Beginner Marathon Training Plan

Who this plan is for

First-timers whose goal is to finish a marathon, running, walking or both. There is no speed work and no pace you have to hit.

Before week 1 you should be able to:

• Cover 6 mi (9.5 km) at an easy effort with walk breaks. Not there yet? The beginner half marathon plan builds to it.
• Run or run-walk four days a week, about 14 mi (22.5 km) in total, and have done so for the past month.

Check with a doctor before you start if you have a health condition, or if you are new to exercise.

If you already run without walk breaks and have a time in mind, the 16-week marathon plan is the paced version.

How it works

• Four runs a week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. There is a rest day before and after the long run, Thursday is optional cross-training and the other days are rest.
• Walk breaks from the first minute. Weeks 1 to 6: run 3 minutes, walk 1. Weeks 7 to 13: run 4 minutes, walk 1. Weeks 14 to 20: run 5 minutes, walk 1. Take the breaks from the start of every run, not once you are tired. If the next pattern leaves you unable to talk on the run segments, stay on the one before: the distances matter more than the pattern. If you already run 30 minutes without stopping, run the weekday runs your usual way and keep the walk breaks for the long run.
• A long run that grows in small steps. From 6 mi (9.5 km) to 20 mi (32 km). No long run is more than 2 miles (3 km in the km edition, after rounding) longer than the longest one before it.
• A lighter week every fourth week. Weeks 4, 8, 12 and 16 drop back before the next step up.
• Weeks that grow slowly too. No week is more than 2 miles (3.5 km) bigger than the biggest week before it. The peak week is 35.5 mi (57 km).
• A taper. After the longest run in week 17, week 18 steps down, week 19 drops to 59% of the peak week and race week to 25%, race not counted.
• Time limits. When you enter a time, the long run is held to 3 h 30 min and weekday runs to 1 h 30 min at your run-walk average. Without a time, stop the long run at 3 h 30 min even if you are short of the distance.
• Room to repeat a week. Any week can be run twice. Enter your race date and the calculator tells you how many spare weeks you have.

The longest run is 20 mi, which leaves 6.2 miles that you cover for the first time on race day. That is how this plan is built: it keeps the longest training run at 3 h 30 min or less.

The formula

easy pace       = the speeds that cost 59% to 74% of your VDOT
average pace    = (run min + walk min)
                  ÷ (run min ÷ run pace + walk min ÷ walk pace)
walk pace       = 16:06 per mile (10:00 per km), a brisk walk
finish estimate = race distance × average pace
long run limit  = 3 h 30 min ÷ average pace

VDOT is the fitness score from Jack Daniels’ Running Formula, worked out from your race time on the VO2 max calculator. The calculator takes times down to a VDOT of 20, about 42:39 for 5K. Slower than that, the formula’s easy pace drops below a brisk walk and stops being useful, so run by feel.

Worked example

A recent 5K in 32:00.

1. That race scores a VDOT of 28.5, which puts easy pace at 12:16 to 14:33 per mile (7:37 to 9:03 per km).
2. Run 5 minutes at 12:16 per mile and walk 1 minute at 16:06: in 6 minutes you cover 0.470 miles (0.756 km).
3. Average pace: 6 ÷ 0.470 = 12:46 per mile (7:56 per km).
4. Marathon at that average: 26.2 miles × 12:46 = about 5:35:00.
5. Long run limit: 3 h 30 min at that average is 16.4 miles, so the longest run in the plan is 16 mi instead of 20 mi.

How to pace each run

• Run segments. Easy: you can talk in full sentences. With a race time entered, the calculator gives the range, and the fast end is a ceiling. If you cannot talk, slow down.
• Walk breaks. A brisk walk, not a stroll. The estimates on this page use 16:06 per mile (10:00 per km).
• Long runs. The same easy effort as the short runs. Start slower than feels necessary.
• Race day. Use the pattern of your last long runs from the first mile, and hold the effort of those runs until at least mile 20.

What walk breaks do to your time, with the plan’s last pattern (run 5 minutes, walk 1). Finish times are rounded to the minute.

With a recent race entered, the pace table shows two marathon times. “Marathon at 5:1” is this plan’s estimate: your easy pace with walk breaks all the way. “Marathon at the same VDOT” is the time the formula gives a runner who is trained for the distance and races it, and it is the faster of the two.

A time goal changes the question. To average a goal pace with walk breaks, the run segments have to be faster than that pace, and the calculator shows by how much when you choose “A goal time”.

If you miss a week

• A run or two. Skip them and carry on. Do not add the missed distance to the next run.
• One week. Repeat the week you missed if your race date has room. The calculator shows your spare weeks when you enter the date. If there is no room, do the current week with the long run of the week you missed.
• Two weeks or more. Go back to the last week you finished and build again from there. Keep each long run within 2 miles (3 km) of your longest run in the last four weeks. If the plan no longer fits before race day, a later race is better than a rushed long run.
• Stopped by illness or pain. That is a question for a doctor or physiotherapist, not for a training plan.

