What is the best way to train for a marathon? If you are not looking beyond the present season, you can choose between several good answers, according to personal circumstances and inclination. A number of quite diverse approaches, ranging from a Lydiard-style program starting with high volume base-building followed by race-specific training, to the more intense Furman ‘train less; run faster’ program combined with cross-training, offer a the prospect of a good marathon, provided the training is consistent yet flexible enough to allow a good balance between hard work and recovery.

The question of how best to train in a way that leads to year or year improvement is less easily answered. The recent study in which Stoggl and Sperlich randomly allocated previously well-trained athletes to one of four different training regimes: high volume, high intensity, threshold and polarised found that the polarised schedule (characterised by a large amount of…