How to train for and run your first marathon.

inishing your first marathon is an exciting, rewarding, and emotional experiF ence and may well be one of the highlights of your life. I certainly remember

bursting into tears after finishing my first 26.2-miler, at age 19, without even

knowing why. Maybe it was just the relief of finishing, but I suspect it was more

related to the fact that I had just completed a distance that I had grave doubts about finishing, and I had overcome a major challenge.

A study reported by the American College of Sports Medicine in 2006 tells that the average dropout rate among first-time marathoners is 70 percent. The reason this dropout rate is so high is listed as “the intensity of a marathon-training program.” This appalling statistic tells us that training for and running a marathon is a huge commitment, far more than most aspiring marathoners would think.

Clearly then, training for and running 26.2 miles is not something to be taken lightly. Many runners get caught up in the mystique and allure of the marathon before they’re ready for it, and they pay the price. There are lots of ways to train for the marathon, all with some level of success; but one absolute law for this event stands out above all others: If you are not prepared for it, it’s not going to be a pleasant experience. So before you decide to do a marathon, have a long, hard think about the time, the discipline, and (literally) the blood, sweat, and tears that you are going to have to put in to cross that distant finish line.

My objective in writing this training article is not only to help you finish your first marathon but also to make it a pleasant experience, both the training and the event itself. (But I’m not saying it will be easy!)

Iam always amazed at people who come out of nowhere, train for six months (or less), and then run a marathon. I take my hat off to them, because that’s certainly not how I would go about this task. It is possible, with a lot of guts, to run a marathon on minimal training. People do it all the time. A study on first-time marathoners by Grant et al. (1984) shows that high mileage may not be as necessary as we believe, at least to finish a marathon. This group found that marathon runners do not need excessively high volumes of mileage to complete their event. These researchers surveyed 88 beginner runners in the 1982 Glasgow Marathon and found they averaged only 60 kilometers (38 miles) per week for 12 weeks before the race, ranging from 24 kilometers (14 miles) to 104 kilometers (64 miles).

But if the truth be told, I certainly would not want to run a marathon on 38 miles per week. I would think these runners were absolutely exhausted and sore at the finish line and, frankly, really glad to cross it! And they probably limped around like a lame duck for several weeks afterward, vowing never to run another marathon, ever. I suspect, sadly, that the sport loses a lot of fine runners who, if their first experience were more positive, would continue to run marathons and see what sort of time they could squeeze out of themselves given more advanced training.

Here’s my agenda: all you need to know about finishing your first marathon relatively intact, while enjoying the experience.

What are the prerequisites for running your first marathon?

How much running is necessary to complete a marathon?

Bw Ne

The physiological benefits and adaptations from marathon training

4. Designing your training schedules—how far should you be running? 5. Designing your training schedules—how slow (or fast) should you be running?

6. Designing your training schedules—how long should your conditioning phase last? 7. Using periodization in your training schedules 8. Limitations of running high mileage only 9. Avoiding injuries and leg soreness 10. The principle of recovery 11. Supplementary training—strength training 12. Supplementary training—cross-training 13. Preparation for your first marathon—carbohydrate loading 14. Preparation for your first marathon—tapering 15. Running your first marathon—pacing strategies 16. What to do when you finish

17. Weekly marathon training schedule for beginners

What are the prerequisites for running your first marathon?

Let’s start with the basics. How long should you be running before attempting your first marathon? I get asked this question all the time. When I tell aspiring marathoners they should be running consistently for four or five days a week for a solid two or three years before running a marathon, most shrug their shoulders and walk away, muttering that that is too long to wait. Fine. Do it the hard way and suffer the consequences.

But I often hear back from the wise few who listen, go away and train hard for a year or three, and trot through their first marathon without any ill effects. They tell me that they are glad they did it this way. They usually end with, “Now I want to get my time down. What training do I need to do?” They’re hooked on marathons and have just become intermediate-level marathoners.

