your (and mine) pace, it’s real tough to train by running slower than marathon pace. When it means you’ve got to run 20 miles at a 12 minute pace to prepare for a 10 minute pace marathon, wow! You realize just how much SLOWER it is when you slow down. I think that when you’re a novice, and you don’t have speed, it’s unrealistic to slow down as much per mile as many of the trainers suggest. For the elite, who run 5-6 minute pace, running a few minutes per mile ain’t no thang.

But definitely you don’t want to train FASTER than your marathon pace, because then it will be tough on race day to run the slow pace you know you need to do.

I’ve run 3 marathons. All 3 were based on a schedule of long runs. No particular pace was indicated, other than whatever you could do comfortably and be able to converse at. I’m sure I could run faster if I added to my training, and maybe sometime I will. But for a first marathon, the goal is to finish. Then you work on getting faster.

So my vote out of the three would be for Higdon’s, with Bakoulis in second. I don’t particularly care for the idea of having to figure out paces at variace distances to figure out marathon pace, etc. Sounds like too much figuring for my taste.

Have I said enough???

3

I used Hidgon’s when I ran a marathon and it worked well for me. I was 5 plus minutes faster that an I wanted to be. The plan was easy to follow and I didn’t once get sick of the running, so it was a good motivator for me as well. I can’t speak of the other plans, but I have used Jack Daniels book for training in shorter distance. Daniels seems really good for very specific training for time. If your goal is too finish it might be too much.

By the way what marathon are you planing to run? May I suggest you pick one you have to travel to. This made my experience even more special.

4

scoutybaby, my runnin’ friend! Thank you for your thoughts. May I ask what your times were in the marathons you have run?

Hey TJ, I’m running Grandma’s marathon in Dooloot. I did the half last year and had a blast. It’s far enough away that I have to stay at a hotel and I already have my reservations. If I do well with the training and race, I’m considering Disney in 2004.

5

San Diego Marathon, January 2001 - 4:39
Rock N Roll Marathon, June 2001 - 4:22 (PR)
San Diego Marathon, January 2002 - 4:27

6

So the San Diego marathon is in January, huh? Maybe I’ll make that my second one. That way, I can meet you!

Which marathon do you like better?

I’m shooting for a 4:30 but my number one goal is to run the whole thing comfortably.

7

For course support, Rock N Roll is tops. However, because it’s in June, it can get sunny and warm (like high 70’s maybe low 80’s). Not as hot as some cities can get, but definitely a misery factor.

The San Diego course, being that it’s in January, is almost always great weather. More than likely it’s overcast, no sun, maybe a little fog - great running weather. It’s a smaller race, so there aren’t as many spectators. But if that’s not important to you, it’s still a good race.

The logistics of getting to/from Rock and Roll can be hair raising. When I ran it, road work was preventing shuttle busses from doing their thing - I had to probably walk a mile after the race to get back to the car, which sucked.

Neither are particularly hilly, though there are slight elevation changes in both - nothing too challenging.

Overall, I’d pick San Diego over Rock and Roll.

And if you run it, I’d happily cheer you on!

8

I have finished two marathons, and am well on my way to another one in April (Spirit of St. Louis). I can’t say I’m familiar with Bakoulis or Higdon, so I won’t comment. I have read Jack Daniels’ and Galloway’s books. I don’t really care for Galloway, but not because of the walk breaks.

For my first marathon I used a plan by Art Liberman . I must confess that I didn’t really put in the miles toward the end, and struggled to a 4:57 finish. Four months later, without really putting in many more weekly miles, but having the chance to put in a few more long runs I had a very satisfactory 4:34. I was averaging about 34 miles/week over the last 6 weeks or so before race day (not including taper).

Jack Daniels book seems more oriented toward serious competitors or coaches. I’m not in that category, but I do think it’s very useful to hear the advice and pick the features that seem to fit your needs. It has a more scientific approach. I have been very happy using his tables to evaluate and compare my race performance, and to plan training runs. For my third marathon, however, I pretty much sat down and made up my own training schedule after reading his book. I intend to get to 40 miles/week this time.

I’ll probably be looking for another late summer marathon to enter, and may make it Grandma’s.

As for the Tennesee whiskey, I find George Dickel has as good a product at about 2/3 the cost of Jack Daniel’s.

9

I used Higdon’s plan for my first (and only, so far) marathon and it worked GREAT. I’m also a fairly slow runner–when I started, I was running ~10 minute miles, so I didn’t worry too much about slowing down for the long runs. I just made sure that I didn’t run them any faster than 10 minutes. I got faster over the course of the training, but stuck with 9:30/10:00 per mile on the long runs. My sister’s using the Higdon plan right now but I can’t tell you about her experience with it because she just started last week. Mostly the long runs are about putting in the miles to train your body and to train your mind into not being scared of the mileage.

I haven’t looked at Higdon’s website recently, so I don’t remember exactly what it says, but I may have modified his program a little: I tried to cross-train once a week (instead of a 3-mile run) because I didn’t want to overuse anything, and every other week I ran a set of hills, which I think is what really made me get faster. I wasn’t doing them in order to get faster, though–there’s a pretty big hill at mile 15 of the Vermont City Marathon (it’s on Battery Street and they call it “Assault on Battery”) that I was scared of, so I ran up it when I was doing my hill repeats.

It’s terrific that you’re doing a class–I did one, too, and it was wonderful to have company on the long runs. (I made arrangements to run with another person; we didn’t all run together.)

Vermont City Marathon, 2001: 4:07 Beautiful course and fantastic crowd support, including a guy in his BVDs playing the tuba on his front lawn.

Good luck! Around mile 23 or 24 I got so choked up with being proud of myself for finishing (I knew I was going to make it at that point) that I had to make a real effort to think of something else because I couldn’t breathe very well.