Boston Marathon BAA – Level 1

About the plan

A 20-week plan for anyone taking on their first marathon training four days a week. It is Level 1 of the official schedule that the Boston Athletic Association publishes for Boston Marathon entrants, the entry step of the four the organization offers. Volume goes from 24 miles (39 km) in the first week to 37 miles (60 km) in week 17, with three days of complete rest — the BAA suggests cycling, swimming or strength training on those days, but no running is prescribed. The week has one track session on Tuesday, a threshold or marathon-pace workout on the weekend, and two easy runs. The signature of the method is the sandwich set: a block of repeats at a hard pace followed, without a long rest, by a block of the same size at marathon pace — this is how the BAA teaches the body to hold target pace on tired legs, which is exactly what Boston demands after the Newton hills. The long run goes from 11 to 14 miles (18 to 23 km) and the target-pace workouts grow to 10 continuous miles (16 km). The last two weeks are the taper. Week 20 is the last week of training and ends on Sunday, exactly as the BAA publishes it; the marathon comes the next day, on day 141 of the plan, because Boston is run on Patriots' Day Monday. If your race is on a Sunday, activate the plan by entering the race date: the whole plan shifts by one day and each workout lands in the same spot of the official schedule again. All paces come from your times in the magic calculator; adjust the reference race time in your profile before starting so that threshold, interval and race paces come out calibrated.