Considering that there is a respectable learning curve even in something as simple as long-distance running, logic would dictate that you should be able to complete the 10K distance and the half-marathon comfortably before attempting a full marathon. There are lots of lessons to be learned from racing the shorter distances. In fact, many beginners run the half-marathon as a rite of passage to prepare for the 26.2-miler. So get lots of 10Ks and half-marathons under your belt before making the transition to the marathon.

And we’ll also assume that you are healthy and injury free when you start your marathon-training journey. Those niggling knees, sore hips, and touchy Achilles tendons are not going to feel better as you pile on the miles. The injury demon has a nasty way of attacking your weakest spots as your running accumulates. So get those injuries rehabbed and strengthened before you start training.

How much running is necessary to complete a marathon?

No one flukes a good marathon. Completing a marathon has to be prepared for the hard way—simply by doing lots of running. I have coached and known thousands of marathon runners in a running and coaching career spanning 42 years and can tell you that a large percentage of runners toe the marathon start line without even knowing whether they are going to finish. I would prefer that my runners eliminate the guesswork and line up with confidence, knowing that based on recent training, getting across the finish line is a given. Thus, your first priority should be putting in lots of conditioning miles to ensure that you can go the distance—there are no shortcuts to running 26.2 miles.

Iam often asked how many miles per week you should crank out to be able to finish a marathon. I wish there was a one-size-fits-all answer, but there isn’t. My former mentor, Arthur Lydiard, would have said, “The key is 100 miles per week.” However, it is clear that even many elite runners cannot handle 100 miles per week, let alone beginners. Whether it’s faulty biomechanics, lower motivation

levels, an immune system that crashes under this stress, or an inability to provide enough energy to sustain this volume of running, many people just can’t run this much without breaking down.

For the beginning marathoner, the key to success is to establish how much you can handle before breaking down and then work within that range to allow a safety margin for good health and injury prevention. It’s my belief that rather than using a one-size-fits-all 100-miles-per-week guideline, we need to find our personal limit, and I believe it’s somewhere between 60 and 90 miles per week.

Leven have some science to back this claim up. Fink et al. (1977) have shown that maximal oxygen uptake (aka VO,max) increases in runners who do between 50 and 75 miles per week. Beyond that, lab tests show no further improvement. Costill (1986) theorizes that optimal mileage for runners is between 60 and 90 miles per week. This, he claims, is the point of diminishing returns. Costill also advises that runners who cannot handle 60 miles per week are better off running less than this to avoid becoming overstressed or overtrained (Costill).

A study by Lumian and Krumdick (1965) of marathon runners found that 60 percent ran 45 to 52 miles per week and a staggering 40 percent ran more than 100 miles per week. These figures for the 60 percent are closer to my recommendations.

The physiological benefits and adaptations from marathon training

Long, steady-paced running causes a myriad of desirable physiological changes and adaptations that improve our performance in aerobic events such as the marathon. Here is a list.

Physiological parameter Benefits of high-mileage aerobic conditioning

Maximal oxygen uptake —_ Develops aerobic capacity (VO,max) to its optimal level

Economy of movement We can run at our highest speed utilizing less oxygen. We use less energy to run at the same pace.

Cardiac output (CO) Develop CO to its maximum. Increase oxidative capacity in our cardiac muscle.

Blood volume Increase red blood cells and hemoglobin levels, resulting in better oxygen transport to the working muscles.

Muscle-cells fuel storage Increase our storage of ATP, glycogen, fats. Burn these substrates more efficiently. Increase number and size of mitochondria.

Muscle tissue Increase strength of joints, connective tissue, and resistance to eccentric-muscle damage from longdistance running. Continued recruitment of fasttwitch muscle fibers when slow-twitch fibers are fatigued.

Capillary beds Increase our capillary network, resulting in better blood (and oxygen) perfusion into the muscle and better removal of CO,.

Enzymatic activity Increase glycolytic and oxidative enzymes.

Designing your training schedules—how far should you be running?

Now that I’ve sold you on the importance of developing your aerobic-conditioning base, let’s look at the nuts-and-bolts guidelines to putting your training schedules together.

