A month after giving birth to our first child, my wife, Macy, had a crazy idea. She wanted to set a personal best in the marathon. And she wanted to do it soon.
Immediately I hit the local bookstore. It didn't matter that I'm a coach by trade and have been a runner for more than 15 years. I knew a single misstep in planning her training would make her goal impossible (especially because she had already run a respectable 3:09 marathon several years before). Yet the moment I opened the bookstore's doors, I was overwhelmed. At least 40 books on the running shelf claimed to have the secret to great marathon training. Somehow they also appeared to disagree on every detail. I sat down with a stack of books and began reading, certain I would never find the perfect plan for my wife.
I was right. The perfect plan for Macy did not appear in any one of those books. After many hours, I came to a simple conclusion. There will never be a unified theory of marathon training. But by taking the time to analyze how a number of coach-authors handled six key marathon variables, we were able to create a plan that worked around Macy's running experience, temperament, job commitments, and even our daughter's feeding schedule. Sure enough, less than six months after becoming a mother, Macy crossed the finish line with a new PR of 3:08.
More From Runner's World
You don't have to read 40 books to see how different coaches approach marathon training. We've broken down the six main variables and we show you how you can put them all together on your own. It might sound intimidating to tinker with the plans of established coaches, but it might be your best chance at a new marathon PR.
VOLUME
How many miles a week do you run? It's a loaded question every runner gets, a question that reflects the powerful influence of Arthur Lydiard, the late New Zealand coach, whose teachings on aerobic development and periodization remain the underlying principles for nearly every marathon program today.
Perhaps this explains why volume is the most agreed upon marathon training variable. As Lydiard found more than 50 years ago, runners cannot reach their highest potential in the sport without maximizing their aerobic capabilities, and aerobic potential cannot be maximized without running high volume. All the coaches I spoke with had their professionals and dedicated sub-elites routinely running 90–150 miles per week in the name of maximizing this system. As Pete Pfitzinger, a two-time U.S. Olympian and the author of Advanced Marathoning says, "The more volume you can get in for a longer period of time, the better you're going to do."
If such uniformity exists, why do some coaches advocate 40 miles per week in their books and others 150? The answer lies in knowing the target audience and its limitations, says 2:14 marathoner Luke Humphrey, author of Hansons Marathon Method and the head coach of Hansons' online coaching services. He readily acknowledges his book is aimed at runners who must prioritize work and family before their training. He limits the highest mileage in his book to 65 per week, a pedestrian number when compared to the 120- to 150-mile weeks the Hansons team is known for, but suitably challenging for most anyone else. "You're writing a schedule to fit a large percentage of people," he says. "You're not personally coaching those people. You're just giving them a schedule and saying, 'This will work if you follow it.' You're definitely limited in some aspects."
Most nonprofessional runners will see gains in their marathon performance by increasing their volume, irrespective of anything else. At the tip of the elite marathoning iceberg, however, there is a dissenting opinion. Renato Canova, coach of Olympic silver medalist Abel Kirui, is known to throw his hands in the air and ask, "Mileage? What is mileage?" when questioned about what his runners put in each week. "By that he means, 'What are you doing in that mileage?'" says Scott Simmons, the head coach of the American Distance Project and a strong proponent of Canova's system. To Canova, volume is a result of the workouts and aerobic support needed to complete them, not the other way around. Whether that philosophy affects mainstream training has yet to be seen, but it does point to a truism that every other variable exposes: Not all miles are created equal.
THE LONG RUN
Sixteen miles or 24? Sedate pace or blister it on the way home? Take in fluids and gels every 20 minutes or teach the body to burn fat whether it wants to or not?
