Monday: In this training schedule for novice marathoners, Monday is always a day of rest. Count on it! Rest is important for recovery after the weekend's workouts, particularly as the long runs progress from 6 to 20 miles. Your body needs time to recover. So take the day off. Friday is also a day of rest. In this program you will run on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Sunday is a day for cross-training. (If you want, you can reverse the order of the Saturday/Sunday workouts.) Let's begin this Monday, the first day of your marathon journey, by contemplating the training that will begin tomorrow.

Tuesday: An easy day. Run 3 miles at a comfortable pace. Over the next 18 weeks, you will add only a few miles to your Tuesday workouts. In Week 1, you'll move up to 4 miles. In week 14, you'll be up to 5 miles. By that time, you'll be so used to doing much longer runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays, that a run of that distance will seem easy. It's all part of the progressive buildup of total mileage designed to get you ready to run 26 miles. If even running 3 miles seems a strain for you, don't hesitate to mix in a walking break.

Wednesday: Three miles, same as yesterday. As the countdown continues, you will begin to run more miles midweek. Every second week (beginning in Week 3), you will add another mile to your Wednesday workout. By Week 15 (the same week in which you do your climactic 20-miler), you will be up to 10 miles this day. This midweek workout is what I call a "sorta long" run. What you will find most difficult as the mileage progresses from 3 to 10 is not going the distance, but finding time to squeeze a run taking more than an hour into a busy weekday. I'll offer some tips on that when the time comes. In the meantime, have a good run today.

Thursday: Run the same distance that you did on Tuesday: 3 miles at a comfortable pace. Again, remember the walking-break option I suggested for you on Tuesday. At 3 miles, you may want to run the full distance. But as the distance builds, and particularly on days when the weather is warm, you will appreciate a short break, particularly to stop for water. Since most novice runners will do some walking in the marathon--if only through the aid stations--you want to practice this as part of your strategy.

Friday: Friday in almost all of my training programs for different distances is a day of rest, to allow you to gather strength for the weekend. I ask even the Advanced runners to rest on Friday--although, being compulsive, not all of them listen to my advice! (Don't tell them I said that.) As a Novice runner, I know you won't hesitate to do exactly what I tell you. So take today off.

Saturday: Today is your "long run." Even for a novice or beginning runner, 6 miles (today's workout) may not seem that long. But over the 18 weeks of this program, the distance for your Saturday run will increase to 20 miles in Week 15 (allowing 3 weeks for you to taper before the marathon.) Don't worry too much about pace now; just run easily. If you want to do your long runs on Sunday rather than Saturday, simply flip-flop the two workouts.

Sunday: Use this second day of the weekend to recover from your weekly long run by doing some easy cross-training. What kind of cross-training? The exercise you choose should be aerobic: an hour or so of walking, biking, swimming or some such activity. Swimming is a particularly useful activity, because you can use it to loosen your muscles. If you run long Sundays, you can cross-train on Saturdays.

Tip of the Week: With the marathon 18 weeks away, plan the training now that will permit you success. Marathon training works best if you start easy and build gradually: A long run of 6 miles in June becomes 20 miles in September. Most important at this time is to establish a goal, whether that goal is to finish or to run fast. Once that goal is chosen, everything else will fall in place.

How to Improve: Hal Higdon's Smart Running is a collections of questions and answers from his on-line Ask The Expert column. It covers everything you wanted to know about running, but were afraid to ask. To order an autographed copy of this and other books by Runner's World's best writer go to Books by Hal Higdon.

Copyright © 2000 by Hal Higdon. All rights reserved.