Training plan · starts Monday 25 January 2027
Set from Madrid, April 2026: 3:45:00, which is 5:20 a kilometre. Goal pace is 25 seconds a kilometre faster than that. It is a target, not current fitness, and the half marathon in week 12 is where it gets tested. Everything easy is meant to be slow.
| Effort | Pace | How it should feel |
|---|---|---|
| Easy | 6:00–6:30 | You can hold a conversation. Four runs out of five. |
| Long | 5:50–6:20 | Easy at the start, tired legs by the end. Second half faster than the first. |
| Marathon | 4:55 | Controlled. If it does not feel easy at 20 km, the goal is wrong. |
| Threshold | 4:55, then 4:50 from week 5 and 4:45 from week 9 | Hard but steady. A sentence at a time, not a paragraph. Reset it after the half. |
| 5K | 4:30–4:35, then 4:20–4:25 after the half | Hard. The last rep matches the first. |
| Strides | Not timed | 20 seconds fast and relaxed, walk back. |
Every bar is a week. Click one to open it. Colour shows where the kilometres go: easy running, the Wednesday hard session, the Sunday long run.
Five runs, one of them hardThree easy runs, with strides on Tuesday and Thursday. One hard session on Wednesday. One long run on Sunday. About 80 per cent of the distance is easy.
Friday offNo running, every week. Saturday is free for a swim, a ride, or nothing. Never a hard run the day before the long one.
Lift Tuesday and ThursdayRun first or lift in the evening. Never the morning after a long run, which is when the legs are least able to take it. Drop heavy leg work after week 14 and lift nothing in race week.
Down weeks in 4, 8 and 15Volume drops by about a quarter. Week 13 is a fourth cutback in all but name: it follows the half marathon and carries no goal-pace work.
Three long runs of 30 km or moreWeeks 9, 11 and 14. Week 14 is the biggest week of the block and finishes with 12 km at goal pace. On those Sundays the long run is over 40 per cent of the week, which is above the usual ceiling. That is deliberate: durability is the thing Madrid lacked.
The long runs cost 3 hours or moreWeeks 11 and 14 need about 3h15 door to door. Those two Saturdays are empty for that reason. If the time is not there on the day, cut the run to 28 km rather than running it faster.
Fuel every long runMadrid ran on about 40 g of carbohydrate an hour, and that was too little. Every run of 24 km and over here is a rehearsal at 75 to 90 g an hour. Count a missed gel as a failed session.
Week 14 is the dress rehearsalExact race kit, exact shoes, exact gels, race-morning breakfast. Nothing on 30 May should be new.
Week 12 half marathonRace it, then read it honestly. 1:38 or faster confirms 3:30. Between 1:38 and 1:41, 3:30 is still live but the first half of the race goes at 5:02. Slower than 1:41, the target becomes 3:35 and every pace here shifts with it.
Two-week taper, not threeMadrid tapered too early. Volume holds through the week 16 long run on 16 May, 14 days out, and the taper starts the next morning, 13 days out. That last long run carries only 6 km at goal pace, so the taper is spent getting fresh rather than repairing it.
Downhill runningEdinburgh is net downhill along the coast, and quads that have never taken sustained descent fail late. Weeks 11 and 14 want a route with real descents in it.
HeatLate May in Scotland can be warm after a London winter. From week 15, sit in a sauna or a hot bath for 20 minutes after three runs a week. Stop three days out.
Race morningWhite bread and coffee, more than two hours before the gun. Carb load from Thursday at about 8.5 g per kg of body weight a day. Drink steadily all week and only moderately on the morning.
Race dayRead the course in detail first. Run the first half slower than goal pace and keep the option to lift later. First 10 km at 5:00, not faster.
TravelArrive in Edinburgh on the Friday, two days before. Stay two days after.