Running Plan Review Hal Higdon The Dopey Challenge

Does it build you up smartly?

A good plan does two jobs at once. It grows the work gradually, and it changes what the work is for as race day gets closer: general fitness first, then the specific demands of the race, then a taper so you arrive fresh. Varying the emphasis from one block of weeks to the next gets runners to better races than repeating the same kind of week over and over.

The growth is where Higdon shines. Every big weekend is followed by an easier week, so your body gets a regular chance to absorb the work that came before before the next step up. That rhythm is easy to trust. You always know where you stand: a big weekend, then a lighter one.

But the plan explains almost nothing about itself. Its stages aren't named, and when the training changes character late in the build, nothing on the calendar says why or what the new weeks are for. Each day is a distance and little else. The Wednesday run is printed as a number of miles at marathon pace, with no word on what it builds or how it fits the weekend ahead. The shape is sound. The reasons behind it are missing from the page.

Does it protect you from injury?

Partly. The mileage is handled with care, but two basic safeguards never reach the calendar.

The careful part is real. The weekly totals climb in small steps, every other week is lighter, and the Wednesday pace run never lands next to another demanding day.

There is one sharp step, in week 7. Sudden jumps in weekly running raise injury risk, most of all once a week tops about 1.5 times your recent average. Week 7 asks for 37 miles after three weeks that averaged about 24, right around that line. The long run, the pace run and both short midweek runs all get longer at once. Many running injuries seem to start suddenly, often within days of a jump like this. Treat week 7 as the plan's first real test, and ease off if something starts to ache.

The safeguards it skips are warm-ups and strength. The plainest gap is the warm-up. Every pace run starts cold on the calendar, as a single block at pace, so begin each one with some easy running before you speed up. Strength is missing too. The book recommends it, and even lets first-timers skip it, but none of it appears on the schedule. Strength training lowers injury risk more than stretching or balance work alone, and race weekend asks more of your legs than any week of training here: 48.6 miles in four days, against a biggest training week of 42.5.

The book does teach the warning signs of overtraining, and how to keep training through an injury with pool running. But none of it shows up on the calendar. A small ache that keeps coming back can raise the odds of an injury that stops you running, and catching it early is your job here.

What happens when you miss a day?

Eighteen weeks is a long stretch of life to plan around. Sooner or later, a week won't go the way the calendar says, and a plan earns its keep by making the next decision easy.

Higdon's rules here are generous. The book lets you swap days around, and asks for one thing: miss a day if you have to, but never two in a row. That's a rule you can carry in your head. The plan's shape also hints at what matters most. The weekend runs and the Wednesday pace run carry the training, so in a crowded week a short midweek run is the sensible one to drop. Week 15 is the exception. Its Thursday run opens four straight days of running, and the four belong together.

But the plan only hints. There is no list of which runs to protect, and nothing on what to do after a lost week, whether to go back, jump forward or pick up where the dates say. Effort is set by feel. Easy runs go at a pace you could talk at, and the pace runs depend on a goal you work out from the book. The book suggests a race around week 8 to check that goal, but this schedule doesn't include one, so you'd have to find and add it.

For this event, a rough goal matters less than it might. The plan frames the weekend as finishing four races and enjoying them, not racing them flat out, so a goal pace set loosely does less harm here than in a plan built around one fast marathon.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Mostly, yes. The long runs are right, and the plan rehearses the race weekend itself. But it does little to lift the effort you can sustain.

The marathon on Sunday is the race that decides the weekend, and long runs are what prepare you for it. This plan's long runs climb steadily and peak 3 weeks before race week. The two lighter weeks after the peak work as a taper, and a 1 to 3 week taper makes runners measurably faster on race day.

The best thing in the plan hides in week 15. Thursday is 2.5 miles, Friday is 5, Saturday is 10 and Sunday is 20: a mini Dopey three weeks out, four days in a row, each longer than the last, in the same order as the races. Nobody would spot it from the grid without adding it up. Weeks 9, 11 and 13 lead up to it by moving a short run to Friday, so those weekends become three days of running in a row. If week 15 goes well, you'll have a good sense of what race Sunday will ask of you.

Higdon keeps the faster running modest, and his reason is a fair one: the volume of the weekend is the real test. But it leaves a gap. Every faster session is at marathon pace, and for most recreational runners, that pace sits below threshold, the effort above which tiredness starts to build fast. Running at it teaches rhythm. It doesn't raise the ceiling much. And those runs end in week 13, so everything after that is easy running.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Enough for this event, though not much beyond it. Nearly all the running is easy, which suits a weekend built on staying power. But there is only one kind of faster run, and nothing for speed or form.

Easy running is the base that carries everything else, and about 4 of every 5 miles here are easy. For a weekend that's mostly about staying on your feet, that's a sensible share. The plan also uses a good range of runs, from short midweek runs to medium-long Saturdays to the long run, and the schedule is a pleasure to read, with one distance per day.

Higdon's choice to keep the effort low makes sense for four races in a row. But the variety stops there. The only running that isn't easy is the marathon-pace run, in the same form for 13 weeks, and it sits in the middle ground: harder than easy, gentler than hard. Runners who mix easy running with clearly hard sessions tend to build more endurance than runners whose harder days stay moderate, and this plan has nothing clearly hard. There are no hills, no intervals, and no strides, a few brief, fast pickups at the end of an easy run that make running more economical. The book suggests strides as part of a warm-up, but none appear on the calendar. A few strides after two easy runs a week would cost minutes, and give the 5K and 10K that open the weekend a little more snap.