Running training plans

These are not editorial preferences restated on each page. They are constraints in the generator, which is why you can check them against any plan in the catalogue and get the same answer.

A cutback week roughly every fourth week. In the 12-week 10K beginner plan the long run runs 4.3, 5, 5.6 miles and then drops to 3.7 miles in week 4 before climbing again. Adaptation happens during the easier week; a plan with no cutback is a plan that assumes you never get tired.

Progression capped at 20%. No long run climbs more than a fifth above the previous progressive week. Where a short plan cannot reach the usual peak inside that limit, it lands on a lower peak instead — the 8-week 10K beginner plan peaks at a 6.2-mile long run, the 12-week version at 8.7 miles.

The long run is capped below race distance where recovery costs more than it returns. The 16-week beginner marathon plan tops out at a 18-mile long run, not 26 miles. The 20-week advanced marathon plan tops out at 22 miles. You do not run the marathon before the marathon.

A taper that actually comes down. In the 12-week half marathon beginner plan the long run goes 12 miles, then 7.5, then 5, then race day. Race week carries almost nothing. This is the part runners most often cut and the part with the clearest evidence behind it.

Every plan in this catalogue, like any printed plan, assumes you complete it. That assumption is where most training blocks actually break: not week 1, but the week you get a cold, travel, or tweak a calf and come back to a schedule that has moved on without you.

It is worth being specific about how unaddressed this is. The single most-linked beginner plan on the internet (the one that ranks first for the biggest plan keyword in this category) contains, across its entire page, none of the words miss, missed, injury, sick, skip, cutback, adjust or behind. That is not an oversight in the writing. A static table cannot answer the question, because answering it means changing the remaining weeks.

So use these pages the way they are meant to be used: print the table, follow it, and know in advance that the first missed week is a recalculation, not a failure. If a week goes missing, do not attempt to make it up: rejoin the plan at the current week and, if you missed more than one, step back to the previous cutback week and continue from there. After a break of more than a few weeks, do not resume where you stopped: restart from week 1 of a shorter distance's beginner plan and let the base rebuild first.