Running Plan Review Pete Pfitzinger Advanced Marathoning 12 Week, 70-85 mi/wk

Does it build you up smartly?

Pfitzinger ranks the kinds of training by how much they matter for a marathon: endurance first, then threshold, then repeats at 5K effort, then speed. This calendar is built on that ranking. Endurance came first in his own racing, too. Before his 1984 Trials win, he trained in New Zealand at up to 143 miles a week. "The New Zealand approach," says Pfitzinger, "was very much about getting a strong aerobic base." Endurance is there from the first Sunday to the last before the taper, every one of them 16 miles or more, with a medium-long run midweek in most weeks to back it up. Threshold starts in week 2 and grows through week 7, until Friday asks for 30 to 40 minutes of it.

The fast repeats wait until week 6 and the tune-up races until weeks 8 and 10, so the hardest work lands on the deepest base. Varying the emphasis this way, block by block, tends to bring slightly better races than holding the same load throughout. Each hard session is written out in full, from the warm-up to the effort, and most of them say what they're for, so you know what a day is meant to build before you start it.

Does it protect you from injury?

Mostly, yes. The build is steady, and the big weeks are less of a risk than they look.

High mileage on its own isn't the danger. Runners who build to higher mileage gradually tend to get hurt less, not more, though that pattern comes from observational studies. Elite marathoner Emily Sisson, who wrote the book's foreword, felt years of building pay off. "Before London, every long run really beat me up," she told an interviewer. Years later, at 110 to 115 miles a week, "I absorbed the mileage better." Apart from the climbs back after lighter weeks, the weekly running rises in small steps, a few miles at a time. The hard days never land back to back, and every hard session opens with a warm-up.

The lighter weeks follow the heavy stretches. Week 5 comes after 4 straight weeks in the 60s and 70s. Week 8 follows the week 7 peak, and week 10 follows week 9, each with a tune-up race in it. Without lighter weeks like these, tiredness from the biggest weeks tends to pile up and raise the risk of injury and illness, and here each one arrives just as that tiredness needs somewhere to go.

But week 6 asks a lot at once. It comes straight after the lighter week and climbs from the mid 60s to past 80 miles, and the first fast repeats at 5K effort arrive that Wednesday. Mileage alone undersells a week like that, because the new speed adds strain your legs feel and the mileage total doesn't show. Research suggests many injuries that look like overuse actually start suddenly. And a lingering ache may raise the odds of a real injury, though that's been studied in football more than in running. If you carry a niggle into week 6, this is the week it can turn into something, and an easier Wednesday costs you little.

Strength is the other gap. The book has a full strength program in chapter 4, but none of it is on the calendar, so fitting it in is up to you. Strength training lowers the risk of sports injury more than stretching or balance work alone, and about 2 sessions a week is enough for most runners to gain its performance benefit as well.

What happens when you miss a day?

Better than the packed calendar suggests, as long as you lean on the book.

It ranks the kinds of running, endurance first and speed last, so in a short week you protect the long run and the medium-long run before anything else. Every day on the calendar has a distance range, so a tight morning can take the low end without breaking anything. If you miss under 10 days, you pick the schedule up where you are, and the book has rules for longer breaks based on how many days you lost and how many weeks remain. Threshold runs are set in minutes rather than miles, so slower and faster marathoners get the same dose.

But the calendar has no slack. A run sits on every day until race week, and on many Mondays there are two, so a missed session has nowhere to go except on top of another one. That's the trap sports medicine doctor Brett Toresdahl warns about: "Runners can get in trouble by trying to catch up on their training and doing too many miles after an interruption in their training." The book states its priorities, but it doesn't list what to cut, in order, when a week gets squeezed. And in a 12-week plan, a lost week is a bigger share of the build. The judgment calls are yours, made from the book's principles.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes. This plan builds the endurance a marathon needs and rehearses race day along the way.

Marathoners who train with longer long runs seem to finish faster, though no one has tested whether shorter, faster sessions could stand in for them. Here they come every week through week 10, peaking at 20 to 22 miles in week 7, five weeks before the race. Three of them carry long stretches at goal marathon pace: 8 miles in week 1, 10 in week 3, 12 in week 6. You find out how goal pace sits in your body when the first hour is already behind you.

Threshold runs grow to 30 to 40 minutes, and most coaches count steady running at that effort as a core part of marathon training. Then come the tune-up weekends, twice. On Saturday of week 8 you race an 8K to 15K, 10 to 15 miles once you count the warm-up and cool-down, and on Sunday you head out for 16 to 17 miles. Week 10 does it again with an 8K to 10K. Sunday's run starts on legs that raced the day before, which is about as close to the late miles of a marathon as training gets. Boston coach Bill Squires had a word for rehearsal like this, "simulation," writes running historian Roger Robinson, who counts Pfitzinger among the elites who "acknowledge the value of his advice." Tune-up races may help most as pacing practice, though no study has tested whether they improve marathon time.

The last 2 weeks are a taper. Race week drops to about a third of the peak, with a short run at goal pace on Wednesday to remind your legs what it feels like. A taper like this, up to 3 weeks of less running with a few faster touches kept in, improves race performance.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Trained runners tend to improve more by keeping easy days easy and hard days clearly hard than by running everything at a medium effort. That's the shape of this plan, and it comes with plenty of range. Holding back on easy days is the hard part for many driven runners. "I've never been someone who has been good at taking easy days and I can trace that all the way back to 7th grade—I just liked to go hard," admits elite marathoner Kate Landau, who is profiled in the book.

About 87 percent of the running is easy, and the hard days come in 4 kinds: long runs with goal marathon pace in them, threshold runs, fast repeats at 5K effort, and tune-up races. Each asks something different of you, from the patience of 12 miles at goal pace to the burn of the last 1 kilometer repeat.

Strides or short hill sprints of 10 to 12 seconds appear in most weeks, and short, explosive work like this can make your running more efficient, though strides themselves haven't been studied directly. In week 7 they come on Saturday, a few minutes of quick, light running the day before 20 to 22 miles.