Marathon training, step by step

18-week program aims to turn out long-distance runners

Nationally ranked ultramarathoner Missy Foy has a peculiar way of motivating the masses. A keynote of her 20-minute pep talk to aspiring marathoners last week? Throwing up. "The Kiawah Marathon was the first marathon I really trained for," Foy told members of the Carolina Godiva Track Club as they embarked on an 18-week marathon training program. Her goal was to run it in three hours, but she surprised herself by crossing the finish in 2 hours and 47 minutes. Then she surprised her waiting husband: "I fell into my husband's arms and threw up on him."

It might not have been what the prospective marathoners and half-marathoners expected to hear, but it didn't seem to faze them, either. Two days later, on Saturday morning, more than 60 runners gathered on the Duke campus for the first group run in Godiva's eighth annual Marathon Training Program.

The Godiva program is based on one developed by renowned distance runner and coach Hal Higdon. The program promises to turn anyone capable of running 6 miles into a marathoner in 18 weeks. Gary Schultz, who coordinates the program for Godiva, estimates that at least 300 runners have successfully completed its program since it began in 2000.

Because it's a beginner-oriented program, most of those 300-plus had never done what Pheidippides inadvertently popularized in 490 B.C. when he set out by foot from Marathon to deliver a message to Athens, 26 miles and 385 yards away. Pheidippides set a personal record of about 3 hours on that run; there is no record of him throwing up at the finish.

He did, however, drop dead.

Yet marathons continue to grow in popularity. According to Marathonguide.com, 382,000 people ran at least one marathon in 2005, a 22 percent increase over 2000.

"When you get involved in it, you realize it isn't about pain," says Dr. Peter Leone, a physician at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill who is training for his first marathon, in Philadelphia, in November. "It's about discipline and sticking with a plan."

Godiva's 18-week plan reflects years of development by Higdon and a little tweaking by Godiva. Higdon, who is 75, started running at the University of Chicago in 1947 and hasn't stopped. He participated in eight Olympic trials, placed fifth at the 1964 Boston Marathon with a time of 2:21:55 (the current world record is 2:04:55, set by Kenyan Paul Tergat in 2003), and won masters (runners 35 and older) titles in 1975, 1977, 1981 and 1991. The whole time he has been tinkering with various training regimens, including the 18-week marathon program that his Web site says has been used by more than 100,000 runners over the years.

Eighteen weeks may seem like a short time to go from running 6 miles -- roughly equal to running from downtown Raleigh to the RBC Center -- to 26 -- continuing on to Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium.

But Leone, who has been running for 20 of his 49 years, thinks it's ideal for first-timers.

"In 18 weeks, you're not looking at people who will be running a three-hour marathon," says Leone. "Their goal is to just finish."

Just to finish

That's what Thomas Markham has in mind. Markham ran cross-country at Durham Academy and in college at Washington & Lee, but those races never exceeded six miles.

A few years into the work force now, Markham, who is 28, realized he was losing his runner's form and needed to get back into shape. Going back to 5Ks and 10Ks, he said, "wouldn't push me as much." So Saturday he joined the Godiva crew for the inaugural 6-mile run, his first steps toward running either the Richmond Marathon on Nov. 10 or the Outer Banks Marathon the following day. As Leone suggested, Markham isn't even thinking about a sub-three-hour marathon, the grail of many marathoners.