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I've got the bus back from Musselburgh after the other ½ marathon (not the one on Saturday,there was another at a different time of year that also finished at Mussy) and never been a problem.

My other half normally parks the car up near the High Street, and will be doing so again this Sunday, normally some queues at the bus stops but nothing too bad. Put it this way, if it was a choice betwen booking one of the overpriced shuttle buses the organisers put on or catching a normal one I know I'd pick the normal LRT ones every time.

See the thread you posted chief, I've left bus info there.

Bus No's 4, 44, 45 and 26 - all go from centre of Mussy into Edinburgh city centre.

1. Local boy here. Mate, I would park in town where the race starts and then after the race, head up to Musselburgh High Street (5mins walk from the race finish) and get a local bus back - there's quite a few to choose from, you may have to wait a bit cos they'll be busy, but that's what pubs were invented for . . Oh, and they won't get disrupted by the race, the roads are open round that way.

Cheers. Enjoy the race and my home city.

Hi all!

Sorry to butt in, been reading quite a bit of the thread and am someone thinking of following the old HADD plan & looking for some advice from you experienced HADDers.

1st off a bit about me, age 45, started running in 2004 and haven't stopped since!

PB's for distances are:

Marathon, 2.57.44 (Amsterdam 2011). ½ Mara, 1.22.39 (Alloa 2012). 10K, 37.49 (Dunbar 2012). Total Marathons raced: 17.

In 2012 ran 2500 miles and didLondon,EdinburghandColognemaras. Now, this is where the old HADD thing comes in, as someone who for the last coupla years has followed P&D plans with increasing success (i.e. my 1st ever sub 3 mara after numerous close calls), but at London I fell apart near the end and came in at an agonisingly close 3h 13secs, then the 2nd part of last year my running pace took a large step backwards culminating in a complete blowout in Cologne at mile 18 with a 'lovely' 8mile death march to the end. Horrific.

Anyway, I think the reasons for all this could possibly be A. too many miles and fatigue B. Training at the wrong paces. Like I said though, P&D have seen me good but possibly following their schedules may be a bit too much all the time for a bloke my age, so thought I'd give HADD a bash. I'm doing Edi mara on 26th May and currently giving my legs a rest with only 25 slow mpw and 2 days rest at the mo.

I've never run using a HRM before so it's kind of a different mindshift from P&D pace so, things I'm really not sure of and need a bit of info on are:

1. How long into the 'plan' should I start with Sub LT pace runs? I've tested myself between 35 – 40 bpm lower than my max HR (which is 175bpm) and this was coming at in around 7.38mpm pace, I’d like to get that down pretty sharpish as that’s way off my target mara pace (6.50mpm).

2. How long should those initial Sub LT pace runs be? And how long should the longest be?

3. I like to get 5 runs of 20+miles in training for a mara (up to 24miles), at what %HR should I be running these?

4. At what point in the training schedule can I introduce any kind of interval training, if any at all?

5. Warm up races – take it these are OK while doing HADD training? I’ll probably knock out a half and at least 1 10k preEdinburghmara.

6. Really, how long should I keep to the HADD principles before going into a different training regime with faster work i.e. LT runs and Vo2 max runs?

Sorry for all the questions guys, but I just want to get this right, I still feel I’ve sub 3 marathons left in me, but want to go forward with this training rather than backwards, to me it feels like a risk doing so much slow work though I totally understand the principles of HADD and have been doing a lot more slower 70% – 75% running of late and am feeling far fresher for it.

Sorry for all the waffle, and hope you’re all good, and look forward to contributing to the thread.

Cheers!