Beginning marathoners are better off concentrating on one or two longer weekly runs to develop their endurance enough to finish the 26.2-mile distance, even if they do little running between them. I know this sounds controversial, because we’ve all read about the high-intensity training sessions that the elite marathoners do,

and many of us love to tear up the track on interval-training workouts. However, remember that elite marathoners have been at the game for many, many years, and they are clearly biomechanically and physiologically gifted to have gotten that far. For the rest of us mortals, it’s OK to sacrifice speed for mileage, especially for our first time round the 26.2-mile block—but more about that later.

I’ve always preached that if you can run 22 miles, you can run the full marathon, so that distance would be a good training goal to strive for. Now, 22 miles is a long way, so why this distance? These long endurance runs are what will get you across the marathon finish line. Running this distance dips your body into the “damage territory” experienced during the full marathon.

The formidable list of damage done during long runs of two- to three-hour duration includes ruptures and tears in the muscle fibers, depleted glycogen stores, severe inflammation, spillage of intracellular contents outside the muscle, swelling, displaced red and white blood cells, degenerated mitochondria, and high levels of stress hormones, to name a few. This may not sound like much fun, but it is necessary for your muscles to adapt to the wear and tear of long-distance running efforts by repairing themselves and becoming stronger.

Does this mean that you should do a 22-miler every weekend? Certainly not. I would be thrilled if you manage one or two in the final three months before your marathon (see my training schedules at the end of this article). A couple of 22-milers backed up by a respectable number of 15- to 20-milers will have you trotting across the finish line feeling in fine fettle.

There is an additional benefit to getting used to running nonstop for 176 minutes (eight minutes per mile) to 198 minutes (nine minutes per mile) over 22 miles. That is the mental toughness and psychological confidence you will gain from doing these extended training runs. And don’t underestimate the power of believing in yourself as you gain confidence from hard training. Many a beginning marathoner has pushed through to the finish on the sheer willpower and mental toughness developed during those long Sunday-morning runs.

Certainly many runners have prepared for the marathon by running less than this distance on their long runs, but remember, my goal is to have you finish your first marathon in good condition, without feeling that you are going to die. Many of the runners I have coached tell me, after completing their first marathon, that they hated me during the conditioning phase but loved me when they finished because the long running schedules prepared them so well for the actual marathon.

Designing your training schedules—how slow (or fast) should you be running?

My marathon coach in New Zealand was Barry Magee, the bronze medalist in the 1960 Rome Olympic Marathon. Barry had a distinguished running career, competing well into his 50s, and was the best coach I’ve ever had. I asked Magee to coach me when I turned senior, at 21, and was very apprehensive when suddenly my weekly mileage approached 100 miles. Barry’s advice was simple. “Keep it very slow, as slow as you can jog, and you’ll soon adapt.” So suddenly, I was jogging along at 7:30 to 8:00 per mile—a pace I considered ridiculously slow compared with my standard training pace of 6:00 to 7:00 per mile. Nevertheless, I persevered. Soon I was handling 100 miles per week and feeling stronger each week, even tackling Lydiard’s (in)famous 22-mile hill circuit through Auckland’s watershed mountain range known as the Waiatarua. Eventually I could cruise around it effortlessly at 6:00-minutes-per-mile pace. I just seemed to get faster each week.

So when you’re just starting out, run very, very slowly. Keep moving, and keep it slow. The reason I insist that you run at a slow pace is that you want your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones to adapt to the new stress you’re putting on your body. If your training is too fast, your body will rebel and you’ll get sick or injured. You’ll also find, as I did back in the day, that when you start marathon training, your breathing adapts quickly and there is a lag time for your musculoskeletal system to adjust. It is unwise to force this phenomenon by running faster. Stay slow.

And if you’re concerned that doing long, slow running will make you run slowly in the marathon, be assured that science shows that there is indeed an important place for low-intensity (slow) training. A study by Esteve-Lanao et al. (2007) compared the influence of different volumes and intensities on performance in eight subelite runners. This study found a strong relationship between time spent training at low intensity (below ventilatory threshold) and 4K and 10K performances.

