Your Marathon Plan Is Backwards – Here’s the Correct Order

[00:00:00] You are three weeks into marathon training and your plan says VO two max intervals today. But your easy runs, they still feel too hard. Your long runs, you hit the wall at 90 minutes and you had to walk home and your threshold, you don’t even know what that should feel like yet. And now you’re supposed to do speed work.

[00:00:18] Here’s the issue. Marathon training. It has an order, a hierarchy. There are three run types that build the foundation. Everything else. Builds on top. Most runners, they do it backwards and get injured, sick, or burned out before they even start their marathon. Let’s fix that. Today I’ll be going over the three core run types that build 80% of fitness, plus the final 20% of that fitness to run your marathon while doing speed work before building your base breaks you for marathon training.

[00:00:47] The proven order Elite coaches use a free 16 week plan, the foundation first, and the speed work second and more. I’m Daren D Lake certified run coach and lifelong runner. Over the last 30 years, I did everything the marathon plan said and more. ’cause that’s just the way I am. Then I showed up for my first marathon with a lingering injury from over training that crashed the marathon party and I’m not alone.

[00:01:13] A 2008 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine tracked 629 runners training for a race. The runners with no previous experience more than twice as likely to get injured. Nearly half of those injured novice runners, they quit entirely and never made it to race day since then, I went sub three in the marathon and finished 10 hours in the Ironman triathlon.

[00:01:33] This isn’t just theory, it’s science plus my real life evidence and all of this to help 100,000 self-coach runners. Run the best marathon and get 1% better each day, each week, each month, each year. Let’s get into it. Alright, so the problem is that marathon training is complex. You need different types of long runs, tempo and threshold work.

[00:01:53] Lots of easy zone two stuff, VO two max intervals and speed work, hill strides, plyo and strength work. Race pace efforts, progression runs, different types of long runs. The list keeps going on because marathons are not to be messed with. They’re not something that you just do because, oh, I might as well, I just, I’ve never trained for one.

[00:02:12] Let me do it. You actually have to build a system, 3, 6, 12 months of building things, but there’s a clear order to getting to the marathon line, healthy, fit, and ready to go. These three run types build the engine, so your long runs, which is one type, build your endurance engine. Threshold runs. They build up that marathon base speed and easy runs.

[00:02:33] They build durability and they help you recover, build up that aerobic engine. So you can do all this over and over and over again. Everything else, the interval speed, work, hills, strides, plyometric strength sharpening race pace. Those are refinements they deliver. The other 20%. They matter, but they only work if the foundation is rock solid first.

[00:02:53] Most runners, they get it backwards. They flip it and reverse it. Like Missy Elliot, they add speed work in week two before their aerobic base even exists. They do race pace efforts when they don’t know their marathon pace yet, and they throw. He repeats before their legs can handle that kind of load. And here’s why.

[00:03:10] It breaks you down. Speed work tears your muscles and ligaments and tendons and connective tissue down harder than easy running. It creates more damage and more stress. Your aerobic base is what helps you recover so you can rebuild. Your body after breaking it down. No base equals no recovery equals injury.

[00:03:28] The result injury before the race, just like I did in the two marathons where I did way too much too soon and brought all that into the race like a heavy backpack or you go into it exhausted and overtrained on race day, or you hit the wall at kilometer 32, mile 20 because the foundation was never built.

[00:03:44] All of that is actually the same thing really. You just did too much too soon and your body wasn’t ready for it. Think of it like building a house. The foundation equals long runs threshold. Runs easy. Runs. Those are the pillars, the concrete, the walls, the roof, the things you need. It’s extra like the plumbing, electrical lights, et cetera.

[00:04:03] It’s finishing touches. You can’t install the chandelier before you pour down the concrete and made a proper foundation. So what’s the solution to this problem? My free 16 week marathon training plan. Why? Because it shows you exactly how to build your foundation first. Then add the refinements. You can even.

[00:04:20] Adapt it. If life punches you in the face or you’re feeling great, you want to advance it so you can remix it. Make it your own. It’s adaptable for you. This is my most ambitious training plan to date that I’ve built, and it’s all free. Get it at the QR code here or link below. And all I ask because that training plan took me a very long time to put together is for you to do one or all of these things.

[00:04:43] Uh, you could watch this to the end, the tells the algorithm that this is worth it to other marathoners that don’t wanna make the mistakes that I’ve made, et cetera. You can also like. Subscribe if you haven’t done those things already, or share this episode out to a friend, slide in the dms, throw it over to ’em, text ’em, et cetera.

[00:05:01] Or, you know what? Just comment what your biggest marathon fear is if you haven’t done it or what your biggest marathon mistake was. If you have done one and you want to fix it, I love to hear all this stuff. I’ll talk about the plan more shortly and get into details, but first. Let’s get into how the 16 weeks breaks down and how to do each of those foundational run types.

