Who’s behind this review? Buena Vida is a running app made by David Cole, a Seattle runner & triathlete who led design and research for Amazon’s Halo fitness band. Every plan here, including Buena Vida’s, is scored on the same 30 measures, each tied to published research. AI does the first scoring and draft, then every claim is checked against its studies. No plan author pays to be reviewed, and we run no ads. See a mistake? Email David at corrections@buenavida.run · How we score →
This marathon plan from Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas is the 18-week, 55 to 70 mile tier of Advanced Marathoning, now in its 4th edition. For a durable runner already at 45 miles a week or more, it's a demanding, well-reasoned marathon build. The training is sound and carefully ordered, and most weeks carry two long runs: a midweek run that reaches 14 to 15 miles and a Sunday run that peaks at 21 to 22 miles.
That midweek run is the one to protect. The book's answer to readers who cut it short is direct: "Those runs are really beneficial for marathon preparation, so just do your best to hit the target distance." On this plan, that means finding room on a weekday for 14 or 15 miles through most of weeks 7 to 13.
The catch is the load. You'll run 6 days a week, your biggest weeks reach the mid to high 60s in miles, and there's no real lighter week in the 15 weeks before the taper. Strength is left for you to schedule. For anyone below 45 miles a week, it starts too high.
Good
| Structure | 5 | |
| Prevention | 4 | |
| Flexibility | 4 | |
| Readiness | 4 | |
| Variety | 5 |
The plan runs in 4 named blocks. Weeks 1 to 6 build endurance. Weeks 7 to 11 add longer threshold runs, held for a set number of minutes at about the effort you could race at for an hour. Weeks 12 to 15 bring short, fast repeats at 5K race effort and 2 tune-up races. The last 3 weeks are the taper, a third tune-up race, and the marathon.
Every week has 6 runs, and Monday is a day off from running. In most weeks, two of the runs are long: a medium-long run in the middle of the week, mostly 11 to 15 miles, and a Sunday long run that reaches 21 to 22 miles in week 11. Four of the Sunday runs carry a long stretch at your goal marathon pace.
It's written for runners who are already running at least 45 miles a week. The book doesn't include a first-marathon plan, and this tier isn't one.
A week with Pfitzinger
Here is week 8, from the middle of the threshold block.
MONDAY is a day off from running, or cross-training if you prefer.
TUESDAY is a recovery run of 6 to 7 miles, slower than your usual easy.
WEDNESDAY is the medium-long run, 14 to 15 miles.
THURSDAY is another recovery run of 6 to 7 miles.
FRIDAY is the hard day. You run 10 to 12 miles in all, with 35 to 40 minutes in the middle at threshold, the effort you could race at for about an hour.
SATURDAY is a third recovery run, 6 to 7 miles.
SUNDAY is the long run, 19 to 21 miles.
That's 6 runs and around 65 miles. Only Friday is hard in the usual sense. But two of the runs are longer than a half marathon, and they sit four days apart.
Wednesday is the run that defines this tier. Fourteen or fifteen miles on a weekday is a different thing from fourteen on a Sunday. It means a long block of the day given to running, and legs that are still carrying it on Thursday morning, when another 6 to 7 miles is waiting. Two long runs a week, through most of the plan, is how it builds the endurance Pfitzinger ranks above everything else.
The week turns on Saturday. Friday's threshold run has left your legs heavy, Sunday asks for around 20 miles, and in between sits a recovery run. It's tempting to run it at your normal easy effort, since it's only a recovery day. That's the mistake this week punishes. The book gives recovery runs a heart-rate ceiling and a simpler test: you should finish feeling you've stored up energy, not spent it. Run Saturday that way and Sunday is a long run. Run it at a steady clip and Sunday becomes a grind well before the end.
Watch the recovery runs as a group. If they start to feel like work, the weeks are stacking up faster than your legs can recover from them.
Does it build you up smartly?
Marathon fitness gets built in layers, and the order matters. Endurance has to come before the work that sharpens it, or the sharpening has nothing to stand on. Training that shifts its emphasis in stages like this tends to beat training that holds one mix from start to finish, and which model of phases a plan uses matters less than having them.
