Marathon Training 10 per cent rule

Many marathon runners find a 10 per cent rule a useful way of avoiding over training.

The 10 per cent rule

This simply says:

Don’t increase your overall weekly mileage by more than 10 per cent each week; and

Don’t increase the length of your longest or hardest run by more than 10 per cent each week.

Protection against illness and injury

The idea behind this is simply to give you body a chance to avoid injury.

The 10 per cent rule can also provide a degree of protection against illness caused by over training.

What this means in practice

Let’s say in your first week of training your longest run is just 3 miles.

Increasing your longest run by no more than 10% per cent each week will mean that you need to allow at least 6 months to train for a full marathon (or 17 weeks for a half marathon).

For most runners, in practice you may need to allow even more time that this.