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After purchase, your plan will be available in your own private online training log account. You'll enjoy these benefits and more:

• Daily e-mails with your next workout keep you on track
• Create your own routes or search our library of routes for tracking your workouts
• Map, graph and share workouts with your friends by e-mail, Facebook and view in Google Maps or Google Earth
• Upload workouts from one of more than 80 training devices (Garmin, Suunto, Timex, Polar, more) or easily record your workouts manually
• Track your fitness and gain confidence
• Complete nutrition tracking to monitor your diet
• Get support and answers on the Message Boards

Workout #1 : Other

Planned Time: 0:00:00
Marathon Novice 1 is now also available as an app for your iPhone. Check the iTunes library, or look for the link on halhigdon.com.

Workout #2 : Day Off

Planned Time: 0:00:00
Welcome to my premium interactive training program for Novice marathoners. A few words of explanation: Monday is always a day of rest. Count on it! Rest is important for recovery after the weekend's workouts, particularly as the long runs progress from 6 to 20 miles. Your body needs time to recover. So take the day off. Friday is also a day of rest. You will run on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Sunday is a day for cross-training. (If you want, you can reverse the order of the Saturday/Sunday workouts.) Let's begin this Monday, the first day of your marathon journey, by contemplating the training that will begin tomorrow.

Workout #3 : Other

Planned Time: 0:00:00
Marathons lend themselves to goal setting, because of the extra effort required both to train for them and to compete well in them, and simply because of the magic of the marathon itself. But setting a goal involves not merely selecting an event or events but also deciding what you expect from your participation in that event. Is your goal just to finish? Is your goal a PR? Is your goal victory, or at least placing high in your age group? Or maybe you are just out to have a good time?

Workout #4 : Run

Planned Time: 0:30:00
An easy day. Run 3 miles at a comfortable pace. Over the next 18 weeks, you will add only a few miles to your Tuesday workouts. In Week 11, you'll do 4 miles. In week 14, you'll be up to 5 miles. By that time, you'll be so used to doing much longer runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays, that a run of that distance will seem easy. It's all part of the progressive buildup of total mileage designed to get you ready to run 26 miles 385 yards 18 weeks from now. If even running 3 miles seems a strain for you, don't hesitate to mix in a walking break.

Workout #5 : Run

Planned Time: 0:30:00
Three miles, same as yesterday. As the countdown continues, you will begin to run more miles midweek. Every second week, you will add another mile to your Wednesday workout. Four weeks before the marathon (the same week in which you do your climactic 20-miler), you will be up to 10 miles this day. This is what 1984 Olympic marathoner and Los Angeles Marathon champion Julie Isphording calls a "sorta long" run. What you will find most difficult as the mileage progresses from 3 to 10 is not going the distance, but finding time to squeeze a run taking more than an hour into a busy weekday. I'll offer some tips on that when the time comes. In the meantime, have a good run today.

Workout #6 : Other

Planned Time: 0:00:00
Planning is where time and goal come together. If you have a specific period of time in which to achieve a specific goal, you can plan accordingly, to a point, of course. You cannot predict whether the wind will be in your face or the weather will be too warm. But you can plan almost every other aspect of your marathon training so you will reach the starting line ready to perform to the best of your ability.

Workout #7 : Other

Planned Time: 0:00:00
Marathons continue to grow in size. Chicago, New York and London all attract fields larger than 30,000 runners. Within the United States, according to figures from the USATF Road Running Information Center, the number of runners finishing marathons has grown from 170,000 to 400,000 in two decades. Those finishers are slightly older and somewhat slower, their motivation in entering a marathon (often their first road race of any distance) being mainly to finish it, not to finish it fast.

Workout #8 : Run

Custom
Planned Time: 0:30:00
Run the same distance that you did on Tuesday: 3 miles at a comfortable pace. Again, remember the walking-break option I suggested for you on Tuesday. At 3 miles, you may want to run the full distance. But as the distance builds, and particularly on days when the weather is warm, you will appreciate a short break, particularly to stop for water. Since most novice runners will do some walking in the marathon--if only through the aid stations--you want to practice this as part of your strategy.

Workout #9 : Other

Planned Time: 0:00:00
The preferred fuel for the endurance athlete is carbohydrates, because they are easy to digest and easy to convert into energy. Carbohydrates convert quickly into glucose (a form of sugar that circulates in the blood) and glycogen (the form of glucose stored in muscle tissue and the liver). Proteins and fats also convert into glucose/glycogen, but at a greater energy cost. The body can normally store about 2,000 calories worth of glycogen in the muscle, enough for maybe 20 miles of running.