Pfitzinger's blocks follow his own ranking of what matters. Endurance first: the first 6 weeks are mostly steady aerobic miles. Threshold next: those runs grow through weeks 7 to 11, from 30 to 35 minutes up to 35 to 45. Then 5K-pace repeats, held back until week 10. Every session is written out: the kind of run, the distance, and for the harder ones, how much of it is at effort. Molly Huddle, billed by the publisher as a two-time Olympian, wrote in a blurb for the book that it "provides a focused purpose every day." A runner in week 9 who wonders why there are still no fast repeats will find the reason in the book's first chapter.
Does it protect you from injury?
Mostly, yes. The plan is careful about how it spaces hard work. Its gaps are three: 15 weeks pass without a real break, strength is left off the schedule, and the book offers nothing for specific injuries.
The spacing is solid. No hard session lands the day after another. New kinds of hard workout never arrive in a week that's already climbing, and each hard session opens with an easy warm-up. Measured against the month before, no week spikes. And for runners who build to it gradually, higher, steady weekly mileage tends to go with fewer injuries, not more, though that evidence comes from watching runners rather than from trials.
But the plan doesn't ease off until the taper. Weeks 6 and 10 run a few miles shorter, yet each still has a 14 to 15 mile Sunday run, and each leads straight into one of the biggest weeks of the plan. The first clearly lighter week is week 16, after 15 weeks of building. Load that piles up without relief tends to raise the risk of injury and illness, which is why coaches usually write a lighter week into a fixed plan every 3 to 5 weeks. Week 15 is one of the hardest stretches: 5K-pace repeats on Wednesday, 14 to 15 miles on Thursday, and 19 to 21 on Sunday. Mileage alone undersells a week like that. A runner who reaches week 15 already tired has had nowhere in the plan to shed it.
Strength is left to you. The book has a detailed strength program in chapter 4, but none of it is on the schedule. Pfitzinger has explained the choice: "Our readers don't have the time to focus on that. And we can't really prioritize it without taking away from the running that's going to be of greater benefit to them." Fitting it in yourself is a squeeze: the only day without running is Monday, the day after the long run, so any session you add sits next to a long run or a hard one. That's a gap, because strength training substantially lowers sport-injury risk. It also makes trained runners more economical, and about two sessions a week is enough to get that benefit. Four-time Olympian Shalane Flanagan, looking back on a career with few injuries, gave her reason: "I attribute that to being as strong as possible." On this plan, finding the days to get stronger is up to you.
The book covers overtraining and illness, and it has clear rules for coming back after time off. But it says nothing about specific injuries. That leaves the small signals to you, like an ache that's still there on Thursday morning, a day after Wednesday's 15 miles. Early evidence suggests lingering aches like that may raise the odds of an injury that stops you running, though it comes from footballers rather than runners. On a schedule this full, the sensible response to the first one is to cut a run, not to push through and stay on plan.
What happens when you miss a day?
Every 18-week plan meets a week that doesn't go to plan. What helps then is knowing what to keep, and knowing how to come back.
This book is unusually good at coming back. A table, new in this edition, tells you what to do based on how many days you've missed and how many weeks remain, and after missed interval sessions the book tells you to run the next few a little easier. It also gives you room to adjust. Every day's distance is a range, a threshold run can be split into shorter pieces, and recovery runs can be swapped for cross-training. Effort is described in more than one way, with heart-rate bands for every kind of run except the fastest, and a chart that turns a recent race into the efforts the plan asks for.
But knowing what to keep is thinner. The book states its order of importance, endurance first, then threshold, then 5K-pace work, then speed, and reminds you that long runs come first. It doesn't turn that into a list of what to drop in a short week, and the guidance is split across two chapters. Keeping the Sunday run is usually an easy call. Whether to drop a recovery run, shorten the midweek long run, or skip the threshold session is yours to work out. In a week like week 15, with three big days, that's a real decision. Exercise scientist David Costill, who studied distance runners for decades, once told an interviewer where calls like that get made: "The best computer in the world is in your head." On this plan, your log from past marathon builds is the best guide to which run you can spare.
Will it get you ready for race day?
It's built for the late miles of a marathon. But it asks for more running than that takes, and its last long rehearsal at goal pace comes early.
