Marathon training plan for beginners: 18 weeks, 4 runs a week

A marathon is 26.2 miles, and for a first one the goal is simple: reach the start line healthy and the finish line on your feet. This marathon training plan for beginners does that over 18 weeks with four runs a week, a long run that grows slowly, a lighter week every fourth week and a proper taper. There is no speedwork. Almost every mile is easy.

Who this plan is for

This plan is for runners who have never raced a marathon and already have a little base:

• You run three or four times a week, and have done so for at least a few months.
• You cover about 12 to 15 miles a week.
• You can run 5 or 6 miles without stopping, at a pace where you could still hold a conversation.

That fits Rush University's marathon guidance: new runners might start with weekday runs of mostly three to five miles, and in most plans the weekend long run starts at about six miles. If you are not there yet, spend a few months on our half marathon training plan for beginners first. A half is a great first goal and makes the full marathon much less daunting.

The goal is to finish, not to hit a time. Once you have one marathon done, a time goal makes more sense.

Check with your doctor first if you are new to exercise, have been inactive for a long time, or have a health condition. Rush's sports medicine guidance specifically says to see a doctor before marathon training if you have chest pain, shortness of breath or unusual fatigue with exercise, unexplained fainting, a heart murmur or high blood pressure, a close relative who had heart disease before 50, or coronary artery disease and are over 35. The CDC advises anyone with a chronic health condition to ask a health care professional what types and amounts of activity suit them.

How long to train for a marathon

Cleveland Clinic notes that most marathon training plans range from 12 to 20 weeks, depending on fitness and goals. Rush suggests picking a plan four to five months before your race.

For a first marathon, aim for the long end:

Eighteen weeks lets the long run grow by a mile or two at a time and still leaves room for three lighter weeks and a three-week taper. If something goes wrong (a cold, a busy week at work, a sore knee), you have slack to repeat a week instead of skipping ahead.

Have 20 weeks? Repeat weeks 1 and 2 before moving on to week 3. The extra two weeks at low mileage give your legs more time to adapt before the long runs get serious.

The 18-week plan

All distances are in miles. "Easy" means conversational. Rest on Monday, Thursday and Saturday, or swap days to fit your week, as long as you keep a day between the long run and anything else hard. Race day is the Sunday of week 18.

A few things to know about how it is built:

• The long run grows by 1 to 2 miles at a time. A University of Utah Health physical therapist describes the typical progression as adding one to two miles per week.
• Weekly mileage never jumps sharply. In a study of 874 novice runners, those who increased their weekly distance by more than 30% over two weeks appeared more vulnerable to distance-related injuries than those who increased it by under 10%. The difference was not statistically significant and the authors call the study exploratory, but it is a good reason to build slowly. In this plan, mileage never rises by 30% or more over two weeks, apart from the bounce back after a cutback week, which only returns you to about where you were before it.
• The peak is modest on purpose. A 2024 analysis of 92 published 12-week marathon plans found that the lower-volume plans peaked at about 58.6 km (36.4 miles) a week with about four runs a week, and that their longest run averaged 30.9 km (19.2 miles). This plan peaks at 36 miles a week with one 20-mile run, right in that range. The authors point out that published plans are not themselves proof of what works, so treat this as a sensible norm rather than a law.

The long run: slow, steady, practiced

The long run is the heart of the plan. It teaches your legs, your feet and your stomach what three, four or five hours on the move feels like.

Run it slowly. The Utah physical therapist suggests a long slow run one to two minutes per mile slower than the pace you expect to race, and warns that running long runs too fast leaves you without enough recovery afterward. Rush suggests at least 30 seconds to a minute per mile slower than marathon pace. For a first marathon, if you are unsure, err slower. You can check your likely race pace against our marathon pace chart.

Walk breaks are fine. If you plan to run-walk the race, use the same pattern on every long run so it is second nature by race day.

Treat it as a dress rehearsal. From week 5 onward, use the long run to try what you plan to use on race day: the shoes, the socks, the shorts that don't chafe, the breakfast that sits well.

Fueling practice: train your gut too

Stomach trouble is common in endurance sport. A review in Sports Medicine by the exercise physiologist Asker Jeukendrup notes that 30 to 50% of athletes experience gut problems regularly, and makes the case that the gut adapts to training like any other system, so it is important to practice your race nutrition in training.

The same review recommends about 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour for efforts up to about two hours and around 90 grams per hour for longer ones, using a mix of carbohydrate types (such as glucose and fructose) at the higher rates, and warns that a single sugar source above 60 grams an hour is likely to cause gut problems. Those are upper targets for trained athletes. A first-time marathoner usually does well to start lower on the early long runs and build up week by week, using the gels, chews or drink you will actually use on race day.

Rush suggests sports drinks for outings of six miles or more and gels, blocks or bars once you are into double-digit runs. In practice:

• Start eating on runs of 9 miles or more (week 5).
• Take carbohydrate at regular intervals rather than waiting until you feel empty.
• Note what you took and how your stomach felt. By week 13 you want a routine you trust.

If you have diabetes or another condition that affects how you handle carbohydrate, plan your fueling with your doctor or a registered dietitian. Our guide to carb loading for a marathon covers the days before the race.

Cutback weeks and rest days

Weeks 4, 8 and 12 drop the mileage by about 20 to 28% and shorten the long run. Rush notes that nearly all training plans include days off and these "cutback" weeks with reduced mileage. They are where the training sinks in, so don't skip them to catch up.

Rest days work the same way. Rush's advice is blunt: if you feel achy or worn out, take the day off even if a run is scheduled. Cleveland Clinic adds that adults need at least seven hours of sleep a night, and long runs make that sleep matter more.

If you miss a few days, don't try to make up the miles. Pick up the plan where you are. If you miss a full week or more, repeat the last week you completed before moving on. Pain that changes how you run, or that gets worse as you go, is a reason to stop and see a doctor or physical therapist, not to push through.

The taper: three weeks of less

If the 20-miler would keep you on your feet for much more than four hours, this plan lets you cap it: stop at four hours or at 18 miles, whichever comes first, and finish the week as written. Treat that as our editorial choice for slower runners, and ask a coach or doctor if you are unsure.

After the 20-miler in week 15, the plan gets shorter for three weeks. Cleveland Clinic's guidance is to cut mileage two weeks before the race by 25 to 50% compared with the week before, then cut it roughly in half again in race week. The plan follows that: 36, 27, 19, then 8 miles plus the race.

There is good evidence for taking the taper seriously. In a study of the training logs of 158,117 recreational marathoners, a strict three-week taper, in which mileage drops steadily each week to race day, produced the best results, with a median finish about 5.5 minutes (2.6%) faster than a minimal one-week taper. Only about 31% of the runners used a strict taper of any length. The most common pattern was letting one of the taper weeks creep back up. You will feel restless. That is normal. Keep the runs easy and the miles low.

Race day for a first marathon

• Start slower than feels right. The first miles will feel easy on race day. Start at the effort of your long runs and hold it rather than trying to bank time early.
• Nothing new. Shoes, breakfast, gels and clothes should all have been tested on long runs.
• Fuel early and on schedule, the way you practiced.
• Plan the last 6 miles. The longest training run is 20, so the final 6.2 miles are new territory. Expect them to be hard and break them into short pieces.

Curious how first-timers tend to finish? Our page on average marathon time puts your goal in context, but for a first marathon the only number that matters is 26.2.