Every time a long run appears in a training schedule, these questions arise, and they require answers. Today most coaches can pinpoint the exact physiological and psychological benefits they want to accrue from every long run in a marathon buildup, and those benefits necessarily differ each week. All long runs boost endurance and prepare your muscles for the challenges of covering 26.2 miles, but those gains can be amplified by mixing up the types of long runs you perform. While each coach mixes long run intensities in different proportions, the runs themselves can be broken into two distinct categories:
CONVERSATIONAL LONG RUNS
These were Lydiard's bread and butter. Lorraine Moller, the 1992 Olympic marathon bronze medalist who trained her entire career in a Lydiard system and now directs the Lydiard Foundation, says that in the '70s and '80s she ran long runs at an easy pace in an unstructured way. "We'd just go out in big groups and chat and joke around and run in the forest or somewhere nice," she says. "We never worried how fast we were going. We never checked the pace. I never knew how far I actually went. It was always a 'guesstimation.' "
These days many coaches use more specific guidelines when prescribing these types of runs. The Hansons follow the advice of Jack Daniels, who holds a doctorate in exercise physiology, and suggest weekly long runs at a comfortable pace that are roughly 25 percent of total weekly volume. Pfitzinger advocates two long runs per week (one 20–22 miles, the other 14–15) to provide the ideal stimulus. He recommends starting at a pace that is 20 percent slower than marathon pace, then gradually increasing to 10 percent slower during the second half of the run. In both instances, the goals of conversational long runs remain the same: increase the number of capillary beds (helping blood reach the muscles more efficiently), improve muscle and tendon strength, teach the body to burn a higher ratio of fat to carbohydrate, and create a sense of preparation for the challenges of race day.
Pfitzinger, in fact, believes these runs may be more important than overall volume. "I'd be willing to bet that if you're running 100-mile weeks but only do a few 17-milers, you won't be as well-prepared as someone doing 90-mile weeks with lots of long runs," he says.
HIGH INTENSITY LONG RUNS
Many coaches have sought to increase a long run's benefits and race specificity by adding high intensity long runs to their programs. These runs incorporate faster pace segments while still averaging more than 20 miles in length. Some coaches, like Canova, may aim for only four or five high intensity long runs in an entire marathon buildup. Daniels, on the other hand, has his athletes doing intense long runs two out of every three weeks (with a conversational long run on the third week).
Adding high intensity long runs into a marathon program is the next logical step in improving performance, Canova says. "Every time you have some stimuli, it is only in intensity or extension," he says. A runner who has never run 2 hours before will gain benefits from doing such a run and will continue to reap benefits by later running 2:15 and 2:30. At some point those gains start to diminish, Canova says. Then the runner needs to look at increasing the intensity to continue progressing.
To this effect Canova prescribes long runs of 16 to 24 miles at 95 percent of race pace. Hitting a given pace is of utmost importance in these runs; when you can no longer maintain the proper pace, the run ends. Elite Americans like 2:34 marathoner Alisha Williams (who is coached by Simmons) have had to gradually transition into this type of work, as they usually lack the immense aerobic background of their African counterparts. To ease this transition, Simmons substitutes equally long progression runs that gradually build up to marathon pace.
Another way to increase a long run's stimulus is by changing the pace throughout. Daniels is particularly adept at this, as his runners shift gears between marathon pace and lactate threshold pace during a long run. These workouts place a premium on pace recognition and recovering at a high intensity, valuable skills to have in a marathon race.
High intensity long runs heavily stress the body and need respect. A runner doing a Canova-style long run will need to run easy for two days beforehand and up to five days after. A Daniels runner can count on never doing more than two hard workouts per week, long run included. This amount of recovery may seem excessive, but it's necessary to ensure proper rest.
MARATHON-SPECIFIC WORK
If you wonder why world records continue to fall and more men and women are breaking 2:05 and 2:20 than ever before, Canova offers a simple answer: specific endurance. "When we talk about extension of specific endurance, we're developing your ability to run farther at a given pace," says Gavin Smith, Canova's assistant in Iten, Kenya. "Once we get to this phase, we're not trying to get faster. We're trying to hold the same pace longer."
