In the eight weeks before a marathon, your weekly mileage stays where it already is, and the Sunday long run becomes, one stretch at a time, a dress rehearsal for race day.
- Who can start from here, and the sign that your goal needs rethinking before you begin.
- How to find your marathon pace from a recent half, with a worked example.
- Three blocks of weeks with different jobs, and how to run each session: long run, tempo run, long repeats.
- How to get back on track when a week falls apart because of work or a cold.
- The full schedule, from week one to race-day Sunday.
Eight weeks out from the marathon, if you’ve been running four or five times a week for months, the miles you need are already in the bank. What’s still missing is familiarity with the race itself: the pace you’ll have to hold, practiced when your legs already carry two hours of running, in the shoes and with the fuel you’ll use that morning. This isn’t the stage to add miles. It’s the stage to make training look more and more like the race.
That’s where the whole plan puts its work. Weekly volume stays where it is today, the long run never goes past 20 miles, and every Sunday the stretch run at marathon pace gets longer: four miles in week one, up to ten by week six. The last two weeks take weight off until your legs feel light again for the start.
Who This Plan Is For
It’s for runners with a base already built and a race on the calendar between late November and early December. In practical terms: four or five runs a week for several months, at least one half marathon (13.1 miles) behind you, and a Sunday long run that currently reaches 12 to 14 miles without leaving you wrecked on Monday. If that long run is already part of your week and has grown with the patience it needs, you’re in the right place to start.
The first Sunday of the plan calls for 15 miles, with the last four at marathon pace. If your most recent long run tops out under 11 miles, eight weeks is too little time for this schedule, to be clear: you’re better off racing with a softer goal, or picking a later marathon, than chasing a plan your legs can’t handle yet.
To place it on your calendar, count back from race Sunday: week 1 starts eight Mondays out, and the marathon closes week 8. The easy runs, which fill the days between the long run and the quality session, stay easy for the entire plan, at a true conversational pace: you can speak in full sentences without grabbing air between words. They hold the week together and shouldn’t leave a trace the next day.
Finding Your Marathon Pace From a Recent Race
Take the average pace of your latest half marathon and add 25 to 40 seconds per mile: the result is your starting marathon pace. Stay near 25 seconds if you ran the half in under 1:40 and the Sunday long run is a settled habit. Move toward 40 if the half took you more than two hours, or if this is your first marathon.
Here’s an example. A half run in 1:45 works out to about 8:00 per mile. Add 25 to 35 seconds and your marathon pace lands somewhere between 8:25 and 8:35 per mile, which over the full distance means finishing roughly between 3:40 and 3:45.
The math holds if the half is recent, raced all-out, on a course without big climbs and in normal conditions. If it dates back to spring, your late-summer fitness is a different story: use the more conservative margin and let the long runs confirm it. Keep your half-marathon average pace on hand as well, unchanged, because it’s the reference for the midweek long repeats.
Between two possible paces, always pick the slower one. The 15 seconds per mile you borrow in the first half of a marathon come back with interest in the second, and until mile 18 or so there’s no telling which of the two was the mistake.
The number that comes out of the math is a hypothesis: the real test arrives in week six, with the long run that holds the longest stretch at race pace.
The Eight Weeks, Block by Block
Every week has the same three ingredients: a long run, a midweek quality session, easy runs. What shifts is the balance between them, and above all how much of the long run you cover at race pace.
Weeks 1–3: Building Race-Specific Endurance
The long run climbs from 15 to 16 and then 18 miles, while the marathon-pace segment grows from four to five miles and always stays at the end. Start slower than usual, run the easy part without checking your watch too often, and ease into race pace over half a mile or so, with no sudden surge. Then hold it to the end of the segment, and finish with an easy mile (when the schedule calls for it).
Race pace two hours into a run tastes different from race pace on fresh legs. Your breathing is almost the same, but the effort moves into your calves and lower back, and your stride starts to shorten without you deciding it. That’s the sensation you need to learn to recognize, and the only place to learn it is the tail end of a long run.
The 18-mile cap in this block, and the 20-mile cap across the whole plan, is a deliberate choice. A 22-miler in training, at this level, leaves fatigue that drags on for days and costs you the quality of the following week: the trade isn’t worth it.
The midweek session alternates between two formats. Long repeats (weeks 1 and 3) open with 15–20 minutes of easy running; then come repeats of 1.25 to 2 miles at your half-marathon pace, with two or three minutes of slow jogging in between, and 10 easy minutes to finish. The last repeat should come out as fast as the first: if it slips by more than a few seconds, you’re running harder than your half justifies. The tempo run (week 2) is a continuous run about 15 seconds per mile faster than marathon pace, with 15 easy minutes before and after. It’s a steady, sustained effort: you can trade a few words, but a long sentence costs you breath.
Weeks 4–6: Long Runs With Race-Pace Segments
Here the long run becomes a dress rehearsal, in the full theatrical sense of the phrase: same stage, same costumes, every scene in order from start to finish. The marathon-pace segment moves from the end of the run to its core and grows until it fills more than half of it.