Further proof of the value of low-intensity endurance training was provided by Fiskerstrand and Seiler’s study (2004) of Norwegian rowers. Between 1970 and 2001 they showed improvements in VO,max of 12 percent and improved six-minute rowing ergometer performance by 10 percent when low-intensity training volume increased by 20 percent, from 924 hours a year to 1,128 hours a year over this time period.

Researcher Paul Laursen (2010) investigated the relationship between highvolume and high-intensity training by looking at dozens of research papers and concluded that, “it would appear that the insertion of low-intensity training sessions has a positive impact on performance, despite being performed at an intensity that is markedly lower than that which is performed during intense competition.” In other words, you can still run fast on slow training.

And if you persist with your slow running, you’ll find that your pace will pick up quite naturally without any conscious extra effort on your part. You’ll suddenly find yourself cruising at a much faster speed—my best description of this is that your running seems to “flow.” This is simply a meshing of your musculoskeletal and cardiorespiratory systems and the other physical adaptations listed above; in short, you’re getting fitter!

Designing your training schedules—how long should your conditioning phase last?

Depending on your starting fitness, you will need six to 10 weeks of higher mileage to reap the benefits of steady aerobic training. Costill (1986) believes that we need several weeks of aerobic training because our body adapts quite slowly to it. Lydiard preached the benefits of 10 weeks of conditioning.

What I propose with my schedules is a slower and more controlled approach than six to 10 weeks. I’m suggesting four to five months (16 to 20 weeks). These months will be preceded, I hope, by at least one and preferably two or three years of running shorter distances and racing in 8Ks, 10Ks, and half-marathons. My schedules will take you longer to achieve peak aerobic fitness, but you will have less chance of getting sick or injured because I’m deliberately programming recovery into your training mix. This is where a training principle (in this case, really a series of interrelated training principles) called periodization comes in.

Using periodization in your training schedules

One of the biggest training mistakes marathoners make is continuing to grind out the same mileage week after week. I’m always amazed at how many marathoners do the same weekly mileage over the same courses, at the same pace, week in and week out every year. This is a good way to burn out. What I am proposing is that instead of grinding out the same mileage every week, back off your mileage every third week. Cut back during this easy week by simply lopping 25 percent to 40 percent off each training run.

By programming in this lower-mileage recovery week every three weeks, you’ll recover from your long runs better and reduce your chances of overtraining and getting sick. This approach, where your running volume increases for two weeks followed by a shorter, easier week, is called periodization. Its purpose is to enable your body to adapt more efficiently. You’ll bounce back the following week with renewed energy and feel mentally refreshed from the reduced mileage.

How slow should your training efforts be during the regenerative week? Nice and easy: about 60 percent to 70 percent of your maximal heart rate. You should feel that you are cruising well below your standard training pace, and you should be able to talk comfortably while running.

Limitations of running high mileage only

Certainly one of the biggest criticisms of high mileage is that it can lead to excessive “junk miles” done at a slow pace, which is claimed to do little more than boost the runner’s mileage total for the week. The perceived problem is that long-distance training is done considerably slower than racing pace and therefore does little to improve anaerobic capacity and does not develop the neurological patterns of muscle-fiber recruitment that are needed during a race. A well-conducted study by Seiler and Kjerland (2006) found that even well-trained athletes, including elite world-class runners, regularly perform 75 percent of their training at intensities below lactate threshold despite competing at much higher levels.

And I hope my earlier comments about running slowly have put you at ease about this. You can still run fast in marathons off slower training.

The question many keen beginning marathoners ask is: Should I put tempo running and interval training into my training schedules? I say no, not for beginners. My reasoning is that your body will be hard pressed as it is to adapt to long slow running, and the moment you start stressing your legs with high-power anaerobic training, your likelihood of getting injured or sick is greatly increased. I just don’t believe that the potential improvements from higher-intensity training are worth the extra risk of injury.

