Training Plans Are Made For Tweaking

Don’t become obsessed with your training plan. Your marathon will not be ruined if you didn’t run seven miles on Thursday because you were up all night with a sick child or if you were on a business trip.

Training plans are made for adjustment. Use them as guides, and adapt them to suit yourself, your life, your goals, and unforeseen circumstances such as injuries or bad weather. As long as you can do a long run once a week during most weeks leading up to the marathon, you will be able to complete the race. If you want to do speed workouts and hill workouts, that’s great, just don’t worry if you miss a few.

During the week, listen to your body and run mostly middle distances, from 5-8 miles, at a comfortable pace. Find a training plan that seems to suit your needs and goals and adapt it. If you want to do some speed work one week but not the next week, that's fine. There is no one plan that guarantees better results than any other plan. Check out runnersworld.com to give you some ideas for basic training plans depending on your goals.