Marathon training plan
A marathon plan that bends instead of breaking
Over months of marathon training, something always goes wrong: a cold, a work trip, a sore calf. Masir is built for that. It starts from your real mileage and reorganizes when a week falls apart.
How the plan is built
| Session | What it is |
|---|---|
| Easy runs | Most of the week. The marathon is an endurance event first. |
| Quality session | Threshold work early on, then blocks at marathon pace as race day approaches. |
| Long run | It grows step by step and is capped at three hours, whatever your pace. |
The longest run comes at least three weeks before race day. Very long runs, beyond about 17 miles, alternate with shorter ones from week to week, so you are not asked for two of them back to back.
The taper lasts up to three weeks, with volume coming down in steps and nothing long in the last five days.
Short on time? If your race is too close for a full build-up, Masir says so. The plan is shortened, and without a time goal the objective becomes finishing, at a more conservative pace.
Marathon pace from your current fitness
Without a time goal, marathon pace in the plan is the pace you could hold today. For six 5K times:
| Your 5K time | Marathon pace /mile | /km |
|---|---|---|
| 20:00 | 7:15 – 7:37 | 4:31 – 4:44 |
| 22:30 | 8:07 – 8:30 | 5:02 – 5:17 |
| 25:00 | 8:58 – 9:23 | 5:34 – 5:50 |
| 27:30 | 9:48 – 10:16 | 6:06 – 6:23 |
| 30:00 | 10:39 – 11:09 | 6:37 – 6:56 |
| 35:00 | 12:18 – 12:52 | 7:39 – 8:00 |
Calculated with Jack Daniels' VDOT formulas, for a flat route in cool weather. For any other race time, use the pace calculator.
When the week does not go to plan
A printed plan assumes you run every session on the day it says. Masir asks what happened instead.
Missed a session: you choose to move it, lighten it or skip it, and the week is reorganized around that choice. There is nothing to catch up.
Sick, injured or on vacation: you pause the plan. The sessions of the break are removed, and training restarts at a reduced volume.
Tired: when your runs feel harder than they should, the load stops climbing until you are back on track.
Runs you do outside the plan count toward the week's load, weighted by how hard they were, so an extra race or a group run does not get stacked on top of a full week.
A plan that starts from your real runs
Masir reads up to twelve months of runs from Apple Health, sets your paces from your current fitness and reorganizes the plan when you miss a run, get sick or go on vacation. Each time, it tells you what changed.
Build my marathon planiPhone, iOS 17 or later · no account, no ads · free beginner program · full plans with Masir Plus, two-week free trial
Questions
How long is the marathon plan?
It follows your race date, up to 24 weeks. With fourteen weeks or more, the last three are a taper.
Will the plan make me run 20 miles every weekend?
No. The long run is capped at three hours, and the longest ones alternate with shorter weeks.
Do I need an Apple Watch?
No. Masir reads runs from Apple Health, so any watch that writes there works, including Garmin, COROS and Polar. You can also enter runs by hand or record them with your iPhone's GPS. There is no Apple Watch app.
Is the plan written by a human coach?
No. The plan is calculated by the app from your runs, and it explains every change it makes.