20-week marathon training plan — beginner

This is the beginner version — it assumes you can run 5 km without stopping and want to finish comfortably. It runs 20 weeks, 3 days a week, and peaks at 52 km in the hardest week.

If that sounds like too much or too little, the same marathon block exists at other levels and lengths — the related plans below are the same engine with different inputs.

Cutback weeks. Roughly every fourth week drops to about 70% of the previous long run. Adaptation happens during the easier week, not the hard one.

Progression is capped at 20%. No week's long run climbs more than a fifth above the last progressive week. Where a shorter plan cannot reach the usual peak inside that limit, it arrives at a lower peak rather than taking an unsafe step.

A real taper. The closing weeks come down hard, and race week carries almost nothing — two short shakeouts totalling 8 km before the start line.