download grandma's marathon training plan

I have an example for this one that comes from my own career. You put in a lot of miles and you are constantly riding that fine line between overdoing it and hitting it just right.

First of all you risk feeling a little rusty and second…you’d lose your mind! So here’s how I suggest approaching the taper for athletes and coaches.

But you can’t just take two weeks off before the race. But over 26.2 miles you need every ounce of energy you can muster to continue truly racing, and not just surviving, across the finish line. In my experience, you can knock out a pretty big workout the week of a shorter race and be just fine. The marathon, unlike the other races mentioned above requires an athlete to be really, really fresh on race day. But for the marathon, for the most part, it’s just a steady diet of long, grinding workouts at or near marathon pace that gets the job done.

The mile, the 5k, the 10k and even the half marathon distances require athletes and coaches to put together a perfect blend of multiple training zones in the weeks and months leading up to the big day. I have often said that in many ways coaching the marathon is the easiest of any of the distances.

Download grandma's marathon training plan