Running Plan Review Higdon Base Training: Novice
By Hal Higdon's Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide — Hal Higdon Requires purchase Visit plan website
Plan at a Glance
This Base Training Program was designed for novice runners, those new to the sport. For more experienced runners, you will find Intermediate and Advanced Base Training versions on my website.
Below is the full Buena Vida review. Every plan is held to the same detailed, 31-point benchmark, with each measure traced back to peer-reviewed sports-science research and proven coaching best practices.
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Our Review
You are brand new to running, or close to it. Before any marathon plan will fit, you need to cover six miles in one go without it wrecking your week. That single job is what this twelve-week program does, and you ride it as an on-ramp to Hal Higdon's marathon plans rather than toward a finish line of its own.
Here is the part to trust. You watch one thing grow, the Saturday long run, and nothing else. It climbs in small waves: up for two weeks, then a shorter week to let your legs catch up, over and over, from three miles to six. You keep the three short weekday runs short, the Friday walk a walk, and Monday and Sunday off. You do the work through repetition, not through any one hard day, so the real trap is the urge to push the pace on a good day. New runners get hurt that way before reaching a start line, and this plan is built to keep you from it.
Best for someone who can already jog a mile or two and wants to build toward a first marathon without rushing the foundation. You run four easy days and one walk a week, with two full rest days, and you bring patience more than fitness. The schedule itself is just distances. The book around it carries the rest: how easy your easy runs should be, how to handle a missed week, two chapters on staying healthy. The real gaps stay real. No table turns a goal time into a pace, strength never reaches a training day, and the catch-up rule is a loose one. If you want a workout that explains itself on the page, or you can already run six miles comfortably, you are past what this program is for.
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Structure
Does the plan build you up smartly?
Strong. The plan has one clear job and a sensible shape for it. The long run climbs in a steady rhythm: two weeks up, one week back, all the way from three miles to six. That every-third-week easing is the part that keeps a new runner progressing without breaking down. There are no labeled phases and no taper, which is fine, because there is no race at the end to taper for.
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Prevention
Does the plan protect you from injury?
Reasonable. Volume climbs slowly, two rest days sit in every week, and the lighter weeks give your body time to absorb the work, so the injury guardrails are genuinely there. The book backs that up with two injury chapters and a list of overtraining warning signs. The gap is that the protective work never reaches the calendar itself. No strength session is scheduled, and the warm-up and warning-sign guidance lives in the chapters, not the grid you read each morning.
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Flexibility
What happens when you miss a day?
Limited. Every day tells you a distance and nothing about what to do when life gets in the way. There is no ranking of which run matters most if you only have time for one, and no rule for what to do after a missed week. Higdon's own advice, that you can shuffle days around and should never go two days without running, sits in the chapters and never reaches the grid you read each morning.
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Variety
Are the workouts varied enough?
Modest, and on purpose. This is the same handful of easy runs and one walk repeated for twelve weeks, with the long run slowly stretching. There is no speed work, no intervals, no variety of any kind, and a base-building plan for a beginner does not need any. Just know going in that the appeal here is calm sameness, not range.
Plan Strengths
- You build to a six-mile run from a standing start over twelve weeks, the exact base a first marathon plan expects you to already have.
- Every third week pulls the long run back a notch, so your legs get to settle before the next two-week climb instead of grinding without a break.
- You bank recovery on two full rest days a week, Monday and Friday, the slack a brand-new body needs to turn plain running into lasting fitness.
- Nothing on the calendar ever speeds up, so you can run the whole program by feel and never worry about hitting a number.
- The Friday thirty-minute walk keeps you moving on a non-running day without adding pounding, an easy way to stay consistent.
Weaknesses & gaps
- No strength session ever lands on the schedule, so the work that protects new runners from injury is left for you to organize on your own.
- The page never tells you how easy your easy runs should be, and that talk-test guidance sits in Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide instead.
- Miss a few days and you are mostly on your own, because the rule for catching up safely is in a chapter and not on the calendar.
- The book's warm-up and overtraining warning-sign guidance lives in its injury chapters, never on the schedule a beginner reads each day.
- Every run is a fixed distance with no range, so a runner having a rough day gets no built-in permission to shorten it.
What this plan does not give you
A few things this plan leans on the book for, and you should know them before you start. First, it never tells you how slow your easy runs should be. The simple fix is the talk test: if you can chat in full sentences while you run, the pace is right. Second, no strength work shows up on the calendar, and for a brand-new runner that is fine to skip until after your first race, but light strength later helps. Third, there is no plan for a missed week. Do not try to make up the miles all at once. Just pick the schedule back up where you left off, or repeat the last week you finished cleanly. Last, the book's two injury chapters cover warm-up habits and the overtraining warning signs to watch for, so keep it nearby even though none of that reaches the grid.
What the science supports
Easy aerobic volume is the foundation
Every run in this twelve-week plan is easy, and that is the point. The three short weekday runs and the slowly growing Saturday long run are all relaxed, conversational miles. Easy aerobic running is the base that everything harder later gets built on top of. By keeping all of it easy, the plan lays down that base the right way before you ever touch faster training in a marathon program.
Haugen et al. 2022; Casado et al. 2022; Tønnessen et al. 2014
Long runs are essential for marathon
The Saturday long run is the engine here. It climbs from three miles in week one to six miles in week twelve, growing two weeks then easing one. Long runs build the kind of staying power a marathon asks for, and no amount of short, faster running replaces them. This plan grows that one run patiently so your body learns to handle distance before a marathon plan asks for much more.
Toresdahl et al. 2021; Jones & Kirby 2025; Casado et al. 2019
Higher chronic load is protective
This plan adds miles slowly over twelve weeks, never in a rush. Weekly running creeps from about nine miles to fifteen, with a lighter week every third week. Training load built up gradually like this lowers injury risk rather than raising it, because the body gets time to adapt. The slow climb is doing protective work even on the weeks that feel almost too easy.
Keep easy days easy, hard days hard
The week has a clear shape: run Tuesday through Thursday, walk Friday, long run Saturday, rest Monday and Sunday. Runners do best when easy days stay genuinely easy and recovery is real, instead of a steady grind of medium efforts every day. This plan keeps every running day relaxed and parks two true rest days in each week, which is exactly the easy-stays-easy pattern that lets a new runner keep going.
Stöggl & Sperlich 2014; Casado et al. 2022; Kenneally et al. 2017
Anchor baseline to current load, not peak
Week one starts small, at about a mile and a half on most running days and a three-mile long run. A plan should begin from what you can already handle, not from where it ends, and this one does. It meets a near-beginner at a gentle starting load and looks ahead only as far as six miles, which is the doorway into the marathon plans this program feeds into.
Nuuttila et al. 2022; Roberson et al. 2018; Ramskov et al. 2018
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Frequently asked questions
- Is Higdon Base Training: Novice good for beginners?
- Yes. Higdon Base Training: Novice is designed for runners new to the distance.
- How many days per week does Higdon Base Training: Novice require?
- The plan runs on a schedule of multiple weekly runs. See the at-a-glance strip for the exact count.
- Does Higdon Base Training: Novice include a taper?
- Yes, the plan includes a taper into race week.
- What is the rubric grade for Higdon Base Training: Novice?
- Higdon Base Training: Novice grades D on the Buena Vida rubric.