Luke Humphrey Running

Today, we are going to dive into a fascinating article that’s been making the rounds regarding the performance characteristics of high-performing marathoners The study, published in Sports Medicine in September 2025, looked at the training data of 917 Boston Marathon qualifiers 1-3. It compared their training habits from 12 to 4 months before the race against their habits in the final 4 months 4....

We are at that time of year when a lot of you have just finished your fall marathons. You’ve crushed your goals—maybe you went from a 5-hour marathon down to a 3:45—and now you’re asking the big question: "What do I do next?" Logically, most runners think, "If I ran this fast on 50 miles a week, imagine how fast I’ll be on 60 or 70!" It’s natural to think that more miles equals better results. Now...

Hey guys, it's Luke here! Welcome to Lesson Two of our planning guide. In Lesson One, we talked all about setting the right goals—which is absolutely crucial for runners of all abilities. If you haven't checked out the goal-setting course yet, I highly encourage you to go back and do that first so you can set realistic, actionable targets. But today, we want to move beyond just setting a goal. We...

Mastering Your Training Paces: Goal Pace vs. Current Pace Listen up, runners! Once you’ve mapped out your training plan and laid out the structure of your mileage, the absolute most important step to take is making sure you are starting out at the correct intensity. In my early coaching days and in the first edition of the Hansons Marathon Method, I almost exclusively talked about "Goal Pace". But...

Summary In this conversation, Luke discusses the essential components of successful marathon training, emphasizing the importance of endurance, stamina, consistency, understanding fatigue, and maintaining a healthy relationship with nutrition. He outlines how to build endurance and stamina, the significance of consistent training, and the need to differentiate between general fatigue and overtrain...

The Boston Marathon is not just a race; it's a journey that demands strategic planning and preparation. As a seasoned runner who has experienced both triumphs and challenges on this iconic course, I want to share insights that can help you run your best Boston. Understanding the Course: Boston is a course that rewards patience and punishes haste. With its rolling hills and infamous Heartbreak Hill...

Summary In this episode of the Luke Humphrey Running Podcast, Luke discusses the transition from fall marathon training to preparing for spring marathons. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining training consistency during the off-season and provides insights into effective training strategies, including volume building and speed work. Luke outlines two scenarios for runners looking to improve...

Transcript: Hey guys, this is Luke Humphrey. Welcome back to the Luke Humphrey running podcast. I appreciate all the great feedback from the last one. Yes, the audio is much better, right? And so I think that will be a much better listening experience. And a lot of you reconfirmed what I was kind of aware of. A lot of you listen to the podcast while you're running or doing whatever. It's nice to h...

Transcript:Hey everyone, welcome back to the LHR podcast. It's been a while. We've been revamping a lot of stuff behind the scenes on our website and things like that. fortunately the podcast took a little bit of a backseat, but I think we're back now. I think we're going to be in a position where we can do things much more regularly. when I was going back and looking at some stuff, you know, we g...

As a coach or an athlete, we look for guides as to how much work is an appropriate amount for a given athlete. I have mentioned this before, but again, often we discuss the 80/20 rule in training- 80% of our work should be easy and 20% hard. The question then becomes what is hard and what is easy, and in terms of hard, how should that look? So, I’d like to break down some general guidelines. In te...

In the third part of this series, I want to discuss the race itself. In particular, the challenge of the potential weather. This comes in two parts. The first is the time of year the race is and the second is the different start and finish locations.  Today, let’s discuss the potential weather. In a dream year (2011), you get solid temps and a 30 mph tailwind. What’s interesting is that was the wo...

In part one, we talked a little bit about timing, but more specifically how training starts at maybe the worst timing of the year- the holiday season. Today, I want to expand once into what will really affect a lot of people- the winter months! Where I am at, in metro Detroit, winters aren’t too bad through the end of December. We might get some snow, but there’s been plenty of times when we don’t...

