Running Plan Review Greg McMillan Marathon: Intermediate (Endurance Monster)

Does it build you up smartly?

The schedule is better built than it is explained. Each workout is printed as a prescription and nothing more: 6 to 8 uphill efforts of about a minute, jog back down. Nothing on the page says what the hills are building, why the goal-pace runs keep getting longer, or how a progression run should feel at the end. McMillan explains all of it well, but in the book's chapters, not next to the run. If you like to know why you're doing something on the morning you do it, you'll be flipping pages.

Underneath, the order is sound, even though the phases aren't labeled. Hill repeats and a steady run fill the Thursdays of the first 3 weeks, goal-pace and tempo work take over in weeks 4 to 6, and weeks 7 to 9 lean almost entirely on long goal-pace running. Hill strength comes first, and race-specific work arrives once your legs can take it. Shifting the focus from block to block like this produces better races than holding one load the whole way.

The rhythm is what sets this plan apart. From week 4 on, it swings like a pendulum: a big week, then a light one, then a big one again. Weeks 5, 7 and 9 each carry a long run of 18 to 22 miles, and the week after each one eases off. Weeks 10 and 11 both ease off before race week. A lighter week can feel like lost ground, but it's when the fatigue clears and the body absorbs the work before it. Few marathon plans give you that break this often.

Does it protect you from injury?

Mostly, with one sharp week and one missing piece.

This plan starts at full stride. Goal-pace miles arrive on the very first Sunday, at the end of a 12-to-16-mile run, so it protects you only if that load is already normal for you. A plan's starting point should match the running you already handle, and here the starting point is high.

The sharp week is week 5. Many running injuries start suddenly, often set off by a training jump in the week before, and risk climbs fastest when a week far outruns your recent average. Week 4 is light, about 25 miles. Week 5 goes to about 44, with the first long run of 18 to 22 miles and a new kind of hard session, 8 to 10 half-mile repeats, in the same week. Your heart and lungs will be ready for it well before your tendons and bones are, since those tissues adapt on a much slower clock. If an ache is hanging on at the end of week 4, week 5 is where it will find you. After it, each big week sits only a little above the last big week, from about 44 miles to 46 to 48.

The missing piece is strength. McMillan gives a sample routine in the book and a fuller program online, but none of it is on the schedule. Fitting it around Thursday's sessions and Sunday's long runs is up to you. That matters, because strength work substantially lowers injury risk in sport. A runner who skips it takes three long runs of 18 to 22 miles on legs that were never asked to get stronger.

Warm-ups have the same problem on a smaller scale. The book asks for them before hard sessions, but the schedule doesn't show them, so they're easy to forget.

Past that, the plan looks after you. Hard days never fall back to back, and the book gives whole chapters to warning signs and recovery. That matters, because a low-grade ache that keeps coming back often comes before a real injury.

What happens when you miss a day?

The gap is what happens after a missed run. There's no rule for a lost week, and no ranking of which runs to keep when you can only fit in two. Most runners will guess the long run and Thursday's session matter most, and they'd be right, but the plan leaves you to work that out.

What the plan does give you is slack, already built in. Monday is always free. In most weeks, Wednesday and Friday can be an easy run, cross-training, or rest. In the lighter weeks 4 and 8, Wednesday is cross-training or rest only (and so is Friday in week 4), and race week sets Wednesday as a short tempo run. That leaves most weeks with open days to move a workout into when a Thursday goes wrong. The catch for an Endurance Monster is that those open days are the ones you'll want to fill with running. Keep at least one of them free, and a missed Thursday has somewhere to go.

Easy runs are written as minute ranges, and the book tells you to take the low end when you're tired and to skip or move a key workout on a day your body says no. Before each run, McMillan asks you to check which version of you showed up that day, and to set the effort by that rather than by the plan. Learn to make that call honestly, and it serves you in every race after this one.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes. Nearly every hard session in this plan points at race day.

For most runners, marathon pace sits below the effort you could hold for an hour, so the race is less about raw speed and more about holding a steady effort for hours without fading. That takes two things. You need long runs, because shorter, harder sessions can't replace them. And you need enough practice at your race effort that it feels familiar long before race day.

This plan gives you plenty of both. Goal-pace runs on Thursdays grow from 6 to 8 miles in week 4 to 10 to 12 miles in week 9. Many Sunday long runs finish with miles at goal pace, up to 6 to 8 of them, and three Sundays reach 18 to 22 miles. By race day you'll have run race effort on tired legs many times. Tempo runs on several Thursdays add work nearer the hardest effort you could hold for an hour, and gains at that effort come from running at it.

On the Sundays that finish fast, treat the end as race practice and keep it controlled. The value is the rehearsal, and no study has shown a hard finish adds more than a steady long run.

The finish is handled well. The biggest week lands 3 weeks out, and the running steps down from there to a light race week. A taper like this improves race performance by 2 to 6 percent compared with training straight through.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Yes. The range of workouts here is wide.

Thursdays rotate through hills, long goal-pace runs, half-mile repeats and tempo runs. One Sunday splits into easy, steady and goal-pace thirds, and the long runs in weeks 7 and 9 can carry surges or changes of pace. Around 81 percent of the running stays easy, and the hard days are clearly hard. That pattern of easy running mixed with clearly hard intervals builds endurance better than long stretches of steady, moderate-hard running.

Short, fast work is kept light, with hills in weeks 1 and 3 and half-mile repeats in weeks 5 and 8. That fits the Endurance Monster idea: build on what you're good at, and spend your hard days on the effort the marathon asks for.