Who is this plan for?
This plan is aimed at runners who already run up to 20 kilometres per week. If you’re not yet here I would suggest building up to this distance prior to starting this plan.
When should you start the plan?
This plan should be started 16 weeks prior to your marathon. Before starting the plan, you should have been running for at least 6 months, have completed a 5K or 10K race, be free of injuries, be running several times a week recently, and have completed a long run of at least 1 hour recently.
What does the training look like?
This plan includes 5 to 6 weekly runs in most weeks with 4 to 5 runs in recovery weeks every fourth week. Cross-training can be used as a substitute for one of your scheduled weekly runs to help avoid injury and to speed recovery while maintaining aerobic fitness. Long runs are scheduled for the weekends and build from 1 hour 40 minutes in Week #1 to 3 hours in Week #15.
Workouts included in this training plan includes recovery runs, threshold runs, interval runs, progressive runs, continuous hills and long runs. This structure enables us to stimulate desired training adaptations, ensure each run has a purpose and train efficiently. This will help reduce the risk of overtraining; burnout and injury ensuring you arrive at race day in peak physical condition. The frequency, intensity and duration of the workouts is adjusted each week in a progressive manner in order to meet the desired objectives for that training block.
Do you need any devices or apps?
A heart rate monitor or pacing device is not required for this training plan but may prove helpful. Note that this plan does not include expected workout TSS and does not use the TrainingPeaks “Workout Builder” format. TSS, however, is still calculated on completion of every workout.