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

Does it build you up smartly?

Yes. The plan's shape is the best thing about it.

Each block has one job, and they come in the order Pfitzinger ranks them: endurance first, then the steady hard running at the effort you can hold for an hour, then the faster repeats and races, then the taper. Training that shifts its emphasis from block to block tends to beat training that holds one load all the way through. The calendar names each block, so on any given morning you know what the week is for.

And nothing on the schedule is vague. Each hard session gives the total distance, the stretch at effort, the number of repeats and the jog between them, and each run is named for what it trains. You won't stand at the door wondering what today is for.

Does it protect you from injury?

Many running injuries seem to start suddenly, often right after one run that goes well past a runner's recent longest. For a plan this size, how the miles arrive matters as much as how many there are.

On that, the plan is careful. Between its lighter weeks, mileage climbs in small steps, the hard days are never back to back, and every hard session opens with an easy warm-up. And steady high mileage, built up over time, is generally linked to fewer injuries rather than more. The evidence is observational, but it is the case for a plan like this one. Sport scientist Tim Gabbett calls it a paradox: athletes "accustomed to high training loads have fewer injuries than athletes training at lower workloads," though most of his evidence comes from team sports. The key word is accustomed. That case fits the runner who already lives at this plan's mileage, not the one climbing to it.

Weeks 5, 8 and 10 drop back to the mid to high 70s after weeks in the 90s. For a runner at this mileage that is still 9 runs, but it is the week for the heaviness to drain from your legs, and a fixed plan needs that relief written in, since training that piles up without a break tends to raise injury and illness risk.

But three things are left to you. The first is strength. The book has a full strength program in chapter 4, and none of it is on the schedule. Where it fits around a run on every day is yours to work out, and strength training substantially lowers injury risk in sport. Marathoner Eliud Kipchoge and his training partners showed how light it can be: twice a week, they did an hour of band and body-weight work, such as bridges, planks, and balance drills. "The exercises are not something where you suffer," said Marc Roig, the physiotherapist who oversaw the routine. The point is to back up the running "and avoid any negative interference." On a plan with a run on all 84 days, that is the kind of strength work with room to fit.

The second is week 6. It follows a lighter week, and in the same seven days the mileage climbs from about 78 to nearly 99 and the first repeats at 5K effort arrive. Two new loads land at once. A niggle, the low-grade ache runners notice and keep running on, may raise the risk of an injury that stops you, though that has been measured in footballers rather than runners. Marathoner Nigel Martin, who ran 2:18 in his first marathon, ran on one for months before it caught up with him. "You're much more likely to get side-lined by the niggle you know about than something that crops up out of the blue," he writes. On this plan, week 6 is the week to take one seriously.

The third is rest. There is no day without a run in 12 weeks. The book lets you swap cross-training in for a recovery run, but whether you ever take that option is your call, and a runner who never does carries every week into the next.

What happens when you miss a day?

The schedule stays fixed, but the book gives you room inside it.

Every day's distance is a range, so a tired week can live at the low end and still be the plan. The steady hard running is set in minutes rather than miles, and the book lets you split it into shorter pieces. It also has a clear rule for coming back after missed days, set by how many you lost.

But the book has no list of what to cut in a short week. It says which kind of training matters most and leaves the rest of the triage to you. And a run on every day, with two on many of them, leaves no empty day to move a lost session to. Miss a Wednesday evening of repeats, and the only place to put them is on top of something else. The better move is to let them go. "You can't make up what you missed," says exercise scientist Bill Pierce, whose own marathon plans use just 3 runs a week, "and you certainly shouldn't double up on your workouts to catch up with your program." Here, a lost session stays lost, and the next day goes ahead as written.

Will it get you ready for race day?

A marathon asks for three things above the rest: legs that have already run close to the distance, practice at the pace you plan to race, and enough rest at the end to use them both. In the early evidence, longer long runs go with faster marathon finishes, though no study has tested whether shorter, faster sessions could replace them.

The plan covers all three. The long run peaks at 21 to 22 miles in week 7. Goal-pace running grows from 8 miles on the first Sunday to 10 in week 4 and 12 in week 6, each time inside a long run, so you practice the pace on legs that are already working. The last 2 weeks cut back hard, and a taper of up to 3 weeks improves race performance compared with training straight through.

But the plan asks for more than the race does. Its biggest weeks sit near 100 miles, far beyond what most runners need to be ready for a marathon. For a runner who already trains there, the extra miles still have a job. Once a runner is trained, added mileage may toughen the legs more than it grows the aerobic engine, though the direct evidence is thin. For a runner stretching up to this mileage to follow the plan, the miles cost before they pay. Co-author Scott Douglas learned that firsthand. After years at 70 to 80 miles a week, he set out to make 90 to 100 his normal. "At first, all that accomplished was being even more tired," he writes. "But after a few months, I adapted." A 12-week plan has no room for those months, so the miles need to be in your legs before week 1.

The race practice also comes early. The longest run at goal pace is finished in week 6. From there, the plan turns to 5K-effort repeats and two tune-up races, and goal pace returns only as 2.5 miles in race week. The races give you a hard effort and a chance to practice your race-day routine, which coaches see as pacing rehearsal. But a runner who wants one more long rehearsal at goal pace in the final month won't find it here.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Yes. Two kinds of hard day take turns through the plan, and they never blur together.

One kind is long and steady: goal-pace stretches inside Sunday long runs, and runs at the effort you could hold for an hour that stretch from 20 minutes to 40. The other is short and fast: repeats of 600, 1,000 and 1,200 meters at 5K effort, and two tune-up races. Between them, most weeks have a midweek run of 11 to 15 miles, long enough to build endurance without becoming a second long run. Everything else is easy, so the hard days get your full effort, and runners tend to improve more when easy days stay easy and hard days are clearly hard. Keeping them that way is harder than it sounds. Sport scientists Stephen Seiler and Espen Tønnessen have a name for what happens when recreational runners let their easy runs drift up toward the effort they could hold for an hour: "falling into a training intensity 'black hole.'" With 7 to 11 runs a week here, that drift adds up fast, so the slow runs need to stay slow.

The small things count too. Every week has strides, 100-meter bursts at the end of an easy run, and three weeks add hill sprints of 10 to 12 seconds. After an hour of slow running, a few of these wake the legs back up. Short, explosive efforts like the hill sprints can make runners more efficient, though strides on their own haven't been tested.