What the research supports

A few parts of this plan lean on published studies. The rest is how the plan is built, not settled science.

• Walk breaks. In a trial with 42 recreational marathon runners, those who ran with walk breaks finished in similar times to those who ran all the way (4:14 against 4:07 on average) and reported less muscle pain and fatigue afterwards (Hottenrott and colleagues, 2016).
• Building up gradually. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends at least 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise for most adults, and says that building up intensity and volume gradually may reduce the risks of exercise (Garber and colleagues, 2011). The US Physical Activity Guidelines tell inactive people to “start low and go slow”, raising how often and how long they are active a little at a time (Piercy and colleagues, 2018).
• How fast is too fast. A trial with 532 novice runners compared an 8-week program with a gentler 13-week one built on the 10% rule. The injury rates were almost the same: 20.3% and 20.8% (Buist and colleagues, 2008). A study of 874 novice runners found more distance-related injuries in those who raised their weekly distance by more than 30% over two weeks than in those who stayed under 10%, though the difference fell short of statistical significance (Nielsen and colleagues, 2014). Neither study gives a firm rule for how fast to build.
• Long-run steps. In a study that followed 5,205 runners for 18 months, the rate of overuse injury was higher after a run more than 10% longer than the runner’s longest run of the previous 30 days. Week-to-week changes in total distance showed no such link (Frandsen and colleagues, 2025). The long-run steps in this plan run from 7 to 17%, and 6 of the 12 are over that 10% line. Staying under it from 6 to 20 miles would take 13 steps, with no lighter weeks between them. If you have spare weeks, repeating a week before each step is the cautious choice.
• The taper. A meta-analysis of 27 studies of competitive athletes found the largest gains from a two-week taper in which training volume fell by 41 to 60% while intensity and the number of sessions stayed the same (Bosquet and colleagues, 2007). Those were trained athletes, not first-timers, so the taper here is a design choice.

Plans for a time goal

The plans we sell are paced plans for a goal time, built like the 16-week marathon plan on this site: threshold sessions, runs at race pace and a tune-up race. They add a PDF in kilometer and mile editions, a calendar file that puts every session on the right day in Google, Apple or Outlook, and a printable pace band for race day. They suit a second marathon more than a first.

• Sub-3 Hour Marathon Training Plan, $24. For runners who run about 6 times a week, around 34.5 mi in total.
• 3:30 Marathon Training Plan, $24. For runners who run about 5 times a week, around 27.5 mi in total.
• Sub-4 Hour Marathon Training Plan, $24. For runners who run about 5 times a week, around 23 mi in total.
• 5 Hour Marathon Training Plan, $24. For runners who run about 4 times a week, around 18.5 mi in total.

Print it or save it

The Print this plan button prints the plan alone: your paces, the overview and all 20 weeks, without the menus or the text on this page. Choose “Save as PDF” in the print dialog to keep a copy on your phone.

“Copy link to result” gives a link that reopens the page with your units, time and race date filled in. With a race date set, the page marks the current week each time you open it.

Questions

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Sources

1. Hottenrott K, Ludyga S, Schulze S, Gronwald T, Jäger FS. Does a run/walk strategy decrease cardiac stress during a marathon in non-elite runners? Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport. 2016;19(1):64-68.
2. Garber CE, Blissmer B, Deschenes MR, et al. American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Quantity and quality of exercise for developing and maintaining cardiorespiratory, musculoskeletal, and neuromotor fitness in apparently healthy adults: guidance for prescribing exercise. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2011;43(7):1334-1359.
3. Piercy KL, Troiano RP, Ballard RM, et al. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. JAMA. 2018;320(19):2020-2028.
4. Buist I, Bredeweg SW, van Mechelen W, Lemmink KA, Pepping GJ, Diercks RL. No effect of a graded training program on the number of running-related injuries in novice runners: a randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Sports Medicine. 2008;36(1):33-39.
5. Nielsen RØ, Parner ET, Nohr EA, Sørensen H, Lind M, Rasmussen S. Excessive progression in weekly running distance and risk of running-related injuries: an association which varies according to type of injury. Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy. 2014;44(10):739-747.
6. Schuster Brandt Frandsen J, Hulme A, Parner ET, et al. How much running is too much? Identifying high-risk running sessions in a 5200-person cohort study. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2025;59(17):1203-1210.
7. Bosquet L, Montpetit J, Arvisais D, Mujika I. Effects of tapering on performance: a meta-analysis. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2007;39(8):1358-1365.
8. Daniels J. Daniels’ Running Formula. 4th ed. Human Kinetics; 2022. VDOT tables and training intensities.
9. Daniels J, Gilbert J. Oxygen Power: Performance Tables for Distance Runners. 1979.