[00:05:21] I’m gonna focus this on someone that’s brand new to marathon or coming back after break and needs to rebuild. So usually most people, they’re like, I’ve never done a marathon before. Or they did one, they didn’t do it right, they wanna figure it out. So this is for you. If you already build a base, you run all year long, you’re already consistent.

[00:05:39] You can actually skip, uh, weeks one through six. You have to actually have been running and no injuries. And then you can actually jump straight to weeks seven through 16. And again, you can remix, you can extend them out longer, you can do a bit VO two max stuff. I’ll get into all that in a second. So I just wanted to be very clear who this is for and how you can use this.

[00:05:56] Alright, so here’s how the 16 weeks breaks down for that new-ish comeback runner. Weeks one through six build the foundation. You’re nailing your easy pace of building your long run capacity. Learning what threshold actually feels like you’re building the aerobic base that everything else sits and build on top of.

[00:06:10] I cover base training more in depth at the episode up top here or below in the description or show notes if you’re listening to this. Go check that. Out, uh, covers way more than that last 10 seconds. Alright, now week seven through 12, you want to add the refinements. Now you can add in interval VO two max and speed work.

[00:06:27] Now it’s useful. I’ve got a whole deep dive on VO two max training at the link up here or below In the episode description, if you wanna learn all about VO two max and heart rates and all that sort of stuff. And you can also add in hills because your base can now handle it and you can practice race pace in your long runs and even medium long runs.

[00:06:46] Or just regular tempo runs because you actually know what you’re aiming for. And then weeks 13 through 16, sharpen and taper. You dial in race specific work. You can drop volume, but keep intensity. You arrive fresh, not broken. This is smart periodization. You may have heard that. That’s where you treat different blocks of time.

[00:07:06] So you have these weeks and then you do these weeks and you ramp up, et cetera. It’s not random workouts thrown together because they sound hard and you got grit and you can travel hard that the willpower. And the discipline and the grit, all that stuff, it, it ends. There is an end to it, but systems and processes and proper strategy that can go on forever.

[00:07:24] Willpower and grit plus systems equal a 1% better runner. Alright, so what do these three foundation run types actually look like? Let’s break them down. Type number one, the easy run. This is foundation block one, because you can’t run marathon distance unless you’ve done the thing short and easy first before you can go long and hard.

[00:07:42] Most people, they wanna skip this. They think easy runs are a waste of time because they feel easy. That’s the point. They’re also not a waste of time. So what is it? It’s short conversational runs 30 to 60 minutes. These fill in the gaps between your long run and your threshold work. Alright, so you can get way more information about how to run at a low heart rate and zone twos on one training and all that at the video up top.

[00:08:04] Or again, I do a lot of deep dives below in the episode description. Why? Easy runs matter. They build your aerobic base. Aerobic base is oxygen, allows you to build that cardio engine. It also allows you to recover while still adding volume. They teach your body to burn. Fat properly run economically, they keep your movement pattern sharp.

[00:08:24] Without adding stress, you’re able to run longer and farther. You get to practice running, which makes you a better runner because you’re running easy and it’s less demand on your body, and they also prevent injuries in the long term. This is the most underrated run in marathon training and people. Do it wrong.

[00:08:40] How to master it. You wanna run embarrassingly slow. Uh, you can nose breathe. You wanna try to nose breathe the entire time if you can. All people can’t do it. Did a whole episode on nose breathing up here, or in the episode description on show notes. Another thing is you should be able to chat in full sentences and keep your heart rate to 60 to 70% of max.

[00:09:00] That’s pretty much like lows zone two, high zone two at most. And it should feel easy in the beginning and feel easy at the end, not. Kind of easy in the beginning and then really hard at the end. And the goal, you wanna stack up this easy volume without stacking up fatigue. This takes experience, but you can do it if you have discipline.

[00:09:18] Common mistake, turning every easy run into a temporal run. ’cause it feels too slow in the beginning, and you’re not getting that huffy puff feeling. Pride always getting in the way. You’re worried about your pace on Strava. Someone’s gonna judge you for running 12 minute miles or seven minute kilometers.

[00:09:32] Not going slow enough. To actually recover is also a mistake. But if your easy runs leave you tired, you’re not ready for what comes next run. Number two, the long run. This is your bread and butter. The engine builder, the thing that separates marathon training from everything else, it’s a weekly endurance builder.

[00:09:49] It starts at. Anywhere from probably 70 to 90 minutes For most people, if you have not ever really ran a long run before, you can even start at 45 minutes and it builds to 2.5 hours, sometimes three hours depending on your pace, your experience, what your uh, end to finish time, you, your goal time is and it to mostly an easy pace.

