Boston Marathon BAA – Level 2

About the plan

A 20-week plan for the runner who has already run a marathon and trains five days a week. It is Level 2 of the official schedule that the Boston Athletic Association publishes for Boston Marathon entrants. Volume goes from 29 miles (47 km) in the first week to 43 miles (69 km) in week 17, with two rest days — the BAA suggests cycling, swimming or strength training on those days, but no running is prescribed. The week has two quality sessions: track on Tuesday and a threshold or marathon-pace workout on the weekend, plus easy runs and the Sunday long run. 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. Compared with Level 1, the density changes: more days of easy running, longer threshold sets and a Sunday that often combines an easy base with a big block at marathon pace, reaching 19 miles (30 km) for the day. The pure long run goes from 10 to 13 miles (16 to 21 km) and the biggest target-pace rehearsal is 11 continuous miles (17 km) in week 18. 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.