London Marathon 2027 Training Plan

Your day is fixed, so count back from it

London Marathon Events drew each ballot runner a day at random and does not change days, and you can run in person on one day only. The route is the same on both. The Saturday start is likely to be 09:00 and the Sunday start 09:30 (2027 Double FAQs). The men's elite, Championship and Good for Age starts are on Saturday and the women's on Sunday, and both mass races are mixed fields (London Marathon Events, 30 September 2026).

Counted back from Sunday 25 April, a 16-week plan starts on Monday 4 January 2027 and an 18-week plan on Monday 21 December 2026. If you run on Saturday, count back from the 24th and every day of the plan comes one day sooner: the last long run, the taper, race week, the shakeout and your carbohydrate days. A plan written for Sunday and run on Saturday leaves you a day short where it matters most, in the final week.

• November and December: the base, easy running that brings you to the first week of the build ready for it.
• 21 December 2026 or 4 January 2027: an 18-week or a 16-week build begins (Sunday runners; Saturday runners a day earlier).
• 27 February to 14 March 2027: the weekends 6 to 8 weeks out, the window for a prep half marathon.
• 27 March to 4 April 2027: the weekends 3 to 4 weeks out, for the dress rehearsal at marathon pace. The taper starts about three weeks out.
• 24 or 25 April 2027: race day.

The weeks before the build

From early November, London is about 25 weeks away, which is longer than most plans. The spare weeks are for arriving at the start of the build already able to do its first week. Brant Stachel, who coaches age-group marathoners, starts a 16-week build with four or five running days, easy runs of 50 to 60 minutes and a long run of 80 to 90 minutes, then adds about 10 minutes a week to the long run for the first four weeks, which are easy running only (Strength Running, 1 October 2026). If that is where you are now, November and December are steady easy running with strides. If it is not, they are how you get there.

If London will be your first marathon and you run little today, you have about the runway coaches ask for. Kim Conley, a two-time Olympian who coaches recreational runners, wants about six months to take someone from nothing to a marathon, and has them comfortable with two hours on their feet before the marathon-specific weeks begin (Ali on the Run Show, episode 885). Start with the running you can do comfortably now and build from there; see the guide on base building.

A build through a British winter

In London the sun sets before 4pm through December and rises after 8am from mid-December to mid-January, and Greenwich averages a daytime high of about 9 C in December and 8 C in January (Met Office, Greenwich 1991 to 2020 averages). If you run before or after work, most of those runs are in the dark until the clocks go forward on 28 March. Give each run a place. The long run goes in weekend daylight, because it needs the most time, light and good footing. Workouts go where you can see the ground: a lit track, a lit loop or a treadmill. Easy runs are the ones that work in the dark, run by feel at a pace you could talk at. The post on running in the dark covers being seen.

Decide your bad-weather rule before the evening. Thomas Nobbs, a 2:09 marathoner, moves a workout indoors when the humidity is over 90 percent or the wind is over 20 km/h (Human Performance Outliers, episode 500). Pick your own line, so a wet, windy Tuesday is decided before you are standing at the window. On ice, run by effort and let the pace go.

Christmas and New Year fall either in your base or in the first week of your build. Write those weeks as they will really be, with the travel, the family days and the late nights, rather than as the plan imagines them. If your plan has a lighter week near Christmas, put it there. A run you miss is not made up, and after a missed week you start back with a short run (see what a missed week costs). Consistency across January and February matters far more than any single week.

The build, on London's calendar

The order of work is the same as for any marathon: easy volume first, then the long run, marathon-pace work, threshold running and intervals, with strength alongside. The marathon training guide sets out each piece. Fuel every run over about 90 minutes and practice your race-day fueling on the long runs (see training your gut).

A prep half marathon is optional and worth having for a reason. Chris McClung, who coaches recreational road runners at Running Rogue, places a half 4 to 8 weeks before a marathon, better 6 to 8. It is there to practice race-day details and race pace without digging a hole, and if you race it all out it gets an easier week before and after. A runner who cannot hold back in a race, or who would lose confidence from a flat result, is better off skipping it (Running Rogue, episode 420). For London that is a half on 27 or 28 February, 6 or 7 March, or 13 or 14 March 2027. Top marathon coaches do the same with professionals: Ed Eyestone puts one or two halves inside his athletes' 16-week builds as a fitness check and so that not everything rides on one race (Set the Pace, April 2025).