[00:10:09] There’s a lot of variations of easy, which we’ll talk about in a quick second. So why do long runs matter? The marathon is. Anywhere from 2.5 hours. If you’re a two and a half hour marathon watching this dope, what’s up to five hours of continuous running wave and six hours? If you wanna run, walk it seven hours.

[00:10:27] If you wanna walk it, your aerobic system, it needs to be huge for all of that. You’re not sitting on the couch, you’re still moving. This run literally grows your mitochondria. Those are the power plants of muscles, the cells. It teaches your body to burn fat so you don’t use all your sugars up your glycogen stores.

[00:10:44] And bonk and hit the wall at mile 20 kilometer 32. It strengthens connective tissue, bones, tendons, muscle. It trains mental toughness for later miles when your brain is screaming at you to stop. And it also teaches your body to run on low levels of glycogen. AKA carb stores. Alright, how to master it.

[00:11:02] Start. Again, easy. A lot of easy running. This whole distance thing is actually a lot easy running conversational pace. Again, you should feel like you could go all day. No marathon pace segments yet. Your marathon pace probably is just slightly faster than your easy runs if you are closer to a four or five hour runner, a marathon finisher.

[00:11:21] But if you’re more in the three hour camp, three and a half hours, your marathon pace is usually between like zone two and zone three, probably lower zone three depending on a lot. A lot of factors you can use. Calculators to figure that out. The VDOT calculator, which I’ll get into in the future. Alright, your focus for this.

[00:11:37] Completing the time or distance without blowing up. I like to do time. Time running is probably the most underrated tool for everyone. Pros use time running. Uh, because time is equal across, you can qualify it. There’s a quality amount for time, time on your feet, time if you’re using, uh, a bike time, if you’re using elliptical time, if you’re aqua jogging.

[00:11:56] It’s just so easy time with zones when you start adding kilometers in there, it’s just harder sometimes in the beginning. To equate distance across other things, time is just easier. So you wanna build week over week, 90 minutes, then 120 minutes, then 150, and then 180, gradual progression all the way through.

[00:12:14] I wouldn’t go longer than a three hour long run. Personally, everyone I coach, I don’t do longer than three hours for many, many reasons. Um, your entry risk goes up quite a lot after, like two hours, two hours, 15 minutes. So you wanna be very, very careful with that. A common mistake. Running it too fast. That ruins the aerobic adaptation.

[00:12:33] You’re supposed to be building your engine and teaching your body to run slow. Understanding that habit. You’re not racing. You want to add pace work before you can even complete the distance comfortably. You’re trying to run the last 5K of the marathon pace when you can barely finish two hours. Easy not yet.

[00:12:47] Comparing your long run pace to someone else’s, don’t do that. Um, also progressing this way too fast. So doing really big jumps on your long run. There’s a study that proves. Finally, this came out in 2025, that if you increase your long run more than 10% week on week, or within the last like month, you actually increase your injury percentage by like 30%.

[00:13:10] If you do 20%, then it goes up 64. It is absolutely crazy. So if you actually do a 15 kilometer or 10 mile long run, and then you decide to do a 20 kilometer, 15 mile long run, then next week your injury risk goes up like 150%. It is absolutely crazy. But once you master this long run, meaning you can consistently hit 1.5 to two hours at easy pace and you recover well, then you can start adding marathon pace type runs.

[00:13:34] I talk more about my five types of long runs in a more in-depth episode up here, or link in description or show notes. But a few variations are fast finish, big block progression runs. These all run long run types and medium long runs midweek. Alright, so you got your easy runs, building durability and your long runs, building endurance.

[00:13:53] But how do you actually get faster? Because most of us wanna actually run a marathon fast. Respect all the people that just wanna finish a marathon, and they’re okay with that. I’m in the camp that likes to go faster. Most people do enter. Run type number three threshold runs. This is where you actually get to run fast and practice marathon or slightly faster than the marathon pace.

[00:14:11] This is the session that makes marathon pace feel easier. What is it? A sustained, comfortably hard effort. Usually 20 to 40 minutes. Total volume we like to go. Again, time could be continuous, like a tempo run, or it could be long intervals with a short rest. More on that shortly. Paces, et cetera, and effort why it matters for most three to four hour marathon finishers.

[00:14:33] The race pace lives between zone two and zone three. Running for four to five hour finishers. Your race pace is usually high zone two for fast sub three hour marathoners, and those getting close to two hours 30 minutes. Again, thanks for watching. You could push more into high zone three for the second half of the race threshold is a pace where your body produces lactate or actic acid, as some people call it faster than it can clear.