And there is another reason why I argue against pushing yourself with anaerobic workouts while preparing for your first marathon. I believe that you should

maximize your maximal oxygen uptake before working on your anaerobic-threshold and lactate-clearing abilities. And the way we maximize our oxygen uptake is through long, steady-paced aerobic running.

You can certainly introduce high-intensity workouts when you have completed your first marathon, learned its vital lessons, and are looking to run a faster time. But for now, be content with pushing your aerobic envelope.

Avoiding injuries and leg soreness

The research shows that increasing our mileage suddenly is associated with a higher incidence of injury, but this has also been found with high-intensity training. And you’ll notice that my schedules bring you along very slowly to allow your musculoskeletal system to adapt adequately to the higher mileage. Studies show that long-distance running tends to cause more repetitive-strain injuries, where a weak point in the runner’s bioskeletal framework is worn down over weeks or months of running, and the injury eventually grinds him or her to a halt.

High-intensity training injuries tend to be more of the sudden-strain or pulledmuscle variety, much as you would expect from doing an interval-training workout. Just as many runners are injured during their buildup conditioning phase as are injured during their high-intensity phase. Regardless of the cause, it is wise to allow recovery days between such sessions and to ease into high-volume workouts. So start out your training gradually and train gently. Ensure that your early training efforts are very slow. If possible, run on soft surfaces such as cross-country, golf courses, farmland, forests, dirt trails, or sawdust trails at least a couple of days each week. Your legs will love the reduced impact.

The principle of recovery

Programming rest and recovery into your training schedules ensures some important benefits. You’ll be healthier—which means you’ll have minimal interruptions to your training from illness or injury—so your training will be more consistent. And by adequately recovering from the stress of training, your body’s musculoskeletal and cardiorespiratory systems will adapt faster, making you stronger and aerobically fitter.

The key is to stress or overload your body with a hard workout and then to allow it to recover while it adapts. These days, it is clear that overload (a wellknown training principle; see the sidebar on page 33) and recovery are the magic ingredients of any marathon training program. Overload and recovery are the yin and yang, representing balance in training, if I can get esoteric for a minute.

By following my periodized schedules and using a bit of common sense every day, you should be recovering nicely from the previous day’s running. But you’ll

The principles of progressive overload

¢ To improve, the runner must progressively overload his or her system with more frequency, intensity, or duration of training efforts.

¢ This overload must be enough to cause new adaptations to the body.

¢ Overload by itself is not sufficient to cause improvement. It must be accompanied by recovery to permit adaptation to take place.

still need to be flexible with your marathon training. Our body does not adapt to training schedules in a linear fashion.

If you’re feeling under the weather, sore, exhausted, or mentally tired, don’t be afraid to take one or two rest days. This might be considered heresy in some running circles, but athletes who can discipline themselves to take the occasional day off when they are exhausted will recover faster than those who doggedly stick to their training schedules every day in spite of how they feel.

Supplementary training—strength training

Ihave reviewed 10 well-conducted, peer-reviewed studies that look at the effects of strength training on running performance and many others that have looked at the effects of strength training on running’s close cousins, cycling and crosscountry skiing. Almost without exception, these studies indicate that resistance training boosts distance running, cycling (Loveless et al. 2005), and cross-country skiing (Mikkola et al. 2007) performance.

But should the beginning marathoner start pumping weights? I have concerns that beginning marathoners will have enough difficulty recovering from their training runs without piling the extra energy demands of two to three weight-training sessions each week on top of a demanding running program. My advice here is that if you already were doing strength training before you took up marathon training, continue to do one or two weight-training workouts each week. Do them on your short running days. If you were not doing weights consistently beforehand, I would skip the weights.

Supplementary training—cross-training

Overuse injuries are the bane of the marathoner’s existence. One way to sidestep niggling soreness and injuries and to do something different for variety is to replace your shorter recovery jogging with other forms of cross-training. This can be done one or two days a week.