The foundation is strong. Five Sunday runs reach at least 19 miles, the longest peaks at 21 to 22 in week 11, and through the middle of the plan the midweek run adds 14 to 15 more. Early evidence links longer long runs to faster marathon finishes, though no study has tested whether shorter, faster sessions could do the same job. Threshold runs fill the first 11 weeks. The last 3 weeks come down in steps, and a structured taper of up to 3 weeks improves race performance over training straight through to the start.
Pfitzinger's case for the miles is that endurance comes first, and for a runner who is already trained, extra volume may build durability more than raw aerobic power, though the direct evidence in trained runners is thin. It's a fair case. But weeks in the mid to high 60s are more running than most runners need to be ready for a marathon. If your body thrives on it, the extra miles can pay off in the last hour of the race. If it doesn't, they eat the recovery you'd rather spend on the faster sessions.
Goal-pace practice ends early, too. The last long stretch at goal marathon pace comes in week 13, 5 weeks out, and race week carries only 2 miles of it. Around it, the plan leans on three Saturday tune-up races, in weeks 12, 14 and 16, each followed the next morning by a 16 to 17 mile long run. That's a real test of legs that raced the day before. "A race is run at a significantly greater effort, pulling out more energy than the body can restore," wrote Boston coach Bill Squires and his co-author Bruce Lehane, as quoted by Doug Kurtis. Each of those Sunday runs starts in that hole, which is part of what makes this tier so demanding. Coaches widely recommend tune-ups, though no study has tested whether they change marathon finish time. What they may offer is practice at pacing a race, though that evidence is thin.
Are the workouts varied enough?
Yes. This plan uses 8 kinds of run and changes its hard sessions as the weeks go by, so each part of your fitness gets its own work.
About 86 percent of the running stays easy. That's the base that carries the harder work. On top of it sit clearly hard sessions of several kinds, and mixing easy running with clearly hard work may build endurance a little better than steady, middling effort.
Threshold runs train the effort you can hold for a long time. Long stretches at goal marathon pace teach your legs the race. From week 10, repeats of 600 meters and 1 kilometer at 5K race effort work the top end of your aerobic range. The tune-up races add the one effort only racing brings out.
Strides, relaxed 100-meter pickups, and 10-second hill sprints appear in 11 of the 17 weeks before race week. Some sit on the Saturday before a big Sunday, as in weeks 7 and 10, and they stay through the taper to keep your legs quick while the miles come down. Strides themselves haven't been tested, but short, explosive work can make runners more economical without a bigger engine. "We believe in 'touching speed' throughout our training cycles," Mike Caldwell, coach of the ASICS Greenville Track Club-Elite, said in Outside. "Our marathon training is not too different than our regular distance training for 8K and upward, so incorporating some faster work is typical." On this plan, the strides and hill sprints are how you keep touching speed, right through the taper.
The good & bad of training from a book
Advanced Marathoning teaches you how marathon training works. Chapter 8 takes each kind of run in turn: what it's for, how hard to run it, and the mistake runners most often make with it. That last part is what makes the book useful on a Tuesday morning, when a recovery run starts drifting toward steady. The schedule itself is clean: one column per week, each day naming the kind of run and its distance in miles and kilometers.
But running the plan from the book means assembling it yourself. The schedules are in chapters 9 to 13, the run types and how to adjust the schedule in chapter 8, and the pace charts in the appendices. Goal marathon pace is yours to choose. Threshold effort comes from your current 15K to half marathon race pace, and interval effort from your current 5K, which the book doesn't chart. Finding tune-up races that land on the right Saturdays, and matching your long runs to your race course's hills, are left to you as well.
And a page can't see you. The book sets a heart-rate ceiling for recovery runs, but nothing tells you whether Tuesday stayed under it, or that three heavy weeks in a row have started to show. If you miss a week or need to shift one, nothing on the page moves. Reworking the days around it is up to you.
Is it right for you?
Run it. You have the base this tier asks for. The first weeks will feel full but familiar.
Run it. The book explains what every kind of run is for, and the blocks follow its ranking of what matters most.
Look elsewhere. Week 1 alone asks for about 48 to 57 miles, and the biggest weeks reach the mid to high 60s.
Think it over. Most Wednesdays from week 7 to week 13 are 14 to 15 miles.
