What should I do the week before a marathon?
Race Training
Race week cannot make you fitter. It can absolutely make you slower. The job is to arrive fresh, calm and unremarkable.
The short answer
In marathon race week: run about half your normal volume, keep a little intensity early in the week, do nothing new, and stop thinking of training as something you can still influence. A typical week is easy running Monday to Wednesday with one short sharpener, 20 to 30 minutes easy Thursday and Friday, a 15 to 20 minute jog with a few strides on Saturday, and race Sunday. Eat normally but slightly more carbohydrate-heavy from Thursday, and sleep well on Friday night rather than Saturday.
The mindset first
The single most useful thing I can tell anyone in marathon week is this: there is nothing left to gain and quite a lot left to lose.
Every year, runners with sixteen good weeks behind them do something in race week that costs them the race — a "confidence" session run too hard, a new pair of shoes, a long walk around a city on the Saturday, a diet change, an experimental gel. None of it was necessary. All of it was avoidable.
Your fitness was set weeks ago. Race week is logistics and restraint.
A sample race week
| Day | Session |
|---|---|
| Monday | Easy 40 min, relaxed |
| Tuesday | Easy 40 min with 3 x 5 min at marathon pace, 2 min float |
| Wednesday | Easy 30–35 min |
| Thursday | Easy 25–30 min + 4 x 20 sec strides |
| Friday | Rest, or 20 min very easy |
| Saturday | 15–20 min jog + 3 x 20 sec strides. Stay off your feet otherwise. |
| Sunday | Race |
Adjust the numbers to your own volume — the shape is what matters. Some intensity early, almost none late, and steadily less time on your feet as the week goes on.
Why keep any intensity at all?
Because dropping intensity entirely leaves most runners feeling flat and disconnected from their race pace. The Tuesday session is not training — it is a reminder. Three short blocks at marathon pace should feel easy and rhythmic, and if it does not, that is useful information about your pacing plan rather than a reason to panic.
Keep it short. Fifteen minutes of marathon-pace running total is plenty.
Coach's note
The runners who race best in my squad are boringly consistent in race week. The ones who struggle almost always did something extra. The most common version is a midweek “confidence” long run, done because someone is worried about their fitness. They are fit. A 25km effort four days out adds nothing to what you have built, and you carry the fatigue to the start line. Confidence in race week comes from the training log, not from another effort.
The practical checklist
Sleep
Prioritise Thursday and Friday nights. Almost nobody sleeps well the night before a marathon, and that is fine — one poor night has minimal effect on performance if the two before it were good. Knowing that in advance removes a lot of the anxiety.
Food
Carbohydrate intake goes up from about Thursday. You are not looking to eat enormous quantities — you are looking to shift the proportion of your normal intake towards carbohydrate while training volume drops. Reduce fibre a little from Friday if your stomach is sensitive.
Eat familiar food. Race week is not the time to discover a new café.
The expo
Go, collect your number, leave. Standing and walking around for three hours on the Saturday is a genuine and completely unnecessary drain.
Kit
Everything you will wear and use on race day should have been worn and used in training. Shoes with at least 40 to 60km on them, not brand new. Socks you have run in. Gels you have practised with. Chafing prevention, applied before you leave the house.
Lay it all out on Friday. Check the weather on Saturday and adjust once, not repeatedly.
Race morning
Wake up about three hours before the start. Eat your usual pre-long-run breakfast — the one you have practised — and nothing else. Get to the start with enough time to be unhurried. Warm up gently for 5 to 10 minutes with a few strides; a marathon does not need much, and the first few kilometres of the race will finish the job.
Wellington-specific notes
The Wellington Marathon is run in late June or early July, which means cold mornings and a genuine possibility of wind coming off the harbour. Have a throwaway layer for the start, and think in advance about how you will handle the exposed stretches — sitting behind a group in a headwind for a few kilometres is worth far more than the seconds it appears to cost.
If you are travelling to a race elsewhere, do the travel on the Friday if you possibly can. A Saturday flight, a rental car and an unfamiliar bed is a lot of small stresses to absorb on the wrong day.
Three things to write down on the Friday
- Your goal pace, and the pace you will run for the first 5km — which should be slightly slower.
- Your fuelling schedule: what, and at what time, not at what kilometre.
- Your plan B. If it is windy, or hot, or you feel wrong at 15km, what is the adjusted target? Deciding this in advance stops you making the decision badly at 30km.
Feeling terrible in race week is normal
Almost everybody feels heavy, sluggish and vaguely unwell somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday of race week. It is so common it has a name — taper crankiness — and it is a consequence of the training load dropping while your body catches up on repairs.
It is not a sign that you have lost fitness. Fitness does not disappear in a week. It usually resolves by Friday or Saturday, and it has no relationship whatsoever to how you will run on Sunday.
Sit with it. Do less, not more. The work is done.
Put a recent 5k time in and get your easy, threshold and interval paces as real numbers.
Open the pace calculator →I coach a small number of runners one-to-one, in Wellington and remotely, and run AW Extra Mile group sessions for beginners at Waitangi Park. Ask me a question if you are not sure which fits.
