Running Plan Review Runner's World Break 4:45 Marathon Training Plan

Does it build you up smartly?

Partly. The build moves through two sensible stretches, but the plan never names them, and its sessions say what to do without saying why.

Good marathon training moves through chapters. Early weeks build the aerobic engine, middle weeks add more of the hard work, and the last weeks turn toward the race itself before a taper cuts the running back. Training that changes its emphasis from block to block tends to beat a steady, unchanging load, though the edge is small.

This plan has two of those chapters, even if it doesn't call them that. Through week 5, the hard days are the Wednesday track session and the long run. From week 6 a tempo run joins in, growing from 2 miles to 6, and the long runs climb toward 20 miles, so the back half of the build points squarely at the race. But nothing on the page marks the change or says what each stretch is for, so it's easy to miss from inside it.

The sessions are clear about what to do, and less clear about why. The workout key gives each type of run a line about its purpose, but no single session says what it's building or how it should feel. If you like to understand your training, you'll be filling that in yourself.

Does it protect you from injury?

Your body doesn't adapt to running all at once. Fitness builds on a staggered clock: your blood and muscle energy systems tend to improve within weeks, while tendons usually need weeks to a few months and bone longer still. That gap is why most coaches add miles gradually, even when the running already feels easier. Lorraine Moller, an Olympic marathon medalist from the Lydiard school, put it as a rule: "you can never progress faster than your slowest part will allow." This plan's long run grows by just 2 miles every other week, which gives the slower parts time to catch up.

This plan protects you well in most of the ways that count. Hard days never come back to back. Each track session and tempo run starts with at least 2 easy miles. Through week 9 there are two days a week with no running scheduled, and new kinds of hard sessions never arrive in a week that's already climbing. And while sudden jumps in running tend to raise the risk of injury, most clearly when one run goes well past your longest of the past month, this plan never makes a big one against the month before.

But it leaves strength out. The plan suggests light mobility or an easy yoga class on rest days, but no strength session ever appears on the calendar. That's the plan's clearest gap, because strength training substantially lowers the risk of injury in sport, and a runner stepping up toward 45 miles a week is exactly who needs it. Fitting it around the track, hills and tempo days is a puzzle you'll solve on your own. It doesn't have to be heavy. Eliud Kipchoge and his training partners did a strength and mobility session twice a week, built on resistance bands, bridges, and planks rather than weights. "The exercises are not something where you suffer," said Marc Roig, the physiotherapist who oversaw the routine. A session that light fits on an easy day without taking anything from the hard ones.

The lighter weeks come with a catch. Training that piles up without relief tends to raise the risk of injury and illness, and a printed schedule can offer that relief in only one way, with a lighter week every few weeks. This plan cuts its mileage in weeks 8 and 12, but both are hard weeks in the pattern: each carries the track, hills and a tempo run. You run fewer miles, but your legs don't get much of a break.

The weeks with the 18 and 20 mile runs ask the most of you, and those are the weeks to pay attention to your legs. The plan uses the talk test to keep easy runs easy and cautions you not to overdo it, but it never describes what trouble feels like before it stops you. Runners tend to describe injury as a sliding scale, from a slight ache to a full stop. Sports medicine physician Brett Toresdahl's rule for when it has gone too far, as his hospital relays it, is plain: "If there is pain that gets worse throughout the course of a run and causes a runner to limp or change how they run, that should be seen by a sports medicine specialist." Easing off when Tuesday's easy run starts to feel sore, instead of holding the schedule, is how most runners try to stay at the near end of it.

What happens when you miss a day?

Partly. The plan makes room for small adjustments inside the week, but it has nothing to say about the bigger ones.

Nothing in it covers a missed run, a sick week or a skipped long run. Lose a week to a cold in week 9 and the decision is yours alone: run it late, drop it, or rebuild the next few weeks around it. The plan doesn't name which runs matter most in a short week either, though it clearly builds around the long runs and the track.

Printing every pace has a real upside. You never have to work out what a track session or tempo run asks, so you can step onto the track and run it as written. But the track and tempo paces are set for the goal, and they're the same in week 15 as in week 1. Your easy runs adjust on their own, because they go by the talk test, and the same easy pace starts to feel easier within a couple of months of steady running. The harder paces don't adjust at all. If you start the plan well short of the goal fitness, every Wednesday asks for more than you have, and nothing on the schedule eases it. So the goal has to be right from the start, and race-time predictions are least exact, in minutes, for slower runners. "In percentage terms we do just fine with slower runners; in terms of absolute time, we do slightly worse," says statistician Andrew Vickers, who studied the race times of more than 2,000 recreational runners. Test the goal against a recent race first, because once you start, the Wednesday paces won't move.

What the plan does allow is some room inside the week. Thursday's run is optional and short, Monday's is too in the later weeks, and several track sessions give a range of repeats rather than a fixed count. And it states its starting point clearly, so you can tell before week 1 whether it fits you.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes. The plan builds the fitness a marathon at this goal needs, and it times the longest run and the taper well.

For everyday marathoners, race pace sits well below lactate threshold, the effort you could race for about an hour, and the slower the goal, the bigger that gap. At a 4:45 goal, the gap is wide, and this plan spends its hard running near threshold rather than at race pace. That's what the Sunday tempo runs are for, growing from 2 miles to 6 through the middle of the plan. The Wednesday track sessions sit faster still. Threshold work and race-pace work are different kinds of training, and for recreational runners either one is a reasonable choice. The plan has you train above race pace and run your long runs below it, so on race day you settle into an effort between the two you know best.

The long run carries the rest. It grows by 2 miles every other week, from 8 miles up to 20, with a shorter Sunday between each step. Coaches lean on runs like these, and marathoners who go longer in training tend to finish faster, though that evidence is early and no one has tested whether shorter, harder sessions could do the same job. This plan gives them pride of place.

The 20 miler comes three weeks before the race. After it, the long run drops to 12 miles, or a 5K race with easy miles either side, then to 8, while the Wednesday sessions stay full until race week. Race week itself is light: a short set of 400 meter repeats, a few easy miles, and rest. A taper of up to 3 weeks that cuts the running but keeps some speed improves race performance compared with training straight through. "The first marathon I had to taper, I felt like I was losing fitness," said marathoner Reid Coolsaet, who trained at about 125 miles a week. "But the way I felt in the first part of that marathon, I realized that it worked." Expect a flat day or two in this plan's last three weeks, and don't read it as lost fitness.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Endurance tends to build a little better when most running stays easy and the hard running is clearly hard, with a mix of hard sessions rather than a steady diet of medium effort.

This plan mostly delivers that. About 78 percent of the running is easy, and the hard days are spread out so each one gets a full effort. Wednesdays bring the range: 6 repeats of 400 meters in week 1, mile repeats by week 13, ladders and pyramids in between. Tempo runs, hills and an optional 5K race fill in the rest.

But there are no strides anywhere, no drills, and no short sprints. Strides are a few minutes of quick, relaxed running at the end of an easy day. Short, explosive work like sprints and jumps can make runners more efficient, so the same pace costs less, though the research hasn't tested strides on their own. "I do strides on my easy days after my run," said trail runner and author Morgan Sjogren. "This reminds my body to run fastest at the end of a workout or race, practice good form, loosen up any tightness and prime my body to run fast the next day during my workout." A few strides after Tuesday's easy run would do the same job before Wednesday's track session, at little cost. The hills day is thin as well. It comes as 4 miles with hills in it, without the detail the track days get, so how many climbs and how hard is up to you.