Think it over. Weeks 7 and 11 each jump by 12 to 15 miles, and no lighter week comes before the taper.
Think it over. Three Saturdays are 8K to 15K races, and finding them is left to you.
A good alternative with an app
If Pfitzinger's approach makes sense to you but his mileage is more than you run today, Buena Vida offers its members a lower-volume marathon plan that shares much of what works here. It runs 6 days a week for 18 weeks, keeps most of the running easy, puts strides on easy days, grows the long run steadily, and ends with a taper.
Closest matchWhy this plan scores higher
- A lighter week in weeks 4, 8 and 12, where this plan runs 15 weeks before its first
- Strength training on the calendar every Thursday until race week, instead of left for you to fit in
- A start near 28 miles a week and a peak of 39, for runners not yet at the 45 this tier asks for
- A note on every run that says what it's for and how hard it should feel, plus a note for every week
What the app adds
- No complicated lookup tables. Each day's workout is clear and easy to follow
- Paces worked out from your own fitness, and adjusted automatically as you get stronger
- Miss a run, move a run, and the plan carries on
- Voice coaching through every workout, and runs recorded from your iPhone, Apple Watch, or Garmin
Get more out of your running with Buena Vida
Buena Vida was built by a runner to bring the whole job of training into one place: a plan that fits your schedule and your fitness, coaching on every run, and food targets that keep up with the work you do. Members get personal training & nutrition plans, plus full access to the catalog of pre-written plans for every running goal.
In research studies, runners on plans fit to them improved as much as or more than runners on fixed plans, and fewer of them stalled.
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More plans like this
Each of these plans takes its own route to race day. Effort-based plans, like the Buena Vida plan above, set your hard sessions by feel, so you learn what 10K effort and tempo feel like, and your training paces grow with you as you get stronger. Time-goal plans set every pace from the finish time you're aiming for. Others trade days, weeks, or mileage to fit your life.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need the book to run the Advanced Marathoning 18-week, 55 to 70 mile plan?
- Yes. The schedule names each run by type and distance, but what each type means, how hard to run it, and the charts that turn a recent race into training efforts are all in the book.
- What is a medium-long run in Pfitzinger's plans?
- It's the second-longest run of the week, run in the middle of the week. In this plan it's mostly 11 to 15 miles, usually on Wednesday, and it reaches 14 to 15 miles from week 7 on.
- What does LT mean in Advanced Marathoning?
- LT stands for lactate threshold, the effort you could hold for about an hour of racing. The book sets it from your current 15K to half marathon race pace. In this plan, threshold runs are prescribed in minutes, from 20 to 25 in week 1 up to 35 to 45 in week 11.
- How many miles a week do I need before starting this plan?
- The book asks for at least 45 miles a week for this tier. Week 1 itself runs about 48 to 57 miles, depending on where you land in each day's range.
- Is the Pfitzinger 18-week, 55 to 70 mile plan good for a first marathon?
- No. The book doesn't include a first-marathon plan, and this one assumes you already run 45 miles a week and can handle two long runs in most weeks.
- Does the plan include strength training?
- The book has a detailed strength program in chapter 4, but none of it appears on the schedule. Choosing the days and fitting it around the running is up to you.
- Does the plan have recovery weeks?
- Weeks 6 and 10 run a few miles shorter than the weeks around them. The first clearly lighter week is week 16, the start of the 3-week taper.
- What happens if I miss runs on the Pfitzinger plan?
- The book has a table for it. Miss fewer than 10 days and you pick up the schedule where you are. Miss 10 to 20 and you rethink your goal only if the race is less than 8 weeks away. Miss more than 20 and you rethink it regardless.
Research notes
- Shifting training emphasis beats unchanging training
- Consistent mileage is linked to fewer injuries
- Fixed plans need built-in lighter weeks
- Mileage alone doesn't measure your load
- Strength training lowers injury risk
- Strength training makes running more efficient
- Two strength sessions a week is enough
- Niggles often warn of a bigger injury
- Longer long runs go with faster marathons
- A real taper sharpens you for race day
- Trained runners may gain durability more than VO2max
- Tune-up races: untested, may help pacing
- Easy miles do most of the work
- Mix easy and hard instead of steady medium
- Explosive work can make you more efficient