Before Starting the Schedules
These schedules are challenging right from the start and get harder as your marathon approaches. So that you can progress as the training increases in quantity and quality and to minimize your chances of injury, you should be able to complete the first week of the schedule without too much effort.
Be realistic in assessing whether you’re ready for the first week of the schedule. For example, if you’ve been running 40 miles (64 km) per week and your longest run in the last several weeks is 12 miles (19 km), now isn’t the time to suddenly jump to a 65-mile (105 km) week containing a 17-mile (27 km) run, as the first week of the 18-week schedule calls for. The idea behind the schedules isn’t to make you as tired as possible as soon as possible but to apply repeated training stress that you absorb and benefit from.
As a rule, you should be running at least 55 miles (88 km) a week before starting these schedules, and in the last month, you should have comfortably completed a run close in length to the long run called for in the first week of the schedule.
Reading the Schedules
The schedules are presented in a day-by-day format. This is in response to requests from readers of our first book, Road Racing for Serious Runners, to provide schedules that specify what to do each day of the week.
The main limitation with this approach is that it’s impossible to guess the myriad of outside factors that may influence your day-to-day nonrunning life (assuming you still have one at this level of volume). Work schedules, family life, relationships, school commitments, and Mother Nature all play a part in determining when you get to do your long runs and other aspects of marathon preparation. You’ll no doubt require some flexibility in your training and will need to juggle days around from time to time. That’s expected, and as long as you don’t try to make up for lost time by doing several hard days in a row, you should be able to avoid injury and overtraining. By following the principles covered in the earlier chapters, you will be able to safely fine-tune the training schedules to suit your circumstances.
The schedules express each day’s training in miles and kilometers; use whichever you’re accustomed to. The mile and kilometer figures for each day (and the weekly total) are rough equivalents of each other, not a conversion from one to the other accurate to the third decimal point.
Following the Schedules
Each column of the schedules represents a week’s training. For example, in the 12-week schedule, the column for 11 weeks to goal indicates that at the end of that week you have 11 weeks until your marathon. The schedules continue week by week until race week.
We have included the specific workout for each day as well as the category of training for that day. For example, in the 18-week schedule, on the Monday of the 7-weeks-to-go column, the specific workouts are a 6-mile (10 km) run and a 4-mile (6 km) run, and the category of training for that day is recovery. This aspect of the schedules allows you to quickly see the balance of training during each week and the progression of workouts from week to week. Look again at the 18-week schedule – it’s easy to see that with 7 weeks to go until the marathon, there are two recovery days that week, plus two general aerobic runs, a lactate-threshold session, a long run, and a medium-long run. Looking at the row for Sunday, it’s easy to see how the long runs progress and then taper in the last few weeks before the marathon.
The workouts are divided into the following eight categories: long runs, medium-long runs, marathon-pace runs, general aerobic runs, lactate-threshold runs, recovery runs,
O2max intervals, and speed training. Each of these categories is explained in depth in chapter 7, and the physiology behind the training is explained in chapter 1.
Doing Doubles
As discussed in chapter 4, sometimes marathoners benefit from running twice a day. This is obviously the case for elites cranking out 130-mile (209 km) weeks, but it can also be true for anyone running more than 70 miles (113 km) a week. In these schedules, for example, recovery days of 10 miles (16 km) are often broken into two short runs. Rather than making you more tired, splitting your mileage like this on easy days will speed your recovery because each run will increase blood flow to your muscles yet take little out of you.
As we mention at the beginning of this chapter, we know that not everyone will be able to follow these schedules exactly as they appear. That applies on the days that call for a lactate-threshold workout in the morning and an easy recovery run in the evening. If your schedule makes it more likely that you’ll do a high-quality tempo run in the evening rather than the morning, then simply flip the workouts prescribed for these days. Just be sure to make the short morning run a true recovery run.
When a second run is called for on the day of a medium-long run, however, try to stick to the schedule as written. As explained in chapter 4, a short evening run on these days provides an additional endurance boost, whereas doing a short morning run and a medium-long run in the evening will likely detract from the quality of the medium-long run. Again, though, use your best judgment. If your schedule means that you’ll have to do a midweek medium-long run at 4:30 a.m., you’re probably better off making time for it in the evening.
Racing Strategies
We discussed marathon race strategy at length in chapter 6. If you follow one of the schedules in this chapter, you’ll probably find yourself near the front part of the field once everyone settles into their paces. Still, you might be running with people who aren’t as well prepared as you (e.g., a fit-looking man in his late 20s whose goal is to break 3:00, more because it’s a nice round number than because that’s what his training has prepared him for). If you wind up in a group early on, talk to the others to get a sense of whom you can count on still being there with 10 miles (16 km) to go.
Because of your strong preparation followed by an effective taper, you’ll probably find your goal pace in the early miles quite easy. After all, you were doing long runs with lengthy sections at goal pace in the midst of your heaviest training. Now that you’re rested and are filled with race-day excitement, goal pace should feel eminently doable. You’ll need to be disciplined and resist the temptation to go too fast so that you can use your fitness in the second half of the race and run even splits. Although your outstanding preparation makes you less likely than most to blow up late in the race from a too-hasty start, there’s still no point in squandering months of hard work with an overly ambitious early pace.
After the Marathon
The final schedule in this chapter is a 5-week recovery schedule for after the marathon. This is the fifth mesocycle; it completes the training program and leaves you ready to prepare for future challenges.
The recovery schedule is purposely conservative. You have little to gain by rushing back into training, and your risk of injury is exceptionally high at this point, owing to the reduced resiliency of your muscles and connective tissue after the marathon.
The schedule starts with 2 days off from running, which is the bare minimum of time away from running you should allow yourself. If you still have acute soreness or tightness so severe that it will alter your form, or if you just don’t feel like running, certainly feel free to take more than 2 days off. If ever there was a time to lose your marathoner’s mind-set, the week after your goal race is it. Even most of the top runners in the world take days off after a marathon. They know that the nearly negligible benefits of a short run at this time are far outweighed by the risks. Not running now will also increase your chances of being inspired to resume hard training when your body allows it.