[00:14:55] I went into detail on lactate threshold training, uh, at the episode. It above, or if you don’t see that link up top, you can just go in the link below in the description and get it. But a quick definition train here and you push the threshold pace faster. You make marathon pace feel way easier. Yes. Even five hour marathon is benefit from training at threshold, even though you’re not running a marathon close to threshold when you’re in the five hour range, it’s nice to take the governor off for these types of threshold runs and let your body naturally run fast after holding back with low heart rate, easy runs and those.

[00:15:26] Pretty much longer easy runs. How to master it? Effort level. I like to start at a 5.5 or six outta 10 and then aimed at a seven outta 10. Effort wise, you wanna run at a pace. You can speak in short phrases, but not full sentences. Your pace actually should say the same or usually slow down or. Which is what we want as you get tired in a tempo run, ’cause your heart rate will start creeping up.

[00:15:47] You want the heart rate to stay no higher than I like zone three. If you wanna be in the five zone heart rate system. Low zone three. Mid zone three is where these tempo runs Should be, not 5K pace, not vo two max pace, comfortably hard, roughly between 10 k, current fitness and half marathon. Current fitness.

[00:16:04] If you want to use again, that VDOT calculator, which I have a link. In the episode description, I know I’ve ran outta links in YouTube, but get the link down below for the Vdo calculator and my explanation for how to use it and why it’s so effective in knowing different paces. Some workout examples, you got 20 minute continuous tempo run.

[00:16:21] That’s like just everyone’s temple run tempo Tuesday, or you can do the broken temple run, so that’s three times, two miles, or about three kilometers. At threshold again, which is one to 1.5 minutes. Easy jog recovery. Between that, you’re just really quick recovery and then B’Av right back into it. Or you can do two or three times, like six to 10 minutes, probably starting at six minutes and then gradually going to 10 minutes times three, and you have that one minute jog recovery if you wanna be on time and not distance or.

[00:16:52] Five times one mile at threshold with a even shorter rest, 60 to 90 seconds. Again, we’re doing like a really, really, really slow shuffle. In between that and then starting again, or for advanced runners, you could do 40 minutes steady tempo, run at threshold. That is like advanced elite level. You need to get up to that ’cause it’s a lot of stress on your body.

[00:17:11] Alright? Common mistakes that people make, they go too hard on Threshold runs. This turns into a VO two max workout, which is the wrong adaptation. You’re not trying to red line, you’re trying to teach your body to. Clear waste efficiently. This always will feel way easier than you think in the beginning and in the middle.

[00:17:27] The end is where you start feeling it. Another mistake is skipping it because it’s not long enough to matter wrong. This session builds your speed endurance. That’s the ability to hold a strong pace without blowing up. That’s the entire marathon game. Inconsistent pacing, surging. Fading, do these threshold and temple runs on a flat course if possible.

[00:17:44] Or have the power metric on your smartwatch, uh, on you can look at it to know if you’re surging on hills. Pace is kind of not great for these unless again, you’re on a flat course. Uh, and you can also use your heart rate and you wanna stay within a heart rate zone. I like to be very much zone three for these.

[00:18:00] If you’re on a five zone heart rate system, the whole point is. Steady effort. And finally, once you master this, meaning you can hit the prescribed paces consistently and recover within that 48 hour window, sometimes 72 hours. If you’re a bit older, uh, and you need more time, then you can start adding VO two max intervals, which are faster, shorter reps, hill repeats.

[00:18:19] You can add speed, endurance work, you can add all that stuff. But if you can’t nail a threshold, run speed work usually won’t help you for. Marathoners. Alright. That was a lot. We learned all about those three specific runs, threshold runs, long runs, and easy runs. And how you can use VO two max. And this again, is specific for marathon runners because if you’re training for 5K, the order is very different.

[00:18:41] You wanna do actually a lot of VO two max work, et cetera. So wrapping it up if you want this all mapped out week by week so you could use it yourself. I built a free 16 week marathon training plan for you. My biggest one that I’ve done many, many hours spent on this and a lot of time you’ll also get automagically signed up for my free five minutes or less per week newsletter where I go deep on stuff like.

[00:19:03] This marathon stuff and long runs and half marathon and 5K, 10 K threshold VO two max injury prevention and how to stay consistent when life gets crazy. Get all that at the QR code here, or the link in the description or show notes if you’re listening. Some of you out there be listening. This episode was all about how to train for the marathon, but what about the levels of marathon training and racing that happens as you get more and more obsessed?

[00:19:28] If you wanna have fun, I explain the five levels of marathon as and why you should strive for one. But avoid another. Get the episode below right here if you’re on YouTube or the link in description. If you’re listening, happy Marathon Training. Peace.