Training for a Marathon by Running as Little as Possible
The diary of my first full week
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There are as many ways to train for the New York City marathon as there are people who are running the New York City marathon.
I’m not saying there are 51,402 different training plans out there—that’s probably an underestimate. But the experience I have training to run 26.2 miles on November 3 is going to be singularly mine. After all, it’s my body, my preferences, my hangups.
I’m broadly choosing to organize my training by the principles outlined in “Run Less, Run Faster” from 2007. To quickly summarize, authors Bill Pierce and Scott Murr recommend each athlete do three key runs a week: a speed run, a tempo run and a long run. The intensities of the first two stay pretty consistent with your level of fitness over the course of a training block. But you slowly ramp up the distances of your long runs over time, tapering a bit in the weeks immediately before race day.
The key to their program is what you do besides run.