I’d recommend Trainer Road paired with one of the cycling platforms – you can do the workouts while “riding” on group rides or solo on Zwift and on IndieVelo. Zwift has more “carrots” and many, many more people and groups.

I use IndieVelo because I tired of Zwift’s worlds and my favorite type of group rides went away. I found the routes, worlds, and real people quite engaging for a long time. I suspect you’d find Zwift more engaging than other platforms. Zwift has training plans for all sorts of goals.

IndieVelo is mostly bots, but there are some real people, and the bots are more like real riders than on other platforms. The interface is much more intuitive and easy to use than MyWhoosh and Zwift, another free option.

The nice thing about Trainer Road is that it will give you a plan and change the plan and workouts as you go along. That auto-customizing felt good to me, and I made some fitness gains. Using Training Peaks requires that you add a training plan from someplace – a coach or some free one you find. I didn’t use a coach and felt like it was dull and clumsy. Other people love it.

Here are some Hansons training plans for marathon and half-marathon:

https://shop.hansons-running.com/content/training-plans

I hadn’t heard of the Hansons Method either. Last year, I started two runs a day once or twice a week. Unsurprisingly, it was easier on my body than running the same distance continuously. And I didn’t feel as fatigued over all as my weekly mileage increased. My form was better, too.

But as to the big questions: Did I have as much endurance? Was I faster? I really don’t know. I wasn’t significantly slower.

The Hansons Method

https://www.runtothefinish.com/hanson-marathon-training-method-review/

Consider this your Cliff Notes version of Hanson running plans overall. These are the key concepts of the Hanson Method for half marathon and marathon training:

• High mileage
  

• 6 days of running
  

• Speed emphasis early in the training plan
  

• No planned cross training – in fact, they seem to do very little strength training
  

• Cumulative fatigue – “The development of fatigue through the long term effects of training which results in in a profound increase in running strength”
  

• 3 “SOS” (Something Of Substance) workouts per week–speed work, tempo run at goal race pace and long run
  

• Longest run is 16 miles for most people
  

Obviously you may have heard of this training program thanks to the incredible success of Desi Linden. She gives them a lot of credit, but also noted that she reached a point where this wasn’t the best option for her any more

I admire athletes who can do amazing feats, but this seems crazy. Crazy, as in, someone should have stopped her from continuing.

Obviously, I need to change my name to Kip Something!

Pretty cool.