Why are my long runs so short, my volume so low and my taper so brief?

One of the most common pieces of feedback we get: “My marathon plan has nothing but short runs for months, the long ones come far too late” or “The taper is too short”. Both have the same reason – and it's intentional.

Basic rule: The plan starts from what you can do today

From day 1, you train according to your current abilities. If you can just about manage 10 km today, you won't get 15 to 18 km runs in week 1 – even if that would actually be appropriate for a marathon. You'd immediately be overtraining and, in our experience, would drop out after about three weeks.

Experience and studies show: most people give themselves too little time to prepare for a marathon, go from 0 to 100 and develop overload problems after just a few weeks. Many then don't finish the marathon at all, or do significantly worse than planned.

What matters is the gap between today and your goal

• Big gap (e.g. from 10 km runner to marathon in a few months): Trait increases volume faster than usual because marathon fitness has to be reached – but not at any cost. That's why the really high volumes only come late: before that, your body simply isn't ready. For the same reason, the taper is short – the time is needed to build fitness.
• Small gap (e.g. you already run marathons and want to prepare for one in three months without the time being especially important to you): then you get plenty of taper. The main thing is arriving at the start line fully rested.

So it's not true that marathon plans generally only have runs of up to 90 minutes and increase late. What your plan looks like depends on your starting point and your time frame.

The deliberate trade-off

In plans like these, a marathon is often not prepared as “ideally” as in some other plans. In return, the drop-out rate along the way is significantly lower. Trait takes responsibility for making sure you don't drop out injured while working through the plan – that matters more to us than the perfect volume.

What you can do

• Allow more lead time for future goals. The more time you have, the more gently volume can increase and the longer the taper will be.
• For very big jumps, set an intermediate goal.
• Choose your level honestly – it's the basis for the volume of your sessions.

Please understand that we don't extend individual sessions on request. The plan is built to work if you run it the way it's laid out.