All year marathon plan

by Geir

What is the best way to train between 100 day marathon plans - if you want to use the program as an all year marathon plan ?

"I have just finished my first marathon (New York) and started on the recovery training. I am planning to do a half marathon in 5- 6 month and a new marathon in a year. How should I link the different training periods.

Should I go start into a new period and just repeat the middel weeks before starting the specific race training, or should I just do some maintenance training first and start on a schedule the "normal" 100 days before the race.

My goal is to better my PBs (3:58 and 1:39)quite a bit. Previously I typically did 8-10 weeks of training before a half marathon and then stopped training for months before starting again before a new race. Now I'm hoping to utilize the training I already have put in for the marathon to improve my previous results.

Geir"

Answer: Hi Geir, I will give you two options to this question.

The first choice is to repeat the schedule year through and you can see my answer to this here : After the first 100 days

The other option you can try out is this - and for many it works better. My answer below is taken for a conversation with one of the other 100 day marathon plan runners who had the exact same question as you had. To sum it up, you can make the 100 day marathon plan general with just "picking sessions" from the schedule and then 100 (or ideally 121) days before your next marathon start using the specific plan again.

This was my answer to him :

For winter/spring training sessions if you want a general plan- consider the following : Pick 2-3 quality sessions from the 100 day marathon plan weekly and add in there the long runs (but run the easy runs EASY)

Aim for a flat structure, meaning that you actually pick sessions from all periods (one week can be one session from the 5k/10k phase and one from the marathon phase for example) This will help you going over the winter. IF you choose to run a marathon in May for example, 100 day before that repeat the 100 day plan to its fullest again. If not, keep this flat structure until 121 days before the next marathon (include the introductory weeks if you can - making it 121 days)

Point is that the general structure of the individual workouts in the 100 day plan will help you stay injury free, so no need to worry about that. And this gives you a more long term plan before going into the marathon specific work before a marathon.

Remember one thing on the way : never two hard workouts back to back and respect the easy workouts ! In addition to this, be careful with the absolute longest hard marathon "key sessions" as these should be preserved for only when preparing for the marathon (for example 40 min + 40 min + 40 min - all hard at different paces to quote the sub 3:00 schedule)

If you are planning a half marathon in there and want to do well on that, then you may use this solution about 80-100 days before a half marathon Half marathon schedule with the 100 day plan

Wish you all the best with you all year marathon plan !

Marius

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