This principle of doing progressively higher amounts of work at goal pace has been at play in the shorter events for decades, but its application to the marathon didn't begin in earnest until the Italian coaches of the 1980s. Much of this hesitancy came from popular thinking that considered marathon-pace training a "dead zone" that wouldn't produce the same results as shorter, intense intervals or gentler long runs. Two Americans who questioned that logic were Steve Spence, 1991 world championship marathon bronze medalist, and Joe Vigil, the legendary Adams State University coach and author who mentored Deena Kastor to an Olympic marathon bronze. Today it's seen in elite programs spanning from Portland, Ore., all the way to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where national coaches have warmly embraced Canova's principles.
That doesn't mean that everyone accepts the idea of marathon-pace work; traditional Lydiard followers are particularly leery. Moller says that practicing race pace is beside the point, because racing is something entirely different than training. "What you're doing is making a quantum leap at race time," Moller says. "If you're peaking on race day, you can't expect to be able to reach those times while you've still got the load on while you're training hard."
Most coaches today disagree with that sentiment and have added specific endurance intervals into their training plans. Each coach who was interviewed now includes runs of 10–14 miles at goal marathon race pace in their plans; some, like the Hansons, make it a point to include these types of runs on a weekly basis. When Janet Cherobon-Bawcom, a 2012 Olympian in the 10,000m, first asked Daniels to coach her, she was in awe of the marathon-pace workouts. "It was overwhelming to look at [the schedule] on paper," she says. "It took doing the workouts for me to trust him. The more I did it, the more it gave me confidence that I could do a good marathon."
Coaches working with world-class athletes are looking for more than just confidence. They want mastery of this pace in their pupils. During the final 10 weeks of marathon prep, coaches like Canova, who espouse the principles of marathon specificity, will have each workout fall within a few percentage points of marathon pace. These can take the form of 10 × 1600m; 20–30K at alternating paces; longer intervals on the road with short, quick recoveries; or the aforementioned 24-mile long run near marathon pace. Each workout seeks to extend the amount of a time a runner can maintain marathon pace. The capstone is the "special block," a workout containing 20–26 miles of running at marathon pace separated into two workouts on a single day. The special block also teaches the body to burn its almost unlimited stores of fat more efficiently, says Simmons, a point that was driven home when Canova told him his athletes never ingest any carbohydrates on the race course.
"During those workouts you can see the muscle cells are switching back and forth between glycogen and fat, teaching the body to use them at the same time, as opposed to glycogen first and fat secondly," Simmons says, noting this keeps athletes from hitting the wall. "We want to be able to use glycogen at the end and finish at a very fast pace."
This carb-free race-day strategy might work for Canova's elite runners. And if you're running at slower speeds, strenuous marathon-pace workouts will increase your fitness and may make you more efficient in burning fat at higher intensities. But proceed with caution; most research indicates these workouts are probably not a substitute for taking in carbohydrates during a race.
LACTATE THRESHOLD
Of all the elements involved in marathon training, lactate threshold (LT)--or the point at which you start accumulating more lactic acid in your bloodstream than can be used as fuel--is perhaps the most fluid. There is strong debate today among exercise scientists and coaches regarding what effect raising the LT has on marathon performance. In the meantime, coaches agree there are two excellent methods to increase your LT.
TEMPO RUNS
The simplest and most efficient way to raise your LT, tempo runs traditionally include spending 20 to 40 minutes running at or near LT pace, roughly the pace you can sustain for an hour-long race. "Threshold training is either the first or second most important thing, along with the long run, in marathon training," Pfitzinger says. "It's a matter of getting it in the right balance." For Pfitzinger, that balance means including a tempo run every two weeks for the majority of a marathon buildup.
Tempo run guidelines have changed in recent years. Recent lab tests have found that runs slightly faster than LT pace are more efficient in raising the lactate threshold, while slightly slower but longer tempo runs may be of great use for marathoners. Coaches have also started adding hills and heart rate guidelines to what was once a time-based workout run only on flat, well-marked courses.
CRUISE INTERVALS
Made popular by Daniels almost 20 years ago, cruise intervals transform tempo runs into long intervals at LT pace with short recoveries in between. The Hansons relish these runs and offer a steady diet of workouts like 3 × 2 miles with several minutes' recovery in between. These recovery intervals allow runners to spend more time at LT pace, providing a greater stimulus for beginners and advanced runners alike.
