Running Plan Review Hal Higdon Marathon: Intermediate 2

Does it build you up smartly?

The plan's shape is easy to see. The weekly miles climb from 26 to 50 and the long run from 10 to 20, and the growth comes in steps, not a straight line. The long run drops back in weeks 3 and 6, the half marathon week is lighter around the race, and from week 11 each 20-miler is followed by a week of about 34 miles with a 12-mile long run. Lighter weeks are when the training of the weeks before turns into fitness, and this plan gives you one after every big push. The last 3 weeks taper you down to race day.

What doesn't change is the training itself. The Saturday run at marathon pace in week 1 is the same session as the one in week 15, only shorter. There's no early stretch of easy running to build into, and no point where the hard work shifts toward something new. That runs against the evidence: plans that change their emphasis from block to block tend to beat plans that hold one kind of training all the way through.

The sessions themselves are thin on the page. Each one is a distance and a label. The schedule doesn't say why you're running at marathon pace on Saturday, how it should feel by the end, or how to warm up for it.

Does it protect you from injury?

Partly. The plan's lighter weeks and the book's injury advice help a lot, but the schedule leaves three gaps.

The first is the early build. Week 4 adds about a fifth to the week. Week 7 is steeper: in a single week, the running goes from 30 miles to 40, the long run reaches 16 miles for the first time, and the Saturday marathon-pace run grows to 8. Sharp jumps in weekly running raise injury risk, and many injuries that look like overuse start suddenly, right after a jump like this one. Your muscles and your breathing will probably cope. Tendons adapt more slowly than muscle, so an Achilles or a knee can be the first to feel week 7.

The second is strength training. The book talks about strength and stretching, but it gives you no program, and nothing appears on the schedule. Strength training substantially lowers the risk of injury in sport, and about two sessions a week is enough for runners to get its performance benefit. Tuesday and Thursday are short easy days, so there's room for it. Fitting it in is up to you.

The third is warm-ups. None is written into the Saturday marathon-pace runs or the half marathon. The book covers warming up, but on the day, all the schedule tells you is the distance.

The book's injury chapters are a real help. There are two of them, one on avoiding injuries and one on running in the pool while you heal, plus a section on the warning signs of overtraining. Read them before week 7, not after something hurts. A small ache that hangs around between runs often comes before an injury that stops you, and the runner who backs off at the first one usually loses days, not weeks.

What happens when you miss a day?

Higdon's rules are short. The book lets you swap days to fit your week, and its main rule is that missing one day is fine, but you shouldn't miss two in a row. Monday is cross-training, so an easy run that won't fit on Tuesday can move there. Friday looks open too, but it's the only rest before the Saturday and Sunday pair, and filling it makes that weekend harder.

What the book doesn't give you is a plan for a bad week. If you lose five or six days to a cold in week 13, nothing says whether to repeat the week or move on. The book implies that the long run and the Saturday marathon-pace run come before the easy days, but it never states an order, so deciding which to keep in a short week is up to you. A missed 20-miler is the hard call. There are only three, and the schedule doesn't say whether to make one up.

Effort works the same way. You choose your own goal marathon pace, using the book's guidance on reading it from workouts, a shorter race or a past marathon. Easy days go by feel, at a pace where you can talk. That's reasonable, and many runners like the freedom.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes, for the most part. This is the plan's strongest side.

The marathon is decided in its final hour, and what carries you through that hour is endurance built over months. Long runs that build week by week are essential for the marathon, and shorter, harder sessions can't replace them. This plan gives you three 20-mile runs, in weeks 11, 13 and 15, with a 50-mile week around each one. The last comes 3 weeks before the race, which is good timing. Then the miles drop off, and a 1-to-3-week taper improves race performance compared with training right up to the start.

The half marathon in week 9 is useful too, though maybe not in the way you'd expect. Tune-up races don't reliably improve marathon times. Early evidence suggests they may help you pace a marathon better, and they give you a real test of whether your goal marathon pace is realistic before you spend 9 more weeks practicing it.

The gap is threshold. Threshold is the effort where running stops feeling sustainable for long; you could race at it for about an hour, not much more. It sets a ceiling on how fast you can run for longer. The case for training at marathon pace instead is simple: it's the pace you'll run on the day, so you practice it. But for most runners, marathon pace sits below threshold, and gains in threshold are specific to the pace you train them at. Outside the half marathon, no run in this plan is faster than marathon pace. Those 10 Saturdays will teach you the rhythm you want on race day, but they won't raise the ceiling. If your goal is to finish strong, that's fine. If your goal is to run faster than last time, threshold work is a tool this plan leaves out.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Partly. The easy running is right, but you'll spend nearly all your time at two efforts: easy and marathon pace.

About 83 percent of your running is easy, and easy miles are the base that carries everything else and helps your body adapt. The schedule is easy to read, and the weeks are easy to repeat.

What's missing is anything faster. There are no intervals, no hills and no strides on the schedule. Strides are short pickups, fast but relaxed, of the kind the book mentions only as part of a warm-up. That's a real loss. Mixing easy running with clearly hard sessions builds endurance better than long stretches of steady, moderate running, and short, fast efforts like strides improve running economy, which means less energy spent at the same pace, including race pace.

The Saturday marathon-pace run is moderate by nature, harder than easy but well short of hard. It comes 10 times in 18 weeks, always as one steady stretch, and it gives the plan a sameness. Some runners find that reassuring: by week 15, a 10-mile Saturday at race pace feels like home ground. Others will find the weekends long.