Running Plan Review Hal Higdon Marathon: Advanced 2

Does it build you up smartly?

Higdon builds his plans as a ladder, each advanced plan a step up from the one below it, and Advanced 2 is the top rung. So it doesn't start with a base. It assumes you built one on the plan below, and week 1 already has 3 hard sessions. That's a fair design for a ladder. But if you come to this plan straight, without that rung, nothing here eases you in.

From there, the plan grows in size, not in kind. The same four sessions, hill repeats, 800-meter repeats, tempo runs and runs at goal pace, carry the whole build. They get longer, but the focus never narrows toward the race the way it does in a plan built in blocks. Shifting the emphasis from base to build to peak races better than holding one emphasis throughout.

Higdon also trusts you to know what a tempo run or a hill session is. The schedule gives you a number of hill repeats and nothing else. How long the hill is, how hard to climb it and how much to recover are up to you. The book's speedwork chapter covers the general idea, and an experienced runner will fill in the rest, but nothing on the schedule says what a session is for.

The arc underneath is sound. Mileage and the long run climb together, and once the long runs get big, the plan starts to breathe: every 20-miler is followed by a week where the long run drops to 12. You feel that drop. Lighter weeks like these are when hard training turns into fitness, and the plan ends with a taper.

Does it protect you from injury?

Mostly, yes. But it carries more strain than its mileage suggests, and you're on your own for strength.

The basics are right. No two hard sessions fall on back-to-back days, every hard session opens with an easy warm-up, and no single week's load suddenly spikes.

The strain hides in the effort. About 50 miles at the peak is modest for an advanced marathon plan. But in 10 of the 18 weeks you run 3 hard sessions plus a long run, and only about two-thirds of your running is easy. Mileage alone undercounts how hard you're training, because pace and effort add stress that distance misses. A 45-mile week here costs your legs more than 45 miles of mostly easy running.

Two early weeks add to it. Mileage jumps by about a fifth in week 4, and by about a quarter in week 7, the week the long run goes from 10 miles to 16. Those are the weeks to listen hardest. Many running injuries start suddenly, set off by something in the week before, and an ache that hangs around between runs is often the first sign.

Strength is the other gap. The book gives general advice on strength days, but no program and nothing on the schedule. Strength training cuts sport-injury risk more than stretching does, and for most runners, 2 sessions a week is enough to get the performance benefit too. Finding those 2 slots in a week with 6 runs and 3 hard days is a real puzzle, and the plan leaves it to you.

What happens when you miss a day?

Say a work trip takes Tuesday's hill repeats in week 13. Thursday already has a 50-minute tempo run, Saturday has 10 miles at goal pace, and Sunday is a 20-miler. Friday is the only open day, and moving the hills there would put 3 hard days in a row right before your longest run. Letting the hills go is usually the better call, but the plan doesn't tell you that.

That's the pattern. The book's rules are short: you can swap days around, and you can miss one day but shouldn't miss two in a row. Beyond that, nothing ranks the week's sessions, says what to do with a missed week, or explains how to come back after time off. In a week this full, which run to drop isn't always clear, and you're the one deciding.

Your paces don't move with you either. They come from the goal you picked before you started, and they stay there. If you set it too ambitiously, every goal-pace run is harder than it should be, and the plan has no way to notice. The half marathon in week 9 is your one chance to catch it.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes. This is the plan's strongest area, and the part that answers whether the hard weeks pay off.

The long run is the heart of marathon training. Progressive long runs are essential for the marathon, and shorter, faster sessions can't replace them. This plan builds the long run steadily from 10 miles to 20, then runs three 20-milers, in weeks 11, 13 and 15. The last one comes 3 weeks out, which leaves room to freshen up.

Goal pace gets practiced almost every week, on Thursday or Saturday, in runs that grow to 10 miles. By race day, that rhythm should feel familiar. The goal-pace miles never sit inside the long run, but Saturday's goal-pace run and Sunday's long run cover the same ground across two days: you learn to run at goal pace, and then you learn to keep going when tired.

The half marathon in week 9 is a useful check. A tune-up race doesn't make you fitter on its own, but it tells you whether your goal pace is realistic while there's still time to change it. On a plan where you set your own paces, that's worth a lot.

Then the last 3 weeks ease off, with the long run dropping to 12 miles and then 8. Tapering for 1 to 3 weeks before a goal race buys a few percent on race day.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Yes for the hard days, less so for the easy ones.

The hard sessions cover a real range: hill repeats, 800-meter repeats, tempo runs, runs at goal pace and a half marathon race. Tuesday's session rotates through three of them, so it rarely repeats from one week to the next.

The easy side is thinner. About a third of your running is at effort, and much of that is at goal marathon pace. For most recreational marathoners, that pace sits below threshold. It's a middle effort: too hard to recover on, not hard enough to push your top-end fitness. Easy running mixed with clearly hard sessions builds endurance better than long stretches of steady, moderately hard running. Higdon's goal-pace runs have a real purpose, since they teach the rhythm of race day. But there are a lot of them, and the easy runs that should balance them stay at 3 to 5 miles all plan. In week 13, Saturday's 10 miles at goal pace is longer than Monday's and Wednesday's easy runs put together.

The short, fast work is light too. Hill repeats come every third week, and there are no strides on the easy days. Strides and short sprints make your stride more economical, and they take only a few minutes. You could add 4 to 6 after a couple of easy runs each week.