For athletes looking to push the envelope, cruise intervals and their infinite variations allow that opportunity. Daniels offers a brutal 5-4-3-2-1-mile LT-pace workout that lets the athlete spend 15 miles at LT pace in a single session, something that would be physically impossible in a tempo run. Canova offers a similarly challenging 4 × 5K session that begins at marathon pace in the first interval, progresses to LT pace in the middle segments, and drops below LT pace over the last 3 miles.
INTERVALS AND REPEATS
Intervals and short repetitions at speeds faster than 10K pace are a component of most marathon programs, even though coaches consider them to be the least important part of marathon preparation. These workouts are not without merit: They build neuromuscular development and efficiency, improve VO2 max and, for fall marathoners, often flow seamlessly out of a summer season spent racing 5Ks and 10Ks.
The Hansons discovered this for themselves back in the 1990s, when the local runners they coached ran a full slate of shorter races before turning their attention to the Bobby Crim 10-miler in August and the Grand Rapids and Detroit marathons in September and October. Although the schedule is almost a complete inversion of the Lydiard system, the Hansons found their athletes had great success following this model.
This inversion is no longer unique to the Hansons group. Four to six months out from a race, the Canova group focuses on speed, VO2 max work and explosive circuit routines, which they consider vital to developing a runner but nonspecific to marathon training. The workouts in this period are significantly shorter than the marathon workouts and are run closer to 5K pace (20 × 400m or 6 × 1K, for instance). When marathon training fully begins, the speed work all but disappears, save for some short hills and fartleks.
Intermittent interval workouts appear to be enough for athletes who like to race competitively at other distances leading up to a marathon. In Daniels' system, intervals at 5K pace appear only once every three weeks, yet that hasn't hindered Cherobon-Bawcom from winning eight national titles in the past three years. "For me it has worked so well," she says. "It has proven that even though I was training for a marathon, I could still run some fast, shorter stuff. The unique part of his program is it just makes you stronger. Whenever you hit any kind of speed, you're ready for the shorter [races]."
Including this type of work may also benefit a marathoner's overall fitness in the final weeks leading up to a race, says Pfitzinger. "Volume is starting to decrease, so the runner can handle the faster work and still recover in a reasonable timeframe," he says. "The benefit is both physiological and psychological in making marathon race pace feel easier and also providing a cushion, so if the marathon is run at an uneven pace, the runner can tolerate [pace changes]."
TAPER
After months of arduous training, nothing provokes greater feelings of joy than the pre-race taper. This is the point at which fatigued muscles get a chance to rest, glycogen stores get fully replenished, and all the benefits of several months' hard work are finally reaped before race day.
How best to realize those benefits depends on the type of athlete you are and the style of coaching you're under. Some coaches prefer a drawn-out, gradual taper; others keep the overall training load high until the last possible minute. Personal experience may be the best guide in determining which taper works best for you, says Brad Hudson, an elite coach based in Boulder, Colo., and the author of Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon.
LONG TAPER
This type of taper involves cutting back mileage over a three-week period while maintaining a moderate amount of intensity. "Every third day there's something that's maintaining your LT, maintaining your VO2 max or maintaining your endurance capabilities," says Pfitzinger, who champions this traditional approach along with Daniels. In Pfitzinger's system, a runner will see his volume decrease 20 to 25 percent each week over the last three weeks. VO2 max intervals, LT runs, strides and small bouts of marathon-pace work help keep your fitness high during this type of taper.
SHORT TAPER
Not all athletes respond best to cutting their mileage well in advance of race date. "A three-week taper is enough time to lose fitness," says Humphrey. "I think people tend to rest too much and then say, 'I feel sluggish.' They feel crappy during their taper and then they get paranoid." Instead, coaches who advocate a short taper focus on keeping the mileage and intensity high until only seven to 10 days before race day, then dramatically drop volume and intensity in the name of bringing a runner to full fitness. Athletes in Canova's and Hudson's systems, in fact, hit their peak mileage only two full weeks before race day, pushing their fitness gains up to the last minute.
