Boston Marathon BAA – Level 4

About the plan

A 20-week plan for the competitive runner who runs six days a week and goes to Boston to fight for a time. It is Level 4 of the official schedule that the Boston Athletic Association publishes for Boston Marathon entrants, the most demanding of the four. Volume goes from 40 miles (65 km) in the first week to 55 miles (89 km) in week 16, with no week below 39 miles (62 km) until the taper. The week has two quality sessions — track on Tuesday and threshold or marathon pace on Friday or Saturday — four easy runs of 5 to 6 miles (8 to 10 km) and the Sunday long work. 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. At this level the race rehearsal becomes the centerpiece: nine Sundays with a target-pace block, including 2x 6 miles (9.7 km) in week 15 and 12 continuous miles (20 km) in week 18, plus pure long runs that reach 19 miles (31 km). The track work rises to 12 repeats of 400 m linked to another 12 at race pace, and the threshold workouts finish with a repeat at interval pace. 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.