Running Plan Review Brain Training for Runners Marathon Level 2

Does it build you up smartly?

The plan gets the order of training right, but it doesn't explain itself.

Almost every workout says exactly what to run: the number of repeats, the jog between them, the warm-up and cool-down. Almost none says why it's there. Why Friday's tempo sits at half marathon effort and not marathon effort, for example, is a question the schedule leaves to the book's chapters. If you've read them, the plan makes sense. If you're working from the schedule alone, you're following steps without knowing what each one is for.

The phases themselves are well built, each one adding a new kind of hard work on top of the last, and training in stages like these tends to lead to better races than holding the same emphasis from start to finish.

Does it protect you from injury?

Mileage itself isn't the enemy. Higher weekly mileage, built up gradually, tends to be linked to fewer injuries, not more, though the evidence is observational. What tends to hurt runners is the sudden change: many injuries that look like slow wear appear to start suddenly, often right after a run that goes well past your recent longest.

This plan protects you well on most fronts. Weekly mileage rises in small steps. The repeats, hill sessions and tempo runs open with an easy mile or two and close with an easy cool-down. The hard days never fall back to back. And the strength work is right there on the calendar, on Thursday and Saturday from the first week, with the exercises written out. That matters, because strength training substantially lowers the risk of sport injuries.

But the long wait for a lighter week is the plan's biggest gap. The plan builds for 17 weeks without a clearly lighter one. The running dips here and there, but never by enough to count as a lighter week, and the lighter weeks come in weeks 18, 20 and 22, alternating with the two biggest weeks of the plan. A fixed plan needs relief like that built in, since training load that piles up without a break tends to raise injury and illness risk. A small ache that shows up in week 10 or 12 meets no planned break until week 18, and in the meantime the training keeps building around it. The book's rule for swapping in an easier session on a bad day is the one relief valve in those weeks.

Week 12 brings the biggest change in kind. Tempo runs and a 15-mile long run that speeds up toward the end both arrive for the first time, in a week with more running than the one before. Two new kinds of hard work landing together is the kind of jump worth easing into.

The plan pages also don't tell you what an early warning sign looks like or what to do about one. That matters more than it sounds. Runners often describe injury as a sliding scale, from healthy through small, nagging symptoms to an injury that stops you running. A low-grade ache that hangs around for days may raise the risk of a full injury, though the early evidence comes from football rather than running. In a coach's view, the first niggle is the time to ease off.

What happens when you miss a day?

Not without the book. Your steady and recovery runs go by feel, but the hills, repeats, tempos and tune-ups are written as efforts like "10K pace," and nothing on the schedule tells you how fast that is. Your paces come from tables in the book, read off a recent race or an estimate.

A disrupted week is harder still. The schedule doesn't rank its runs, so it never tells you which to keep when you only have time for two. It doesn't say what to do after a missed workout, a cold or a few days off.

What the plan does well is keep up with you. Your paces aren't fixed. After each tune-up race or time trial, or whenever you keep beating your targets, you move to a faster set of paces, aiming to reach the paces for your goal time in the last 3 to 4 weeks. That keeps the training matched to the runner you're becoming, and training adjusted to the runner tends to match or beat a fixed template. On a bad day, the book offers an easier swap for a hard workout, so one rough morning doesn't have to cost you the week.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes. This plan prepares you well for a marathon.

The long run is the backbone. It grows steadily through the build and peaks at 22 miles three weeks before the race, after a 20-miler two weeks earlier. That's the preparation most coaches build a marathon around, and runners whose training includes longer long runs tend to finish faster, though that link hasn't been tested against shorter, faster training. You'll know what the late miles feel like long before race day.

The Friday tempo runs build the other thing a marathon needs: the hardest effort you can sustain for a long time. Half marathon effort is a step harder than the pace you'll race, and tempo work like this and marathon-pace work are different kinds of training, with either a reasonable choice for most runners. Week 21 puts it all together. Friday is 8 miles at half marathon effort, and two days later comes the 22-miler. You'll start Sunday with Friday still in your legs, which is about as close as training gets to the last 10K of a marathon.

The tune-ups keep your training in step with your fitness. A 5K, a 10K and a half marathon, in weeks 11, 15 and 20, each reset your training paces. They may also sharpen your pacing, since runners with more racing behind them tend to pace marathons better. The book lets you run them as solo time trials if no race fits your calendar.

Then the plan tapers. After the 22-miler, the running drops for the final 3 weeks. The second-to-last week returns to the short hill sprints and fartlek of the first weeks, with nothing longer than 5 miles, so some fast running stays in while the miles come down. A taper of up to 3 weeks that cuts the running but keeps some faster work improves race performance compared with training straight through.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Varied training tends to build a better runner than a steady diet of one effort. Mixing easy running with clearly hard sessions may build endurance a little better than spending most of your time at a moderate, comfortably hard effort.

This plan has plenty of range, from hill repeats in the first weeks to ladders and three tune-up races later on. Short form drills and hill sprints follow Tuesday's run in nearly every week. They take only a few minutes, and short, fast efforts like sprints can make you more efficient, though the evidence is mixed, so the same pace may cost you less.

But the easy days aren't very easy. Much of the running between the hard sessions is at a steady, moderate effort, not the relaxed pace you could talk through. In the late build, Tuesday's 9 or 10 miles and Sunday's long run both sit there. Only the recovery runs on Thursday and Saturday are truly easy. Trained runners tend to improve more by keeping easy days easy and hard days hard than by spending much of the week in between. If Thursday's recovery run drifts up to 6 steady miles, the whole week tilts toward that middle effort.