DESIGNING YOUR OWN PLAN
The greatest limitation of any training guide is going to be its lack of individualization. Inperson coaches rely on a number of objective and subjective observations to construct and adjust your marathon training plan. No running book or magazine article can provide that. For busy or isolated athletes whose lives demand training solo, creating their own training plans based on the collective wisdom of these manuals may be the closest thing they get to personalized coaching.
"The problem is you can't do every program," Hudson says, cautioning that while it's fine to create a schedule that incorporates different philosophies, runners still need to have some consistency in their plan.
That consistency comes from understanding the principles and expanding on them in a way that works for you. Accumulated wisdom is what has allowed the sport to continually progress, Canova says, and every great coach has built off the foundation others left behind. If you do construct your own plan, keep the following things in mind:
EVERY ELEMENT SERVES A PURPOSE
For all of their philosophical differences, every coach uses each of the six elements here in one fashion or another because each training element provides a needed stimulus to the body as it prepares for the marathon.
PERIODIZATION MATTERS
Whether you find yourself wanting more marathon-pace work or more speed work as race day approaches, note that each coach tilts the emphasis in one direction or the other. Plans progressively build on each other; slotting workouts in at random defeats this.
PROPORTIONS ARE IMPORTANT
If you're intrigued by the Canova plan and want to hammer out a 21-miler at close to marathon pace, don't do it while running only 40 miles per week. Every plan is proportioned in a certain way, and if your background is insufficient, you risk major injury, illness and poor training returns by going over your head.
RECOVERY EQUALS SUCCESS
All training gains are made during the recovery phase. Putting hard workouts too close together undermines the gains each session brings. Be sure to understand the degree of difficulty each workout provides before slotting it into your plan. See the article Advanced Balancing to learn how to recognize when you have done too much.
PICKING THE BEST PLAN FOR YOU
Picking a training plan is no simple task. The right choice can lead to huge PRs. The wrong one can lead to a long walk back to the starting line. Before Janet Cherobon-Bawcom started working with Jack Daniels, she and her husband, Jay Bawcom, also struggled to figure out which plan would work best. "I think you have to ask yourself where you are in your training, what kind of mileage you can handle, and kind of the intensity that you're looking for," she says.
Here are the kinds of runners who might thrive or struggle in each of the programs profiled.
TRAINING PLANS
HANSONS
HANSONS MARATHON METHOD
Works best for: Runners who want to challenge themselves like pros but are pressed for time. Because the Hanson brothers began working with recreational athletes before recruiting elites, this program has stood the test of time for runners with full-time jobs.
Might not be for: Those who hate regimented routines. The Hansons' training philosophy requires workouts to be slotted in specific places each week, and similar workouts are repeated frequently, limiting the amount of tinkering you can do.
PFITZINGER
ADVANCED MARATHONING
Works best for: Strength-based athletes who enjoy long runs and don't need the constant reinforcement of track workouts. As Pfitzinger is a true adherent to progressively increasing your aerobic base, his plans work well for those inclined to take a long-term approach to the event.
Might not be for: Runners who like hammering frequent fast workouts or who prefer a high amount of marathon-pace work before their race.
CANOVA
MARATHON PLANS
Works best for: Elite and sub-elite athletes who have plateaued or are looking to take their running to the next level with a nontraditional approach. Canova can claim multiple runners under 2:05 in the marathon, proving his methods work at the highest levels of the sport.
Might not be for: Mere mortals. While the spacing between workouts looks nice, the biggest challenge for any Canova adherent is going to be running high volume and high density workouts without sacrificing too much.
DANIELS
DANIELS' RUNNING FORMULA
Works best for: Runners who like to challenge themselves in a variety of ways. Daniels loves to mix paces and his workouts can be quite extensive, making it an ideal fit for post-collegiate runners looking to make a mark in the event. Because you fully control your easy days, the program also offers a high degree of flexibility.
Might not be for: Marathoners who are short on time and like their long runs at a relaxed pace.
