Running Plan Review Pete Pfitzinger Advanced Marathoning Multiple Marathoning, 8 Week

Does it build you up smartly?

Pfitzinger builds these 8 weeks around the race you just ran, and each stretch has a clear job.

The first 3 weeks aren't a base. They're recovery from the marathon you just ran, and the plan treats them that way, with easy running, at least two days off a week, and nothing hard. Weeks 4 and 5 are where the training happens, and weeks 6 to 8 bring you down to the race. Splitting training into stretches with different jobs tends to beat holding one load all the way through, and this split suits an 8-week gap.

Each run on the schedule names its type, its distance and its hard part, and the book has a chapter on what each type is for, so nothing on the grid is a mystery. On a hard day, you know the warm-up, the work, and what the session is meant to do before you leave the house. 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 so that you get to race day fit enough, rested enough, and healthy enough to have a great experience." Between two marathons, getting there rested is half the job, and the first 3 weeks are built for it.

Does it protect you from injury?

Not as well as it could. The weak spot is week 4, and it comes just when you're likely to feel safest.

Three weeks after a marathon, the soreness has usually faded, and easy runs start to feel routine again. Then week 4 asks for a lot at once. Mileage jumps from about 41 to about 57, and your first threshold run, your first hill sprints and your first long run of 16 to 17 miles all land in the same week. Weekly jumps of this size, above about 30%, tend to raise the risk of injury, and this is the biggest one in the plan.

Feeling recovered can run ahead of being recovered. In training, the body tends to adapt on a staggered clock, with blood and muscle energy systems quickest and tendons and bone weeks to months behind. Your breathing may tell you you're ready long before your Achilles agrees. So run week 4 at the low end of the distance range the book gives for every day.

Strength is a gap too. The book lays out a detailed strength program in its own chapter, but none of it is on the schedule. Finding room for it in a 6-run week is up to you, and it matters, because strength training lowers the risk of injury, and does more for it than stretching. Marathon great Eliud Kipchoge once wrote about his training that "the gym work helps to chase away the injuries and train the muscles." Weeks 2 and 3, with only 5 runs each, are the easiest place to start.

The plan does get some things right. No two hard sessions fall on consecutive days, and week 7 comes down to about 43 miles after the 3 biggest weeks, a clear breather before race week. Every hard session opens with a warm-up, and the book explains how to spot overtraining and illness. But it doesn't give a plan for returning after a specific injury. So treat a niggle, an ache that hangs around from one run to the next, as a reason to back off, especially in weeks 4 and 5. Early evidence, though from footballers rather than runners, suggests a lingering niggle may raise the risk of a full injury. "I'd bet those who shut it down at the first signs of a niggle tend to have the longest careers," wrote obstacle-course racing champion Amelia Boone, who also races ultras. In weeks 4 and 5, that's the instinct to trust.

What happens when you miss a day?

Eight weeks is a short window, and one lost week is an eighth of it. What helps most when that happens is knowing which runs to keep.

The book gives you the order, but not the list. It ranks endurance first, then threshold, then faster work, and it says long runs come first. But it never turns that into a list of what to drop from a short week, so the call is yours. With Mondays always open, there's a spare day to slide a run into. But in weeks 4 to 7, with 6 runs a week, every move pushes something else along.

For longer breaks, the book has a clear rule, based on how many days you missed and how many weeks remain. Under 10 days, you pick the schedule back up. Because this plan always sits within 8 weeks of a marathon, missing 10 days or more means the book asks you to rethink your goal. "Missing 2.5 weeks of preparation when you have 16 weeks to go is no big deal, but missing that amount of time during the last 2 months of preparation will likely require you to modify your goal," the authors write. On this plan, every week sits inside those last 2 months. That's a hard call, but it's a fair one.

When you do have to improvise, the book makes it easier. Every type of run comes with what it's for, the effort it needs and the mistake runners most often make with it, so you know what a missed session was supposed to do before you decide whether to replace it.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes. The plan gives a second marathon what it needs: long runs to hold your endurance, a little fast running, and a real step down before race day.

This plan doesn't try to build marathon fitness. You bring that with you from your first race, and the plan's job is to hold onto it. The longest run, 19 to 20 miles, comes in week 5, 3 weeks before race week, and 3 runs of 16 miles or more keep the distance in your legs. Longer long runs tend to go with faster marathon finishes, though the evidence is early and only shows a link. Then mileage steps down over 3 weeks, and race week is a handful of short runs before the marathon.

The faster work fills in around it. A threshold run in week 4, then 3 rounds of repeats at 5K effort, keep fast running in your legs in small doses. The 8K to 10K race in week 6 gives you a chance to race again with less on the line, and racing experience may help runners pace a marathon more evenly. "Like any other skill, pacing requires repetition. No runner gets their pacing right the first time," writes coach and author Matt Fitzgerald. Week 6's race gives you one more chance to practice, over a distance where a pacing mistake costs you little.

In race week, Wednesday's run puts 2 miles at marathon effort inside 6 to 7 miles, a last reminder of the rhythm you'll hold on Sunday.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Yes. Four kinds of hard work, each with a clear job, sit on top of mostly easy running.

About 86 percent of your miles are easy, and trained runners who keep easy days easy and hard days hard tend to improve more than runners who settle into a steady medium effort. The hard part is holding back. "Almost all the problems we have are that athletes are so motivated that they're dumb," says exercise scientist Carl Foster, who studied how coaches and athletes see training. On this plan, that means keeping the easy 86 percent truly easy, so the hard days get your best. The hard sessions change from week to week: one threshold run, three different sets of repeats at 5K effort, a race, and a short marathon-effort run in race week.

The easy runs carry some variety too. Strides show up in most weeks, starting in week 2, and week 4 adds a set of 10-second hill sprints. These short, fast efforts take only a few minutes. Explosive work like hill sprints can make runners more economical, though strides on their own haven't been tested.