Marathon Plan Stucture

by Massimiliano
(Zurich)

How to structure the 100 day marathon plan if you are far away from your marathon race day.

"Hi Marius,
I am roughly 230 days away from NY marathon. I have seen your advise in how to duplicate week plans starting from the farthest from day race...howevever, this would mean to duplicate essentially the entire program.

I wonder whether:

1) I should just go through the full 100 day program and identify a marathon somewhere in June so that I have time to recover and re-start the 100 day program to run new york

or...

2) adapt the program (but how?) to more gradually build up resistance, speed, time, etc.

I have not run in about 18 months, have just gone from weighting 103 kgs to 88kgs (188cm tall) and now will start running from scratch essentially....with my knees being able to hold me much better than at 100kgs.

advise?
many many thanks
Massimiliano"

Answer: Hi Massimiliano and thanks for your question.

I've touched on this (like you've probably seen) three places, see this post plus the corresponding links in it :Structure of Marathon Plan.

In your case, since you've just got into running shape I would suggest another option : go through the 100 day marathon plus BUT be a little bit careful with the longest of the hard runs (where you run hard for 2+ hours, right in the middle of the marathon specific phase). These I would only run easy instead and instead add some time to them. That will get you ready to run either a half marathon or a full marathon in July which will be a nice test of endurance. Just remember to find somewhere where the temparature is nice and cool at that time if you choose a full marathon ! Otherwise stick to a half, even if you do this on top the the marathon plan.

So basically : test the marathon plan all through but be careful with the hardest long runs (save this to before New York) and end it with a half marathon or a marathon in June/July. This should make you all set for the NYC further down the road with another round of the 100 day plan.

Kind regards,
Marius

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