My new book, Marathon Excellence for Everyone, is available now!

I’m thrilled to announce that my new book, Marathon Excellence for Everyone, is available worldwide as of today! This book is the culmination of over two years of work—and over 12 years of coaching.

Marathon Excellence is your comprehensive guide to modern marathon training. It lays out a full-spectrum, percentage-based approach to marathon training, with five different training plans spanning peak mileage levels from as little as 40 miles per week to over 100 miles per week.

You’ll also get evidence-based strategies for race day, including how to structure your race, design your fueling plan, and account for wind, hills, and heat.

Marathon Excellence has more than just training plans: you’ll find a comprehensive review of the latest scientific research on marathon performance, including new material on VO2max, steady-state max, running economy, and physiological resilience. You’ll also learn about advanced training techniques including special blocks, double threshold, and heat training. 

When writing Marathon Excellence, I held nothing back—this book contains everything useful that I know about how to run your best marathon ever. This book is my definitive answer to one of the most common questions people ask me: “how can I improve in the marathon?”

The Marathon Excellence training approach

Marathon Excellence lays out a percentage-based, full-spectrum approach to the marathon. Following the principles of the full-spectrum approach, training is divided into three phases: 

• The general phase, which builds up overall fitness using workouts across a wide range of speeds
• The marathon-supportive phase, which focuses on improving speed at 105–110% of marathon pace (MP) and improving endurance at 90–95% MP
• The marathon-specific phase, which focuses on long, fast, marathon-focused workouts at 95–105% MP

The Marathon Excellence approach involves regular reviews of training to keep your current fitness estimate up to date. Workout pace calculations are made easy thanks to my free pace percentage calculator app.

How the Marathon Excellence training plans work

Marathon Excellence features five different training plans, each of which comes in a flagship 18-week version and an abbreviated 12-week version. Each plan supports a low-end and a high-end mileage level, so you can repeat each plan at least twice: once at the low end of the mileage range, and once at the high end. The plans are as follows: 

• 🍃 Breeze, which builds up to a peak mileage of 40 miles per week (mi/wk) or 50 mi/wk
• 🌬️ Wind, which builds up to 55 mi/wk or 65 mi/wk
• 💨 Gale, which builds up to 70 mi/wk or 80 mi/wk
• 🌪️ Tornado, which builds up to 85 mi/wk or 95 mi/wk
• 🌀 Hurricane, which builds up to 100, 110, or 120 mi/wk

These plans are not just scaled-up versions of the exact same training. The workouts and periodization both scale intelligently with the mileage level, keeping things simple for lower-mileage runners while allowing more advanced marathoners to do longer and more sophisticated workouts.

You can learn more about the Marathon Excellence plans at the book website. 

One thing that I believe quite strongly is that it matters how you do your workouts, not just what workouts you do. To that end, all workouts in the Marathon Excellence plans have detailed instructions and difficulty ratings to make sure you’re getting the intended training effect. 

Check out this training preview to see what I mean—the level of detail for each week of training is far beyond what you’d get in a basic one-page training plan you found somewhere on the internet.

Putting the Marathon Excellence training plans to the test

Before releasing Marathon Excellence, I wanted to make sure that the training plans could actually help real runners achieve their goals—without direct one-on-one coaching. So, I borrowed a principle from software development: beta testing. 

This past winter, I recruited 92 runners from my email list who were interested in trying out a new approach for their spring marathon. I shared draft versions of the training plans (and the first half of the book) with each of these runners, as a Google Doc, and followed their feedback as they went through the training plans. 

This setup meant that each of the five training plans—even Hurricane, the 100+ mi/wk plan—got put to the test by dozens of runners around the world.

The feedback from these beta testers helped me fine-tune the plans: I scrapped some sessions that were too hard or too easy, and added instructions (and in one case, an entire chapter!) to address things that were unclear about the workouts or the plans as a whole.

Easily my favorite part about writing Marathon Excellence was waking up to emails on Sundays and Mondays throughout the spring, when these beta testers would send me their post-race recap. 

The draft versions of the Marathon Excellence plans helped runners break 4:00, 3:30, 3:00, 2:50, 2:40, 2:30, and even 2:20! I was especially happy to see runners doing well in tough races like Nashville (very hilly), London (which was hot this year), and of course Boston. 

Some of my favorite success stories weren’t even personal bests—a mom returning to marathon training after giving birth, a busy parent running his best marathon in ten years, and an ordinary amateur runner squeezing under 3:00 in very hot conditions were some highlights.

If you want to read more success stories with the Marathon Excellence plans, check out the testimonials on the website here to hear from some of the beta testers in their own words!

The latest science on marathon performance

Marathon Excellence also contains a comprehensive but concise overview of the latest science on marathon performance.

You’ll learn about the science that underpins modern training concepts like long fast runs, high-end aerobic workouts, and float recovery intervals. You’ll also learn about modern approaches to fueling, including carbohydrate sources, pre-race fueling, and caffeine.

Marathon Excellence also covers how to overcome setbacks like illness and injury. It includes chapters on scientifically based strategies for overcoming injuries, bouncing back after illness, and preventing race-day gastrointestinal problems. 

Much of this scientific material is brand-new: Marathon Excellence cites over 400 scientific papers, some of which came out as recently as a few months ago. So, the info you’ll find in this book is far ahead of the outdated “bro-science” opinions you’ll see on social media.

Is Marathon Excellence really for everyone? 

The title of this book is a challenge to you, the reader. I didn’t want to write a book called “sub-3:00 marathoning” or “BQ marathoning” or “elite marathoning.” 

Maybe not everyone can break 3:00, or qualify for Boston, or make it into the elite field. But I do think that everyone can run an excellent marathon, by their own definition of that term. 

Excellence means aiming to run a good marathon, not just make it to the finish line, and that’s something that I do believe that everyone can achieve if they are determined to do it.

Get your copy of Marathon Excellence and start training

I’m really thrilled to share this book with you. Whether you follow the training plans to the letter, ignore them and dive right into the science, or use the book as a framework to build your own approach, I hope this book helps you achieve excellence in the marathon—whatever that means for you.

Marathon Excellence is available in paperback worldwide on Amazon at the button below:

Or learn more about Marathon Excellence at the book’s website.

In the coming weeks and months, I’ll also be releasing more content in support of Marathon Excellence: 

• A metric edition of Marathon Excellence, with all workouts and paces in kilometers for international readers
• An ebook version for Kindle, iPad, and other e-readers
• An audiobook version available on Amazon, Audible, and Apple Books
• Digital calendars with workout paces automatically calculated via a companion web app 

If you want to find out when this content comes out, join my email list below! You’ll be the first to find out when I have new material coming out.