Most runners see what type of training elite marathoners do and copy that.

But for an elite runner a marathon will take them around 2 hours.

For most recreational runners it’ll take somewhere between 3 and 5 hours.

Or between 50 and 150% longer.

And this is more important than most people realize, because your ability to keep going for a long time without breaking down is a lot more important the longer it takes you to complete the marathon.

In science this is called your durability.

So how do you train if you’re not an elite runner then?

A study from 2025 tried to answer that question.

They looked at the training data from almost 120,000 non-elite runners in the 16 weeks before 152.000 different marathons.

They found that across all runners the average weekly volume was 45 km (or about 28 miles) but the fastest runners trained more than 3 times as much as slower runners.

What was even more interesting, was how those miles were distributed.

They found that the people who ran the fastest tended to run

• 80% easy
• 15% medium
• and only 5% hard

But, besides just running more another study from 2025 found that doing long progressive runs (meaning you run harder by the end) can help build your durability and not break down by the end of your race.

And then finally heavy strength training and jumping will also improve your ability to keep going for longer making you run faster.

So here’s the keys to your training if you want to run a faster marathon.

• First, Consistency matters more than anything. If you’re not consistent nothing else matters.
• Second, more miles will help you get faster. At least up to a certain point. But how you run those miles also matters. So aim to run 80% of the time easy, 15% medium and 5% hard.
• Third add some progressive long runs to build your durability. An example could be 2 hours and 30 minutes with the last 30 minutes in marathon pace.
• And finally add some heavy strength training and jumping to your weekly schedule as well.

Stay hungry,

Nicklas

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References:

Jones AM, Kirby BS. Physiological Resilience: What Is It and How Might It Be Trained? Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2025 Mar;35(3):e70032

Muniz-Pumares D, Hunter B, Meyler S, Maunder E, Smyth B. The Training Intensity Distribution of Marathon Runners Across Performance Levels. Sports Med. 2025

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