book - Running Writings

The story behind the Marathon Excellence cover

January 15, 2026

pencil sketch of marathon excellence for everyone book cover

One of my favorite parts about my new book Marathon Excellence for Everyone is the one thing I didn’t create myself: the cover.

Early on in the writing process, I looked at all the running-related books on my bookshelf and realized there seemed to be an unwritten rule: “books about running need a stock photo of a runner on the cover.”

That on-the-nose imagery makes sense, I suppose (and I followed that rule back in 2013 with Modern Training and Physiology) but I wanted Marathon Excellence to have a cover that was just as distinctive as the Marathon Excellence training approach.

Announcing the eBook version of Marathon Excellence for Everyone

January 6, 2026December 29, 2025

marathon excellence for everyone on kindle ebook

I’m excited to announce that the eBook version of my new book, Marathon Excellence for Everyone, is now available!

The e-book versions of both the US Edition (miles) and Metric Edition (kilometers) are both listed on Amazon for Kindle. Here are links for both:

🌎 Get the US Edition (miles) eBook here

🌍 Get the Metric Edition (kilometers) eBook here

The Marathon Excellence ebook is available in over a dozen Amazon marketplaces, including several new countries where the paperback is not! The Amazon eBook is readable on your Kindle e-reader, your phone, your tablet, or your laptop.

Podcast: Base training for the marathon with the Seconds Flat Podcast

December 16, 2025

I just recorded a great conversation on the Seconds Flat Podcast from Columbus Running Company where we chatted about base training for the marathon, what coaches influenced me, how to set your marathon goal pace, and the merits of single vs. double threshold, among other topics.

Find the show on your favorite podcasting platform:

🎧 Listen on Spotify

🎙️ Listen on Apple Podcasts

I really enjoyed this one and I hope you enjoy listening to it too! As always, if you enjoy it, feel free to share the episode with your friends and leave a review on your podcasting app of choice.

Podcast: Building a marathon plan from scratch with Dane Verwey from Run Culture

December 3, 2025November 28, 2025

I just recorded an awesome podcast on marathon training with Dane Verwey on his excellent Run Culture Podcast. I was really looking forward to going on this show because Dane was one of the beta testers who tried out the Marathon Excellence training plans before the book came out! Dane ran 2:24 at the Ballarat Marathon using the Tornado plan.

We chat about Dane’s experience doing the plan, including some of his most memorable workouts and a breakdown of how he felt throughout the 18-week training program.

We also chat in-depth about how to put together a marathon starting from scratch—when to schedule your biggest workouts, how to build up to them, and how different types of workouts support one another.

If you’ve been looking for an in-depth account of what doing a full-spectrum marathon build really looks like, or what the process of building up a program from a blank calendar looks like, this podcast is a great listen. I really enjoyed doing this show and I hope you enjoy it as well!

Here are links to the show:

🎙️ Click here to listen on Spotify

🎧 Click here to listen on Apple Podcasts

To keep up with Dane, you can follow Run Culture on Instagram here. If you enjoy the episode, make sure you leave a review on your podcasting app of choice! Reviews are really helpful for content creators, and help more runners find good podcasts!

Announcing the Metric Edition of Marathon Excellence for Everyone

October 27, 2025

I’m thrilled to announce the Metric Edition of my new book, Marathon Excellence for Everyone! The Metric Edition is available now worldwide, and features training plans, workouts, and race tactics in kilometers, km/wk, and min/km.

For the Metric Edition, I redesigned all of the training plans to be kilometer-native—no “16.1k runs.” Like the US edition, there are printable PDF overviews for the metric versions of all five plans on the Marathon Excellence website. This version also features an awesome new cover redesign that’s a perfect complement to the US version’s cover.

The Metric Edition of Marathon Excellence for Everyone is available worldwide in many local Amazon marketplace—here are Amazon links for:

Many of these Amazon marketplaces will also ship to nearby countries as well.

If you’re living in the United States but prefer training in kilometers, I’ve got you covered—the Metric Edition is available in the USA too!

Over half of the people who come to this website do so from somewhere other than the United States, so I’m super excited to share a kilometer-native version of Marathon Excellence worldwide. I know many regular readers have likewise been eagerly anticipating the metric release. Hope you enjoy the book!

How beta testing improved the Marathon Excellence training plans

October 7, 2025

preview of marathon excellence 18 week training plan

In late December of last year, readers who were subscribed to my email newsletter got an email that started like this:

I’m currently developing a set of marathon training plans as part of a larger marathon-focused project. I’m looking for runners who are interested in giving these plans a “test drive” and providing some feedback…

That “larger marathon-focused project” was of course my then-in-development book, Marathon Excellence for Everyone. A core part of Marathon Excellence is the five training plans, which span peak mileage levels from 40 mi/wk (65 km/wk) up to 100+ mi/wk (160+ km/km).

I’ve been coaching and advising marathon runners one-on-one for over 12 years, but writing “universal” plans for a wide range of different runners posed its own set of challenges. Could a complete stranger actually use these plans to improve in the marathon?

Review and summary of Marathon Training - A Scientific Approach by Renato Canova

September 29, 2025June 19, 2023

Photo of the book Marathon Training - A Scientific Approach by Renato Canova and Enrico Arcelli

How do the best marathon runners in the world train? While you might catch a workout or two on Instagram or hear rumors about epic training weeks on message boards, there’s precious little information on the systematic approaches that elite coaches use with top marathon runners–and even less information on the science that backs up these approaches for designing marathon training programs.

One exception to this general rule has been the Italian coach Renato Canova, arguably the greatest living running coach and the topic of several of my previous posts on Running Writings. Canova freely discusses his training philosophy and posts example workouts or even full training schedules for the athletes he has worked with, which include Olympic and World Championships medallists.

In 1999, Canova even co-authored a book on the science of marathon training—however, there’s a bit of a catch: this book was printed through the IAAF (now World Athletics), not a traditional publishing company or printing press. As a result, Canova’s book is extraordinarily rare. I had heard of this book probably a decade ago, but in the intervening years I couldn't find any substantive information on its contents. Until now.