Running Plan Review Hal Higdon Marathon: Intermediate 1

Does it build you up smartly?

Higdon builds the way plenty of marathoners have learned to: a little more, a little more, then a step back. Lighter weeks come often enough to let the work settle in and turn into fitness, and the outline is easy to trust.

But the training never changes character. The goal-pace run in week 1 is the same kind of run in week 16. Only its length moves, from 5 miles up to 8 and back to 4. Nothing on the schedule shifts the work from building an engine toward sharpening it for race day, and changing the emphasis from one block of training to the next produces better racing than keeping the load constant.

The sessions are bare, too. A Saturday reads as a distance and the word "pace", with no word on what the run is for or how to start and finish it. You know how far to go, and little else.

Does it protect you from injury?

Partly. The plan avoids the most common mistakes, but it leaves warm-ups and strength work off the schedule.

What it gets right is real. Lighter weeks come regularly, and the Sunday long run is meant to be run slow, so even the weekend pairing never stacks two hard efforts back to back. The steepest climbs also come straight after a lighter week, which softens them.

But week 7 still climbs hard. Weekly running goes from 26 miles to 36, more than any week so far, and the long run jumps from 9 miles to 14, the day after the longest goal-pace run yet. Sharp jumps in weekly running raise injury risk, and because tendons adapt more slowly than muscle, legs that feel ready can still be behind.

Then there's what isn't printed. No run on the schedule has a warm-up, including the goal-pace runs, so those miles start at the front door unless you add one. And strength work is missing entirely. The book talks about strength and stretching but gives no program, and none of it appears on the schedule, which leaves the what and the when to you. That's a costly gap, because strength training substantially lowers the risk of injury in sport.

Where the book shines is what to do once something hurts. It gives whole chapters to avoiding injury and to running in the pool, and it lists the warning signs of overtraining. It's solid material, but it sits in the book, not in front of you on the morning a shin starts to ache.

What happens when you miss a day?

Every plan meets a missed run sooner or later. What helps is a schedule with room to absorb it, and a clear rule for when it can't.

This one has the room. With 5 runs spread over 7 days and Friday open, a missed Tuesday can slide to Friday without crowding anything. The book lets you swap days, and its rule for missed runs is simple: one day off is fine, two in a row is not.

But past a missed day, the decisions are yours. The book treats the long run as the week's key session, but it never says which run to drop first in a short week. A week lost to illness or travel gets no rule for coming back: whether to repeat it, skip ahead or shorten the next long run is left to you.

The goal pace you set at the start also stays put unless you change it yourself. The half marathon in week 9 is the plan's one built-in check on it.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Mostly yes, if ready means able to cover the distance. Less so if it means faster.

The long runs are built well, and shorter, harder sessions can't stand in for them. The long run grows patiently to 20 miles, twice, and both of those 20s come the morning after a goal-pace run, so you practice the late miles of a marathon on legs that are already tired. The last 20 comes 3 weeks out, and a taper of 1 to 3 weeks improves race performance over holding training steady.

The half marathon in week 9 helps as well. It takes the place of that week's long run and tells you whether your goal is realistic, and racing along the way may sharpen your pacing.

But the only race-specific work is goal marathon pace, and for most runners that's a gentler effort than it sounds. For recreational marathoners, race pace usually sits below lactate threshold, roughly the effort you could sustain in a race lasting about an hour. And race-pace training earns its specific benefit mainly when race pace lands near a threshold, losing much of it when race pace sits well below. Running at goal pace still teaches the rhythm of race day, and that has value. But this plan never asks for the harder effort that would raise your threshold. You'll reach the start ready for the distance at the pace you chose, and the plan does little to raise that pace along the way.

Are the workouts varied enough?

The balance between easy and hard is right, but the hard running itself comes in only one kind.

About 5 of every 6 miles in this plan are easy, and easy running is the base that carries everything harder. That part is well judged, and the schedule is about as readable as a schedule gets: each day is one distance, sometimes with the word "pace" beside it.

Intermediate 1 makes its step up through more miles and tired-leg weekends rather than faster running, which keeps it simple for a runner moving on from a beginner plan. But that leaves goal-pace Saturdays as the only hard running. There are no faster repeats, no tempo runs, no hills and no strides on the calendar. The book has a whole chapter on speedwork and mentions strides as part of warming up, but this plan's schedule uses neither. That leaves fitness on the table, because short, fast strides make runners more efficient. A handful of them after an easy run costs almost nothing, and this plan never asks for them.