Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, running coach, or even a very accomplished runner for that matter. The only credentials I can claim is that I did use the below basic outline to run a marathon in slightly below 4 hours, at just over 40. So if that is somehow similar to your situation maybe it can serve some inspiration.
The central idea here is that training for a marathon is a pretty time-consuming endeavor, over a long-ish period. And so the most challenging part is to organize your training around your life rather than to have a day-by-day plan of the perfectly optimal balance of recovery runs with speed runs or things like that.
So this ‘plan’ leaves a lot of choices open - and indeed the two times I used it the training schedule leading up to it was quite different, even though it landed me at very similar finishing times.
Step 1: run a half marathon
Ha! Didn’t see that one coming, did you. But yes, that’s the starting point. If this feels like a ‘cheat’, know that pretty much anybody who is generally healthy can train for a half marathon essentially like this: run a bit longer and longer each week, up till half marathon distance.
So this plan is going to assume you have done that, quite recently.
To be clear: I don’t think this is necessarily easy, 21.1k is very far to run! If you’ve never run before in your life I’m sure this can take like half a year or more. It’s just that it’s easy to describe and can be totally individual in the specifics.
If you have never run a half marathon distance in your life, my advice would be to first go do that and only after that come back. And if you had fun with that experience, only THEN start thinking about a full marathon.
(or find a better plan than this one will to take you there all the way from the beginning!)
Similarly, if you’re like me and aren’t always comfortable with big complicated mass events right away, it might make sense to also sign up and run some shorter ‘city run’ already to get a feel for it, before signing up to a big full city marathon?
Step 2: repeat step 1 twice
Sorry, just kidding. In fact, it turns out a marathon feels a LOT different from ‘just’ running a half marathon twice.
Step 2: fit 3 runs into your week, including a long one
So this is the hard part. Does your work, family life, and any other commitments or hobbies, allow making room for going out for a run 3 times a week? Ideally in a way that doesn’t feel TOO rushed or make you hate yourself (or your partner hate you) for it too much?
In particular, this requires the ability to run 2 times outside of the weekend, because you generally don’t want to run 2 days in a row to allow proper recovery and prevent injury. So that’s the main thing to ask: can you arrange that, consistently, for weeks and months on end?
For balpark duration including getting dressed first and having a shower afterwards to take respectively:
- a short run of about 1 hour
- a medium run of about 2 hours
- a long run of about 3 hours.
So that’s what you have to fit in.
Besides time schedule, there’s also other circumstances that you will need to get used to ‘fitting in’: running in the darkness, having the motivation and clothes to go out for a run even in the relative cold or even light rain, etc.
In terms of timing, see below, but if you want to know when to plan ahead: you can do this marathon training ‘plan’ takes about 2 months, or 6 to 8 weeks, from start to finish.
Step 3: increase your long run distance in about 3k steps towards 30+ k
This is the most ‘presecribed’ part of this plan: make your weekly ‘long run’ longer and longer, in steps of about 3k at a time, until you land somewhere in the lower 30k range. So starting from your existing half marathon fitness that makes it roughly, at the bare minimum, these 4 consecutive weeks: 24k - 27k - 30k - 33k.
Building slower is ok, but not building faster because this violates the ‘increase max 10% per week’ rule of thumb, and that is the most commonly cited rule to prevent injury.
Note that, together with the below 2 week ‘tapering off’, this brings the minimal total length of your marathon training to 6 weeks: 4 weeks building up from 24 to 33 k, and 2 weeks ‘tapering off’.
Fueling
Part of your long runs should also be to get used to fueling during your run: since your body does not contain enough energy (‘glycogen stores’) to burn the full marathon, you need to replenish these during your run, by bringing along and eating carb-heavy things like running gels or chews (or candy or …) that you carry along.
If you like nerding out in online research or as a trying-and-testing consumer etc etc, this is the part where you can do that :)
Your muscles running out of fuel because you didn’t fuel enough for the energy burned is what causes the infamous ‘wall’ near the end where suddenly your legs lack energy.
Step 4: do a 2 week ‘taper’ period before the marathon day
First of all, if you’re made it this far, that’s amazing! It means you have been able to build up to ‘marathon fitness’ without getting injured, in itself already a big win.
This period is the ‘taper’ period, short for ‘tapering off’. In these 2 weeks you should run less to make your body rest. For instance only 2 runs a week, and slower and shorter than what you did earlier.
This will feel a bit freakish (oh no, will I lose that precious fitness again that I built up?) but it’s ok, the resting is more important than the ‘training’ it turns out.
Enjoy!
And that’s about it. Enjoy your marathon!
(disclaimer again, just to make sure: not a doctor or coach in any way)
Appendix 1: what about pace?
This ‘plan’ doesn’t mention target time, pace, distances of your runs, gear, specific days in the week, any additional strength training etc etc.
In particular, there’s no reference of ‘marathon pace’, the pace at which you aim to run your marathon, which features heavily in most ‘serious’ training plans.
Here’s how I approached marathon pace: however fast your long runs end up being, that is your ‘marathon pace’. With the implication being that you are not explicitly aiming for MORE effort than that during the marathon race day. The actual race at 42.2k is already about 10k longer than your longest training run, that’s novelty enough!
But of course that’s because the main goal here is to be able to finish it while enjoying the process, not a top time. For me, my ‘long run’ pace ended up being typically somewhere between 5:30 and 6:00 min/km, which made my marathon time goal ‘under 4 hours would be nice’, but it definitely wasn’t as important as just finishing it.