Running Plan Review Hal Higdon Marathon: Novice 1

Does it build you up smartly?

The best marathon builds change gear as they go. Early weeks lay down easy miles, later weeks add work that looks more like the race, and the final weeks freshen you for race day. Training in distinct phases tends to produce better races than holding one kind of load throughout. Good builds also back off every few weeks, because a lighter week lets the body absorb the training that came before.

Novice 1 has a clear shape and a sound core. The long run and the Wednesday run grow side by side for 15 weeks, the Saturday run peaks at 20 miles, and the last 3 weeks wind down to the race. Each day asks one thing: a distance, cross-training, or rest. Higdon's reasoning is easy to follow. A first-timer isn't sharpening for a time, and the main job is getting used to covering the distance.

But apart from the half marathon in week 8, the plan runs in one gear from week 1 through week 15. Week 14 asks for the same kind of running as week 2, only more of it, so nothing in the build prepares you for the race in a different way as it gets closer.

The build also rarely eases off. The long run moves in a stair pattern: up, up, back a step, then past the old high. In the step-back weeks, though, the midweek runs hold steady or grow, so the week as a whole ends up only 1 to 3 miles lighter than the one before. Your legs get a shorter Saturday, not a lighter week. The first true lighter weeks are weeks 16 and 17, in the taper, after 15 weeks of building with no real break.

Does it protect you from injury?

Partly. The plan never asks for two hard days in a row, because almost nothing in it is hard, and the book covers the warning signs of injury and overtraining, and how to keep training in a pool while you heal. But the way the long run climbs puts real strain on new legs, and strength work never makes it onto the calendar.

Sharp jumps in weekly running raise the risk of injury. Many injuries that look like slow wear and tear seem to begin abruptly, often set off by a training mistake in the week before. That matters more for a newer runner. Your metabolism and blood volume adapt within days to weeks, but tendons and bone take weeks to months to rebuild. Your breathing gets easier long before your shins are ready for more.

In Novice 1, the jumps come right after the step-back Saturdays. The long run drops, then leaps well past it: from 7 miles to 12, 10 to 15, 12 to 18, and 14 to 20. And the plan's one sharp edge sits at the halfway mark. In a plan famous for being gentle, week 8 brings a half marathon race, on legs whose longest run so far is 12 miles. Monday is off, and by Wednesday you're back out for 7.

Then there's strength. The book discusses strength and stretching in general terms, and it tells first-timers they can skip strength altogether. None of it appears on the schedule. That's a gap, because strength training lowers injury risk more than stretching does.

Read the book's injury pages before week 7, not after. Small aches that linger between runs appear to raise the odds of an injury that stops you, and on this plan, the week after each new longest run is the one to watch.

What happens when you miss a day?

Eighteen weeks is a long stretch to keep clear. Somewhere in it, a run will go missing, and a plan should help you choose what to keep and what to let go.

This plan doesn't help much. The schedule gives each day a distance and nothing else. It says nothing about effort, which runs to protect first, or what to do after a missed week. The book has some answers. It treats the long run as the heart of the training, so you know that's the run to protect. It lets you swap days around. And it gives one simple rule for missed runs: miss a single day if you must, but not two in a row.

But a lost week is left to you. Nothing says whether to repeat it or pick up where the calendar is, and in weeks 13 and 15, when the long run jumps to 18 and then 20, that choice carries real risk.

Effort is the same story. The book's standard for these runs is a pace easy enough to hold a conversation, which is a good standard for a first-timer. But it appears nowhere on the schedule, and the grid itself shows only miles.

There is one practical upside. Most weeks have 2 rest days and a cross-training day, so a run can usually slide a day without crowding another. A Saturday long run can move to Sunday, in place of the cross-training. But the plan won't tell you which run to move, or what to drop when moving it isn't enough.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Mostly, yes, if your goal is to finish. The plan builds the one thing a first marathon depends on most.

Long runs that grow over months are essential for the marathon, and shorter, harder sessions can't replace them. Novice 1 is built around them. The Saturday run climbs from 6 miles to 20 in steps, and it reaches 20 in week 15, 3 weeks before the race. Two lighter weeks and a short race week follow, and a taper like that reliably helps runners race better. By race day you'll have run 15, 16, 18 and 20 miles, each one once. That's why 4 runs a week can be enough: the long run, not the number of days, carries the build.

The gap is practice at race effort. From week 9 until race day, every run is easy, and no long run ends at the effort you plan to hold in the marathon. For most recreational runners, marathon pace sits below lactate threshold, so race day isn't a hard effort in the way a shorter race is. But it's a different effort from easy running, and without a rehearsal, finding it in the first miles of the marathon is partly a guess.

The half marathon in week 8 helps a little. Tune-up races don't reliably make marathons faster, but they may help with pacing. It's your first chance to start a race in a crowd and hold yourself back in the opening miles. But it comes 10 weeks before the marathon, and nothing in the plan repeats it.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Partly. Almost every run is easy, and the plan has only three kinds of running: easy weekday runs, the long run, and one half marathon.

For a beginner, much of that is sound. Easy running makes up most of a runner's mileage and forms the base that harder training stands on. About 91 percent of the running here is easy, and the hour of cross-training on Sundays gives your body a different kind of work.

But the plan skips the small extras that keep legs quick. There are no strides, a handful of fast, smooth pickups tacked onto the end of an easy run. The book mentions them only as part of a warm-up, and they never appear on the calendar. There are no hills either. That's a missed chance, because short, fast efforts like strides make runners more economical.

It's a small gap, but an easy one to close, and the plan doesn't close it. Eighteen weeks at one easy effort leaves your legs knowing only one speed.