Most of the research puts cycling at the top of the supplementary-activities list for running. At the very least, cycling appears to preserve and maintain running fitness when the runner does fewer running workouts or ceases running for a while (such as when injured). Even more exciting is that several research papers, including Mutton et al. 1993 and Tanaka 1994, show that the right type of cycling (that is, higher-intensity) actually improves our running. Cycling also enables runners to increase their workout intensity without causing the muscle and joint damage that running presents.

Preparation for your first marathon—carbohydrate loading

The process of eating and drinking a carbohydrate-rich diet for several days before amarathon is called carbohydrate loading or glycogen loading. This practice builds up huge stores of glycogen in our muscle cells. The supersaturation of glycogen into our muscles is far more preferable for running than using fat for fuel, because glycogen is our premium high-octane energy fuel—and we can store only about 2,000 calories worth of it in our muscles and liver.

The research on this procedure, literally several hundred papers, is unequivocally in favor of the practice (Hawley et al. 1997). And it can make a huge difference to how you run and feel in your marathon if you do it right. Overall, performance improvement is conservatively estimated to be 2 percent to 3 percent. For a threehour marathoner, your time would be 3.6 to 5.4 minutes faster, certainly making carbohydrate loading worthwhile. And many marathoners believe it makes them much faster than that.

The topic of carbohydrate loading is far too detailed and lengthy to get into here. To find out the nuts and bolts of the topic, you can read any of the several sports-nutrition books at your local bookstore. I’ve found Monique Ryan’s book Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes to be particularly helpful with this.

Preparation for your first marathon—tapering

Running studies that used races, outdoor time trials, treadmill run time to exhaustion, and treadmill time trials to assess performance after tapering have proved gratifyingly successful.

How much could we expect to carve off our marathon times if we follow a judicious tapering program? Studies done on runners show improvements ranging from 1.1 percent to 6.3 percent. Conservative estimates are that we could expect to improve our time from | percent to 3 percent (possibly higher if combined with glycogen loading). Hewson and Hopkins (2001) concluded that correct tapering would improve your marathon performance up to 3 percent. Thus a three-hour marathoner could expect to run from 1.8 minutes to 5.4 minutes faster—certainly significant improvements!

The synergistic effect of tapering and carbohydrate loading

Walker et al. (2000) found that six days of tapering combined with a high-carbohydrate diet increased carbohydrate utilization during cycling at 80 percent of VO, max. Another research paper looked at the effects of tapering combined with carbohydrate loading (with a diet of about 60 to 70 percent carbohydrates) for four days before an endurance event. Glycogen stores in liver and muscle tissue almost doubled, resulting in significant improvements in marathon performances, up to 15 minutes.

To accomplish a reduction of 50 percent to 60 percent in your tapering program, start three weeks out by dropping your mileage by 20 percent. In the second week of the taper, drop your mileage by another 20 percent, and the final week before the marathon, drop another 20 percent. Many marathoners simply cut out one or two training days from their program during these tapering weeks and reduce the length of some of their other runs.

Running your first marathon—pacing strategies

You want your first marathon to be as positive an affair as you can make it. Therefore, choose a beginner-friendly (flat) course put on by a well-organized race-direction company. Beware the hilly course. This handicap will affect your finishing time or even your ability to finish. Choose a flat course, and run it like a metronome.

It’s crucial for you to start your marathon at a pace you can maintain all the way to the finish. This is extraordinarily difficult for most runners but does improve with every marathon outing. Ideally, you’ll run an even pace the entire distance, or better still, the second half of your marathon will be faster than your first. This is called negative splits, and the vast majority of world records from one mile up have been achieved in this fashion.

There are many pace charts available in books and on the Internet that provide you with split times according to your predetermined pace. Use them to establish a chart of even split times to carry with you.

What to do when you finish

Keep moving, gradually slowing down to a walk, to allow your stressed system to attain a steady state and normalize. Stopping suddenly can cause lightheadedness, dizziness, and even fainting if your blood pressure drops too rapidly. Your

cool-down should ease you back down to your resting state gently to begin the repair process of removal of metabolic wastes.