Three to four weeks out comes the dress rehearsal: 90 to 100 minutes straight at marathon pace in your race shoes, with your race breakfast and race fueling, on ground like the course. It is worth running once you have done 60 to 70 minutes straight at marathon pace (Stachel, in the episode above). For a Sunday runner, 3 to 4 weeks out is 28 March to 4 April; for a Saturday runner, 27 March to 3 April. Sunday 28 March is Easter Sunday and the night the clocks go forward, so you lose an hour of sleep before it. Saturday 27 March, Easter Monday or the next weekend suit it better, and start it at your race start time. Your biggest long run starts the taper, about three weeks out (see the guide on tapering).

The course

The race starts on three separate lines, and the three fields meet for the first time just before Mile 3, in Woolwich. Miles 1 to 3 are on wide roads, net downhill and crowded. From there the course runs west through Greenwich, past the Cutty Sark between Miles 6 and 7, and over Tower Bridge near halfway, with an incline just before the bridge. Miles 4 to 14 are relatively flat with a small net drop. The second half loops through Docklands and Canary Wharf, then runs back along The Highway and the Victoria Embankment to Birdcage Walk and the finish on The Mall (London Marathon course). The same page warns that GPS struggles among the tall buildings between Miles 15 and 20, so pace off the mile markers there, not your watch.

The start is where London is lost. A downhill in a crowd, with the noise, pulls the first miles fast, and the time you bank there you pay back in the last ten miles. Plan your first three miles slower than goal pace, settle into your pace once the fields have merged, and aim for even halves, near 49/51 (see the guide on race-day pacing). Practice that start in your long runs: begin the first miles easier than you want to and finish on pace.

April weather

Greenwich averages a daytime high of about 15 C in April (Met Office averages, above), which is good marathon weather. It is not guaranteed. The 2018 race was the hottest London Marathon, with 24.1 C recorded at St James's Park (BBC News), after a previous record of 22.7 C in 1996 (Met Office). After a winter of training in single-figure temperatures, a warm race morning can be your first warm run since the autumn.

Look at the forecast from the start of race week and set your goal for the day you will get, not the day you trained for. On a warm day, run by effort and not by pace, start more conservatively and drink and fuel from early. In the mid-70s F (about 24 C) with high humidity, add 20 to 30 seconds a mile (see the guide on race-day pacing). Decide that before the start, not at Mile 18.

Race week on your day

Race week runs to your day. A Saturday runner does the shakeout on Friday, eats the carbohydrate days a day sooner and has breakfast earlier for a start that is likely to be 09:00. A Sunday runner starts about 30 minutes later. Rehearse the breakfast you will eat at that hour on your last long runs, and plan your travel to the start with the earlier time in mind if you are on Saturday. See the guides on race-specific preparation and race-day fueling.

After the race

Recover for about a day of easy activity per mile raced, roughly three weeks: no running until the third day, then two runs in the first week, three in the second and four in the third, with no hard sessions for three weeks (the marathon training guide has the detail).

What Runsense does for a London runner

Runsense is a running coach for everyone. Set London as your race in the app, on the day you were given, and the coach builds your plan back from that date. From November that means base weeks first, then the build that ends on your race morning, and the recovery after it. As you train, the coach reads every run and how you said it felt, and once it has learned your normal, your sleep, HRV and resting heart rate. After a long run that left your legs heavy, it coaches you on whether to keep Thursday's tempo as written or ease it.

Tell it you are in Yorkshire for Christmas with two runs possible that week, or that the evenings are dark now and you will run before work with the treadmill on Thursday, and it reworks the weeks around what you said. If your race date ever changes, change it in the app's Goals screen and the coach reworks the plan around the new day. On an Apple Watch, the coming week's sessions are already in the Workout app, so you open it and tap start. On a Suunto, they arrive as SuuntoPlus guides. After race day, it coaches your recovery from the race you actually ran, then the next goal.