From the newsletter

How to build your first marathon plan backward

The training part of issue 15, on one page. The needs assessment, the rate of change, the rule of thumb, and a planner that breaks your own marathon into weekly chunks. Put in your race date and your longest run from the past month. You get the long-run ladder built backward from race day, and an honest answer on whether the rate is too steep.

Big tasks feel daunting because we haven't walked the path yet, and we aren't sure what it takes. So we break the goal into its component pieces, and then we work through them, one at a time.

First, the needs assessment.

What is the goal actually asking for, and where are you today? For a marathon, mine looks like this:

Movement	Running. One pattern, repeated for hours, mostly at one steady pace.
Demand	42.2 km of it.
Time	Call it four to six hours of work.
Today	I can run about 10 km in a single run, comfortably.

Then we chart it. You can do this on paper, right now:

For my marathon, it looks like this:

Today to the goal: a 10 km long run up to 30. The dashed stretch to 42.2 is what fresh legs cover on race day.

But you'll notice the chart is missing an axis: time.

Then, the rate of change.

So let's introduce a few time frames, and see what my 20 km build looks like in each. 6 weeks. 12 weeks. 18 weeks.

Dotted is 6 weeks, grey is 12, ink is 18. Same 10 to 30 in all three.

Weeks	Rate
6	+20% a week
12	+10% a week
18	+6% a week

And if we taper before race day, to let the body recover and show up fresh, we need a bit more time than that.

• Six weeks. Every run is a big jump. Something starts hurting around week three, and now you can't run at all. Frustrating, and confusing, because you did exactly what the plan said.
• Twelve weeks. Doable, with no slack. One cold or one work trip, and you spend the rest of the block anxious, counting the runs you missed. You arrive underprepared.
• Eighteen weeks. Slack. A cold or a work trip is a shrug, not a crisis. On the weeks you feel good, there's room to push a bit more while staying under the limit. You arrive calm.

One more thing the planner assumes: a base. That means you've been running about three times a week for two or three months. If you're not there yet, the plan starts with that, before the marathon countdown begins.

Breaking down the chunks.

Now that we know where we need to go, we zoom in to the week-to-week changes. What does week 1 to week 2 look like? Or week 2 repeated, if the first go didn't land?

At this zoomed-in perspective, the goal stops being "run a marathon." It becomes: next week's long run is about one kilometer longer than this week's. That's it. Six or seven more minutes on your feet.

Put in your date and your longest run, and the planner draws yours.

Race date

Your longest run in the past month (km) Your longest single run in the last 30 days, not your weekly total.

Is this your first marathon?

Yes No

Draw my chunks

Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Each week has one small, clear target. You hit it, and you tick it. If a week doesn't land, you repeat it and go again. Can I do 11 km this Sunday? Then 12 the next?

How the chunks are built

• It starts from race day and works back. The race is the last week. The two weeks before it are the taper.
• Your longest run peaks three weeks out, at about 30 km, or about 3 hours on your feet, whichever comes first. That's common practice, not a law. Most first-marathon plans peak somewhere around 30–32 km.
• No long run is more than 10% longer than your longest in the month before it. With more weeks, the steps get smaller. That's the gentler rate.
• Every fourth week is lighter. Many plans build in an easier week every three or four weeks. It's practice rather than proven science, but it gives you room to absorb the work.
• The taper keeps the running, cuts the volume. Over the last two weeks, run less, roughly half, but keep running and keep some pace in it. This part is well studied.

What a week looks like

The planner only plans one number, the long run. The rest of the week stays steady:

• One long run, at an easy pace.
• Two or three shorter runs, mostly easy.
• One or two strength sessions. Across sports, strength training is one of the best-supported ways to cut injuries. It's how you hold up to the build.
• At least one full rest day.

Learn to check in and adjust.

No plan survives a full training block untouched. Work travel eats a week. A cold lands right before the long run. A knee starts acting up. The plan isn't broken. Not noticing is the failure.

Once a week, rate five signals honestly: energy, recovery, stress, sleep quality, fueling. Then read it back.

The full check-in, and what I look at first when a signal is red →

The point isn't to protect the original plan. It's to protect your rate of progression.

Let the plate climb

As the long runs get longer, the food has to climb with them, across the whole week, not just on long-run day. Under-eating a build rarely shows up as one bad run. It shows up as flat weeks: the work gets done and doesn't add up.

How to plan a week of food around your training →

The competition track.

That's the whole method: the chunks, the wins, the check-in, the people on the other end. None of it requires believing you can run a marathon today. Only the next step.

On my platform, this is the competition track. If you're interested, I can run you through it. Reply to the newsletter, or write to [email protected].

Where the 10% comes from: Frandsen et al. How much running is too much? Identifying high-risk running sessions in a 5,200-person cohort study. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2025;59(17):1203–1210. Taper: Bosquet et al., Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2007;39(8):1358–1365.

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