Training for the Marathon

What the marathon asks of you

The marathon is run at a steady effort for hours, mostly on stored carbohydrate and on legs that are getting tired. Three things decide it: an aerobic engine that can hold the pace, legs that keep their strength and form late in the race, and a start and a fueling plan that do not borrow from the finish. Training builds the first two and rehearses the third.

Slowing late is the norm, so plan for it. Among 873,334 Berlin finishers, men slowed 10.7% on average from the first half to the second and women 8.3%, and 17.6% of men and 9.7% of women slowed by 20% or more¹. Your training and your pacing aim to keep your own slowdown small.

Choose a plan from the running you do now

Choose the plan by your recent training, not by its title or your wish. Pick one whose first weeks look like the running you did last month and whose goal time you can run confidently. A recent hard 5K or 10K shows what that time is, and if the plan's goal is well beyond it, step back to a plan for a time you can hold. See the guide on race goal-setting. Plans commonly run 12 to 20 weeks.

Stachel, who coaches age-group marathoners at 35 to 60 miles a week, starts a 16-week build with four or five running days: easy runs of 50 to 60 minutes if they can manage them, and a long run of 80 to 90 minutes that grows by about 10 minutes a week for the first four weeks, which are easy volume only. His 12-week build starts with a long run already a little over two hours, and he holds off on workouts until easy runs are consistently longer than 45 minutes.

Build more gradually than you want. Soreness that carries from run to run, or any ache, means back off. Your body returns quickly to a mileage it has run before, but reaching a new level fast is what injures runners. To go from 45 or 50 miles a week to 60 or 65, add easy volume first and intensity in the next stretch of the build. The usual rhythm is two weeks up and one week down (see the guide on periodization). Size each long run to the running you do now (see the guide on the long run).

Never put two hard workouts back to back, and count a long run that carries pace work as a hard workout.

The order of work

Easy aerobic running comes first, because it is what makes every harder session worth doing. Think of the plan as a triangle with easy volume as its base, and layer the harder work on top in the order it matters for a marathon: the long run, then marathon-pace work, then threshold or tempo running, then intervals, with strength alongside. Without a decent amount of easy running behind you, the workouts give you less and the injury risk is higher, so most marathoners earn the workouts by building the base first. In 16-week blocks before 151,813 marathons, the fastest runners' extra volume came mainly from easy running².

In calendar order, a build starts with easy running, strides and light hills (see the guide on base building), adds threshold and tempo running as the build begins (see tempo and threshold runs), and turns marathon-specific in about the last two months (see race-specific preparation). Speed work in those last weeks stays at 10K pace and no faster, because your legs are already carrying the fatigue of long runs.

One option for a runner with several marathons behind them is to start the build the other way around, with fast but not very tiring work such as fartlek of 1 minute on and 1 minute off at roughly 3K to 10K pace, then longer threshold work, before marathon-specific work takes over. The long run and the weekly mileage keep building through all of it, with little intensity inside them.

The long run

The long run is the key session of the week, and it has a ceiling. For a marathon, three hours is about 16 miles at a slow pace and about 20 at a fast one. Most runners can top out at 16 miles, which is about a quarter to a third of the week's miles, because a 20-miler costs more recovery than it pays back. What a marathon needs is a long run that is not short, built in small steps.

Run it at a conversational pace, about 1 to 2 minutes per mile slower than marathon pace, and finish strong and not destroyed. Practice your race fueling on it. See the guide on the long run for how long, how fast and how to build it.

Marathon-pace work

Marathon-pace running teaches you the pace and the grind. It gives little physiology that a tempo run or intervals would not, so its job is to callus your mind and legs to holding an effort for a long time, to show you what race-day pacing feels like, and to add a long aerobic stimulus. Marathon pace is an effort more than a number. Set it from your current fitness, adjust it by how workouts feel, and do not train at goal pace from the first week. Early in the build it can run a little slower than goal pace.

Start with pieces: for example 2 to 3 x 2 miles at marathon pace with 2 to 3 minutes easy between, so you practice finding the pace, holding it, leaving it and finding it again. A stretch of marathon pace under 30 minutes straight is practice and not a check, because the effort is easy to fake. The check that you can hold the pace is a straight stretch of 30 minutes or more. A mile or two at marathon pace tacked onto the end of a progression run is too little to count as either.

A long run with pace work in it is never longer in time than your longest straight easy run, and the 30 and 30 below waits until you have done two or three easy long runs of about 2.5 hours. Keep the pieces at marathon pace and no faster. Runners who drift toward half marathon pace in the 5-minute pieces often fail to repeat it in the next big workout.

• 5 and 5, early in the build: 2 hours alternating 5 minutes at marathon pace with 5 minutes easy.
• 30 and 30, in the middle of the build while the pace is still being dialed in: 2.5 hours alternating 30 minutes easy with 30 minutes at marathon pace.
• Dress rehearsal, three to four weeks out: 90 to 100 minutes straight at marathon pace, in your race shoes, with race fueling, your race breakfast and ground like the course. It is worth running after you have done 60 to 70 minutes straight at marathon pace, which also tells you your current training pace. In the last three weeks you only sharpen and recover, so find out at 70, 80 or 90 minutes that the pace is not sustainable, not on race day. It should feel a little scary, and that makes you start the pace slowly, which is practice at overriding race-start adrenaline.

Fuel, strength and cross-training

Rehearse fueling on your long runs and marathon-pace runs so race day repeats what you have practiced. Past 90 minutes, take the first gel at 60 to 75 minutes and one about every 30 minutes after that, or every 35 to 40 minutes if your stomach is touchy. If your race plan is 60 to 90 grams of carbohydrate an hour, practice near that rate for 4 to 6 weeks. See the guides on training your gut, carbohydrate during exercise and race-day fueling.

Two lower-body strength sessions a week fit alongside the running. Keep them small and aimed at staying healthy, and keep them off the day before a speed workout or the long run. See the guide on strength training for runners.

If your body breaks down when you add running, add aerobic cross-training instead of more miles. It builds aerobic fitness with less pounding, so you stay consistent, and consistency is the backbone of any plan.

A missed run or a missed week

One missed run, even a long one, is not made up. Do not stack it onto the next week. After a missed week, test with a short run before you go back to the plan. If you get sick or hurt in the taper, run the minimum to arrive healthy.

The last three weeks and race day

Your biggest long run starts the taper, about three weeks before the race. From there volume steps down every week while you keep your run days and a smaller version of your hard sessions. See the guides on tapering and race-specific preparation for the taper, race week and race morning.

On the day, aim for an even pace near 49/51 and start a little patient, then fuel from early. The guides on race-day pacing and race-day fueling cover the day itself.

After the race

Recover for about a day of easy activity per mile raced, roughly three weeks. Do not run until the third day. Then run two days in the first week, three in the second and four in the third, with no quality work for three weeks.

Related guides

For the half marathon, see half marathon training. For how a whole season is arranged, see periodization. For the fueling that goes with the long run, see training your gut.