Week 4 is lighter, with about a fifth less volume: 13 miles with six at race pace and a 4-mile tempo run. It’s there to absorb the previous three weeks before the two hardest ones. Week 5 brings the longest run of the plan, 20 miles with seven at marathon pace in the second half, and the quality session should land at least three days earlier. Week 6 trims the total to 17 miles and stretches the race-pace segment to 9–10 miles, starting at mile 5: ten if last Sunday’s seven went smoothly, nine if they left something in your legs.
On at least two of these Sundays, run the dress rehearsal in full. Race-day shoes and clothes, the same breakfast at the same time before the start, and drinks and food at the same intervals as the aid stations, using exactly what you’ll take on the day. Everything that would be new on race morning becomes familiar here.
Week six also delivers the verdict on pace. If the long segment comes out even, with your breathing under control and the closing miles no slower than the opening ones, your pace is confirmed. If from the middle of the segment on you have to push to stay on it, or the last miles drift by 15 seconds or so, run the race 10 to 15 seconds per mile slower. Better to find out on a training Sunday than at mile 15 of the marathon.
Weeks 7–8: Cutting Volume and Staying Sharp
In the last two weeks the volume drops and the paces stay the same. The logic of this phase, and why cutting miles without slowing down is what keeps your legs ready, is laid out in full in the two-week taper plan before a fall race.
Here, all you need is what the schedule asks for. In week 7 the last long run is 12 miles with five at marathon pace, and the quality session comes down to three 1.25-mile repeats. In race week the long run disappears: three or four days out, run 5–6 miles with two at marathon pace, then only short runs. The day before, 20 easy minutes with four strides is enough: stretches of about 300 feet where you build gradually to a quick, relaxed pace, each followed by a minute of walking.
What to Do If You Miss a Week
Race day doesn’t move, so you pick the plan back up from where the calendar stands today, rather than from where you left off. Missed sessions stay missed: cramming them into the following week, say by putting the quality session the day before the long run, costs more than it gives back.
If work kept you out and you feel fine, rejoin with the current week but cut the long run back to the last Sunday you actually ran, with the same race-pace segment. From the following Sunday, pick up the normal progression. If the week you lost was the week 5 20-miler, don’t make it up in week 6: run week 6’s long run as written and let the rest go.
A cold changes the priorities. With a fever you don’t run, and once you’re back, the first two or three days are easy runs only: that week’s quality session is dropped. The next long run goes ahead, but with the marathon-pace segment from the last Sunday you completed instead of the one on the schedule.
After more than ten days off, the pace you took from your half describes fitness you don’t have right now. Slow it by 10 to 15 seconds per mile before getting back on the schedule, and use the remaining long runs to check it.
The Full Schedule
A typical week puts the long run on Sunday and the quality session on Wednesday or Thursday, with at least one full rest day, usually Monday. If you run four times a week, add two easy runs; if you run five, add three. As the long run grows, the easy runs get shorter, so the total stays put: the volume column shows the proportion relative to your current weekly average.
| Week | Long Run (Sunday) | Quality (Midweek) | Easy Runs | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 15 miles: 11 easy + 4 at marathon pace | Long repeats: 4 × 1.25 miles at half-marathon pace, 2-min jog | 2–3 runs | Same as now |
| 2 | 16 miles: 10 easy + 5 at marathon pace + 1 easy | Tempo run, 5 miles | 2–3 runs | Same as now |
| 3 | 18 miles: 12 easy + 5 at marathon pace + 1 easy | Long repeats: 3 × 2 miles at half-marathon pace, 3-min jog | 2–3 runs, shorter | Same as now |
| 4 | 13 miles: 6 easy + 6 at marathon pace + 1 easy | Tempo run, 4 miles | 2–3 runs | About 80% |
| 5 | 20 miles: 10 easy + 7 at marathon pace + 3 easy | Long repeats: 3 × 2 miles at half-marathon pace, 3-min jog, at least 3 days before the long run | 2–3 runs, shorter | Same as now |
| 6 | 17 miles: 5 easy + 9–10 at marathon pace + easy to 17 | Tempo run, 5 miles | 2–3 runs | Same as now |
| 7 | 12 miles: 6 easy + 5 at marathon pace + 1 easy | Long repeats: 3 × 1.25 miles at half-marathon pace, 2-min jog | 2–3 runs, shorter | About 70% |
| 8 | Marathon | 5–6 miles with 2 at marathon pace, 3–4 days before the race | 2 runs of 30–40 min; the day before, 20 min with 4 strides | About half, not counting the race |
Long-run distances are a guideline; paces are a commitment. If your route has you finishing at 17.5 miles instead of 18 one Sunday, nothing changes; if the marathon-pace segment comes out 15 seconds per mile faster than planned, you’re training for a different race than the one you’ll run.