How You Can Train Like Andreas Almgren

Enter a recent race and a goal marathon time, and our calculator scales the training behind Almgren’s New York City Marathon win to a 16-week plan at your level.

Last Updated: Nov 6, 2026 7:18 pm

Michael Doyle

Michael Doyle

Editor-In-Chief: Michael has over 15 years working in running media, attending and reporting on some of the biggest events in running at that time. A dedicated runner and student of the sport, he is also an investigative journalist and editor based in Toronto

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Train like Almgren

Andreas Almgren. Photo: Nike

Andreas Almgren won the New York City Marathon on Nov. 1 in 2:06:01, in his first race at the distance, after a 10-week block he designed himself. Our analysis of that block, drawn from his training log, his lactate readings, his COROS watch data and his own accounts of how he trains, showed a runner who did almost no all-out running and a great deal of running at carefully controlled efforts just below his threshold.

Very few of his numbers transfer directly to other runners. He peaked at 150 miles a week, and his threshold pace is faster than most runners can race a 5K. What does transfer is the structure: how fast each kind of session is relative to his threshold, how his weekly volume rose and fell across the block, and how his long runs changed from one week to the next.

The calculator below applies that structure to your own fitness. Enter a recent race, your goal marathon time and your current weekly volume, and it builds a 16-week plan in his proportions: a five-week base phase modeled on his track-season training, followed by his marathon block, with the weeks lost to his world half-marathon taper and an illness filled in. You can download the finished plan as a PDF, a calendar file or a spreadsheet.

Your Numbers

Build your version of his block

Enter a race from the past two months, the marathon time you’re aiming for and what you run in a typical week now. Heart rate is optional.

Recent race

Time as h:mm:ss or mm:ss

Goal marathon

h:mm:ss

Current weekly volume

Miles per week, averaged over the past month

Threshold heart rate (optional)

Your average heart rate in an all-out 30 to 60 minute effort. Leave blank if you don’t know it.

Plan dates

Weeks numbered 1 to 16, with no dates. Choose a race date to add dates and a calendar file.

Units

Your Plan

A 16-week build toward your goal

How He Measures Effort

Everything is set from his threshold

Almgren steers his training by blood lactate rather than by pace, and almost every session is run at a fixed fraction of his threshold, the fastest pace he can hold for about an hour. Here are his zones as a percentage of his threshold speed, applied to yours: 100 percent is threshold, and lower numbers are slower.

ZoneYou% of threshold speedAlmgren

Your threshold pace is estimated as the pace you could hold for about an hour, from your recent race (Riegel formula, which tends to be optimistic for runners new to the marathon). His threshold is about 2:43/km, from his 12 x 1K benchmark at about 3 mmol. Heart rate ranges, where shown, use the same fractions of his threshold heart rate of 168 that COROS recorded. Lactate figures are his targets, for readers who test.

Your Volume

Sixteen weeks

A five-week base phase modeled on his track-season base week, then his 10-week marathon block and race week. Where his block was interrupted by the world half-marathon taper and an illness, the plan fills in a normal cutback week and a return to full training.

Red marks show his actual weeks, scaled to your peak. Weekly increases are capped at about 10 percent and the peak at about 25 percent above what you run now, within a ceiling set by your goal time.

Your Threshold Days

How much of his double threshold system to use

Double threshold, two controlled threshold sessions in one day, is how he fits a large volume of quality running into a week. It suits only runners with a large aerobic base. The calculator assigns one of three formats from your predicted marathon and planned peak volume.

Easy runs make up the rest of each week. In a week with a hard long run, cut the second threshold session to about half. Strides twice a week, as he does, keep leg speed without any VO2 max work.

Your Long Runs

Four long runs, each faster than the last

His four hard long runs, rebuilt at your paces and capped at three hours, in the same weeks of the block as his. The last comes three weeks before race day, as his did. Each bar is one run, shaded by pace.

The third run keeps the exact shape of his 40K progression: four equal blocks at about 85, 95, 100 and 105 percent of marathon-pace speed. He held a little back in these runs so he could recover within two days.

His Principles

The rules behind the numbers

What he has said about how he trains, and how each idea is built into your plan.

Don’t be greedyHe has said that injuries cost him three Olympic Games, mostly when he added too much. When a plan offers a range, he takes the lower end, and he chose a 25K run over a 30K one in his final weeks.In your plan: capped increases, and the shorter option in the taper.

Never all out in trainingEven hard sessions should feel like floating, he says. Going past the intended effort costs him days of recovery.In your plan: threshold work at 2 to 3 mmol, or below about 93 percent of threshold heart rate.

Find the bottleneckComing from the track, speed was not what limited him. Long runs, LT1 work and durability were, so the block was built around them.In your plan: no VO2 max sessions in the marathon block.

Finish the long runs fastHe needed to run well after an hour and a half of running, so his long runs got faster toward the end.In your plan: the four-run ladder.

Train for the courseHe ran his long runs on hills chosen to resemble New York, and in race week he ran the final 6K of the course on several days.In your plan: match your long-run routes to your race course.

Practice fueling all yearHe drank during threshold reps and took about 120 grams of carbohydrate an hour in long runs for a year before the race.In your plan: race fueling in every long run, at 60 to 90 grams an hour.

Move up graduallyHe takes two to three weeks to move from base training to race-specific work, bringing the faster sessions in gradually.In your plan: the five-week base phase before the block.

Stay consistentHe credits two years without a major injury for his results, and he takes days off at the first sign of pain rather than training through it.In your plan: skip a session rather than force it.

Race Day

A negative split, the way he ran New York

He ran the second half 2:07 faster than the first and stayed below his threshold heart rate until the last 5K. A gentler version suits most runners: about 1 percent slower than goal pace through halfway, and about 1 percent faster after it.

This is a framework drawn from one elite athlete’s training, not individual coaching. If you are new to the marathon, injured or returning from a break, start below these numbers.

Take It With You

Download your plan

All 16 weeks, day by day, with your paces filled in.

Training apps such as TrainingPeaks, Garmin Connect and COROS don’t import plans from a file like these, so the spreadsheet is the quickest way to copy sessions into one. Nothing you enter here leaves your browser.

How the Plan Is Built

The plan keeps three things from Almgren’s training intact. Every session is set as a fraction of threshold, the fastest pace you could sustain for about an hour, because that is how he sets his own training, using blood lactate readings rather than pace. His four long runs keep their shape, getting faster toward the end and faster from one run to the next. And the plan keeps his restraint: weekly increases are capped, the taper takes the shorter option, and no session asks for an all-out effort.

Two things change. The volume is scaled to you, with a peak no more than about 25 percent above what you run now. And his double threshold days, with two controlled sessions on the same day, are assigned only to runners with the fitness and volume to absorb them. Most runners get two threshold sessions a week on separate days, much like Norwegian singles. Runners predicted to finish under about 3:15 who will peak at 50 miles a week or more run the two sessions on consecutive days, with a night’s sleep between them, which keeps the rhythm of his hard days without asking for a second session on the same day. Full double threshold is reserved for runners predicted under 2:40 who will peak at 100 miles a week or more.

Before You Start

The plan assumes you have been running consistently for at least two months and are healthy. Race-time predictions from shorter races tend to be optimistic for runners new to the marathon, so if the calculator says your goal is ambitious, take it seriously. Almgren’s own rule for the final weeks before a race was that, when in doubt, he chose the shorter option.

This is a framework drawn from one elite runner’s training, not individual coaching. If you work with a coach, share the plan with them before you begin.