I read an interesting article from Steve Magness the other day, “How the need to prove yourself in practice can ruin your race day.” In the beginning, he listed some crazy fast workouts he did before a race but then faltered on race day. He came to two conclusions which I thought were great:  Getting fit is easy If you are sufficiently motivated, it is easy to train yourself into the ground.  Over...

We have talked a lot about adjusting workouts due to heat and humidity for quite some length, but what about strategies to cool ourselves before or during workouts so that we don’t have to adjust our paces? I wanted to explore this a little bit more as I thought about people attempting last-chance qualifiers in early September and even those racing into the middle of October. I mean, I have run th...

Alright, as summer gets ready to peak, some of you are questioning why you decided to train for a September or October marathon! Many of you are not hitting your paces and question not only your sanity but your fitness levels too! Well, I can assure you that if you can trust that your training is still working, that good things can happen this fall. Now, that is not the big idea here, but rather,...

You might find yourself in a situation where you plug in a goal marathon time and the training paces for speed, which represent 5k to 10k race pace, don’t line up with what you have actually raced. What should you do? If your actual race pace is slower than what is suggested based on your goal time, then I would usually have the athlete do the slower pace. Why? Well, we aren’t necessarily trying t...

As I write this, we are in the build up for the fall marathon season. For the early October races, we are into about 6 weeks. More advanced runners are cranking into workouts while beginners are just starting more intensity. Regardless of the level of the runner, it is far too early to be complaining of the dreaded “cumulative fatigue.” Yet, so often I will see people saying that they are just com...

It seems like all easy running is the same, and I was in the camp of indifference for a long time, I grew to realize that as we advance in ability, how we approach our easy runs will change with the circumstance. I’ll be honest, I know what I want to convey in this post, but I am struggling with how to present it, or at least get the conversation started. So, let’s start with a common scenario tha...

Every coach I had, from high school to professional was a stickler for pace. That’s not to say that we weren’t monitoring other variables, but the pace was what we focused on. It’s safe to say that over the years, I became pretty good at judging effort and correlating that closely to paces. To say it’s a skill is an understatement, and from the feedback I get from athletes, is that it’s not a skil...

When we talk about long runs, the long run for the marathon is always the primary debate. For shorter races, even up to the half marathon, the long run is further than the race distance or at least up to a big percentage of what you’ll be racing. Yet, for the marathon, unless you go 20+ miles, the long run is going to not going to approach those same percentages. With that, when I prescribe a 16-m...

In my Boston Marathon training plans, I have a lot of specific hill-based workouts. Some straight uphill repeats, some workouts I call “Tired Hills”, some downhill repeats towards the end of the long run, and maybe a few other things. However, I don’t specifically say when a person should get on hills for the marathon tempos. I do this on purpose, but I also recognize that this should be addressed...

So I got done a bit of a rabbit hole the other day. I follow the accounts of My Sport Science and the feed is great if you want to learn anything about nutrition and supplementation for endurance performance. Well, a new blog entitled, "Do ketone esters boost EPO?” And I thought, well wouldn’t that be nice? I knew a little bit about ketones, but more about ketones as a product of high-fat low-carb...

From my experience, you have a deep division in the running world when you mention the word “treadmill.” For some, it’s a necessary part of being able to train during winter, dark mornings, and not leaving children alone in the home. For others, they’d rather fall and break a hip on black ice than submit themselves to “lesser” training on a treadmill. For me, it’s an available tool and as a younge...

Recently, I had a new athlete sign up for coaching and we have them complete a training profile. One of the questions is “what are some of your training weaknesses?” The point of this question is obvious, what do you think you need to work on? However, we are also looking to see if you really think about what those needs are and then really establish a starting point for a conversation about those...

I remember in high school everyone had had these team shirts with “motivational” quotes. My favorite was “Runners have no offseason!” Soooo tough! Looking at it now and then seeing what goes on now, that’s probably not my first choice for a shirt. In high school and college, We went from cross country to indoor, to outdoor track. If you qualified for State Finals in High School or the National Cha...