[shway]

Hello coaches.
I purchased the level 2 pace-based marathon plan a few months ago, and I have been following it pretty religiously up till now for an expected race day of July 24. However, due to work-related scheduling conflicts, I had to withdraw from the July 24 marathon, and I now plan to race in a marathon on August 28. This puts me exactly 5 weeks off of the original schedule (my race day will be 5 weeks later than originally planned).
Basically, I am trying to figure out how to adjust/extend the plan to put myself in the best position for the April 28 marathon race day.
I am assuming I will need to repeat many of the workouts. But I’m wondering how I should go about deciding which to repeat and in what order. I’m assuming that I wouldn’t want to taper twice, so it probably doesn’t make sense to just repeat the last 5 weeks back to back. I’m also honestly not looking forward to repeating the hardest/longest workouts twice (these would be the 21.7M run and the 2:40:00 depletion run — both of which I have already completed) and then the (dreaded!) final Mararhon Pace long run – which I have yet to complete (scheduled for next Sunday).
To complicate matters a bit, I am and will be traveling a fair amount (some international) throughout the month of July, so it is possible I will not be able to complete ALL of the workouts in the scheduled order for that month, although I have done a pretty good job keeping up thus far.
Anyway, I realize you probably can’t get too specific without a dedicated one-on-one consultation, but any advice any one has here on how to extend a Level 2 pace based marathon plan by 5 weeks would be much appreciated!
Also, in case this would help at all:
I am a 53 year old male.
This will be my first ever marathon.
My first ever race was a half marathon which I ran on February 28. My official time for that was 1:36:12.
Thanks so much!
(And apologies for the long-winded post!)
Best,
Josh

[shway]

Sorry that’s a new marathon race day of August 28 (not April!)

[leyla@8020endurance.com]

Josh,
The easiest way to accommodate with a changed race date is to unapply the plan with the current end date and re-apply the plan with the new end date. This will have you repeating only a small section of the plan and still peaking and tapering in time for the new event.
I would say you can have a small transition break when you do this, to allow you to get a bit of rest before cycling back to those longer run workouts again.

Here is a guide on how to unapply and re apply your plan with the new end date.
https://help.trainingpeaks.com/hc/en-us/articles/204071974-How-do-I-apply-unapply-my-plan-

Leyla

[shway]

Thank You, Layla.
I do know how to apply the plan to a new end date.
I suppose my main question would be at what point should I do that?
I was originally assuming it would probably be better for me not to taper twice, so I should reapply before the tapering phase of the original plan end date begins. But perhaps if, as you suggest, it would be good to take a little rest, then I should taper twice? In that case I would finish the tapering phase of the original plan end date and then reapply the plan to repeat the last 5 weeks.
I will admit that I’m feeling rather drained in the middle of the heavy training of weeks 12-16, so I’m sort of dreading having to repeat the long run/high load days again without some sort of break.
Josh

[leyla@8020endurance.com]

HiJosh,
I would switch the plan now, before you reach the peak and taper of the existing plan.

[shway]

Thanks.
I believe I’ve already reached the peak (did the longest run of the plan over a week ago.) I just started week 16, which has a long Marathon Pace run scheduled for the end. Weeks 17 & 18 are taper. So if I switch now, I will be skipping the original taper, but repeating some of the toughest weeks (14-16) that I have already done. Is this what you’re recommending?
Josh

[leyla@8020endurance.com]

So right now you have 8 weeks till your new race date. Long enough away to lose some of the fitness from the training you have completed but also long enough away that if you don’t have a bit of a break you may get burned out.

There is no point to do your last peak week and taper.

So instead here is what I recommend Starting from today:
Week 9: Transition (can reduce a little more if feeling fatigued)
week 12: Transition (a week to add in a little speed but reduce the weekend long run volume down if still feeling fatigued)
Week 13-18 as per the original plan. (but pay attention to fatigue and reduce long run volume down to your longest run not exceeding 3 hours)

Leyla

[shway]

Layla, thank you so much for the recommendation!
This sounds like a great plan, and I will try to follow it as closely as possible.
Best
Josh

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