Dozens of research papers have investigated glycogen replenishment after marathons. All find the same thing— your muscle cells have experienced severe glycogen depletion. The studies conclude that complete repletion of glycogen stores requires a high-carbohydrate diet for at least 46 hours and is most rapid during the first 10 hours of recovery.

Edward Coyle, PhD, exercise physiologist at the University of Texas, Austin, says the glycogen you get into your system within the first two hours of stopping is the most crucial. “The muscles absorb glycogen like a sponge,” he says, but “four to six hours after the race, the absorption rate starts to decline.” You need to carbohydrate-load again after the race.

Four hours after the race, you should be recovered enough to eat a full mixed meal, including some protein along with the usual carbohydrates. It’s commonly reported that marathoners have a craving for high-protein foods after the event. For several days after the race, your overall carbohydrate intake should be 65 percent or more of your total caloric intake—that is, if you can stand the sight of another plate of spaghetti or slice of bread.

Summary

This article has presented a holistic approach to running your first marathon primarily based on running long, slow mileage. I make no apologies for this, as long, steady-paced running forms the bedrock of all marathon-training programs. In a society where we like to hurry things along and are impatient for instant success, the temptation is always there for you to thrash your body with higher-intensity training sessions such as interval training and tempo running in its various forms.

My strongest recommendation is that you stick to your long-distance running; that is what will pay off when you’re struggling through those last few miles in the marathon and questioning your sanity in getting involved in something like this. Certainly the faster training will help you run a faster time, but the risk of injury from higher-intensity training, on top of your long, steady running, is often all it takes to push you over the line from good health to illness and injury. Long running is what also prepares you mentally for the marathon, something that is often underestimated by beginners.

Weekly marathon training schedule for beginners

These schedules are by time rather than by miles. This offers you the advantage of running slower on the days you feel fatigued, rather than feeling obliged to

cover a set distance that you might have on your schedule. You’ll also find that as you progress, you’ll cover more distance in this time than you did previously, as your pace naturally picks up.

Figures indicate minutes of running in each session.

The two shortest days can be cross-training (cycling, swimming).

Day 6 and day 7 can be swapped for your preference.

Week Day1 Day2 Day3 Day4 Day5 Day6 Day7 Total 1 30 Rest 45 30 Rest 60 45 210 30 Rest 60 30 Rest 80 50 250 30 Rest 65 35 Rest 90 60 280 20 Rest 45 30 Rest 60 45 200 35 Rest 75 35 Rest 100 70 315 40 Rest 85 35 Rest 110 715 345 30 Rest 45 30 Rest 70 50 225 45 Rest 95 40 Rest 120 80 380 9 45 Rest 100 45 Rest 130 85 405 10 30 Rest 50 35 Rest 80 60 255 11 50 Rest 110 45 Rest 140 90 435 12 50 Rest 110 45 Rest 150 90 445 13 30 Rest 60 40 Rest 90 70 290 14 45 Rest 120 45 Rest 160 90 460 15 45 Rest 120 45 Rest 190 90 490 16 30 Rest 60 40 Rest 90 75 295 17 50 Rest 120 45 Rest 190 90 495 18 50 Rest 120 45 Rest 210 90 515 19 30 Rest 75 40 Rest 90 75 310 20 50 Rest 120 45 Rest 180 90 485 21 40 Rest 60 30 Rest 60 30 210 22 30 Rest 40 30 Rest 40 30 170 23 20 Rest 30 Rest Rest Marathon

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References

Costill, D. 1986. Inside Running: Basics of Sports Physiology. Indianapolis, IN: Brown and Benchmark Press.

Esteve-Lanao, J., C. Foster, S. Seiler, and A. Lucia. 2007. Impact of training intensity distribution on performance in endurance athletes. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 21(3):943-949.

Fink W., D. Costill, and M. Pollock. 1977. Submaximal and maximal working capacity of elite distance runners. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 301:323-327.