Ask the coach: Spring marathon preparation time

I have a spring marathon, I’m a beginner and never done a marathon. I see you have a 24 week plan. Can I start this plan at 16 weeks? Or am I up against it now with my training?

Charlotte

Running coach answer on ‘spring marathon preparation time‘
Mike Gratton:

As with many questions about training load, the answer inevitably starts with, ‘it depends’.

Traditional training plans tend to start at a low or lowish weekly mileage, which will depend mainly on the marathon target time you have in mind. It will then build up to a maximum mileage in the final weeks before then tapering into marathon day. This is fine and actually very logical for runners who are new or have been on a low volume (see our 5km to Marathon schedule – that has that approach). In this situation, you do not want to jump straight in at a medium to high volume of the 24-week schedule, or take on the intensity, as this has a higher level of injury risk.

What the standard programmes lack, though, is a period of aerobic adaptation as a preparatory period, enabling you to get used to the mileage before the intensity increases. Thus, when you launch into the specific marathon part of the 24-week programme (at 16 weeks to go), your body and physiology aren’t prepared enough. If you can do the full 24-weeks, your physiological systems will be in a more trained state, able then to get the most from later training.

This training system, with a preparatory ‘aerobic base’ period, was designed way back in the 1950’s and 60’s by the famous New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard. Lydiard found that a lot of runners lacked real stamina, and he worked out that this could be corrected by a period of aerobic base training, increasing the vital oxygen-carrying capacity of the muscles.

Lydiard coached Olympic Champions from New Zealand at 800m, 5,000m and the marathon, changing the nature of the training with a period when all ran lots of steady miles, then, after the base period, and depending on the runner’s event introduced specific speed work.

When I moved up from English school track champion to road running, I also increased my weekly mileage… and then, when I moved to the marathon and realised the benefit of starting out the training block with long, steady runs, I rapidly improved from 2.16 to 2.09 in two years. I end up running a 20-mile steady run every week of the year (most races were a Saturday back in the 70s and 80’s, so you could nearly always get the 20 in on a Sunday.

Where is the, ‘it depends here’

To jump into this programme at 16 weeks means you have missed 8 weeks of base training. It depends, then, on the amount of training you have been doing prior to the start of your marathon training block. If you are a well-conditioned runner who trains throughout the year and usually fits in a longish run most weeks as part of your normal training regime, you will have developed a fair aerobic base. You could then tone down the first two weeks of the remaining 16 weeks of the programme (reduce weeks 16 and 15) but gradually increase in the second of those weeks to start the full programme from week 14.

If you are relatively new or haven’t yet developed your mileage to, say, 35 miles a week, then I would suggest a sensible course of action would be to follow a 16-week programme that gradually builds the weekly mileage. Thus, allowing time for adaptation to the higher load and reducing the risk of injury.

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