Experienced Runners’ Marathon Training Plan

By Karen Hancock

This plan provides the daily details for someone training for London marathon 2009, although it can be adopted for any marathon by refering to the ‘weeks to go’ instead of the date. It is designed for a non-novice marathoner – someone with around 2 years of running experience or more behind them.

Some guidance on the paces mentioned:

• Long run should be at a comfortable chatty pace
• Threshold session should include 30-40 minutes at around 85% max HR or “comfortably hard” pace. Can be done as intervals with short recoveries – e.g. 4 x 8 mins with 1 min easy jogging between
• Marathon-paced run – will get faster as the race approaches – so run by perceived effort – a bit harder than the long run, but slightly slower than the threshold session
• Hills session should be about 25-40 minutes of continuous up and downhill efforts in the endurance-building phase or substitute a cross-country race

These are the 4 “active ingredients” in the marathon training recipe to build endurance, strength and marathon-speed. If you want or feel you need to do more miles than this, then do additional miles at recovery run (“hello clouds, hello sky”) pace. But if you’re injury-prone, add cross-training (swimming, biking, elliptical cross-trainer) instead. I also highly recommend core stability or Pilates at least once a week to help improve your posture, balance, running efficiency and injury-resistance. A programme like this is eminently suitable for sub-3:15/sub 3:00 women and sub 3:00/sub 2:45 men, so long as you make the key sessions – the active ingredients – at the prescribed paces. Novices should concentrate more on the distances recommended than worrying about their pace.