For a lot of people, training for the Marine Corps Marathon starts this week.

And in some ways, MCM training starts for me this week too. We're 16 weeks out from the race, which is the number of weeks most marathon training plans prescribe.

But since I burn out really easily on plans that long, I'm not starting official training until the beginning of August.

In the meantime, I'll be doing what I call MCM Base Building.

For the next three weeks, I will be following a very loosely structured running plan to get my mileage where it needs to be for the official start of training.


I'll be running three to four times each week, with no set time, distance or speed. Knowing me and my schedule for the next few weeks, I'd guess the runs during the week will average between three and five miles with weekend runs going anywhere from six to eight miles.

You might wonder what the difference between my base building phase and the start of any traditional training plan is, and the answer is, on paper, there isn't much of a difference.

It's all mental for me. For the next three weeks I'll be building a solid base, while still keeping my schedule flexible and my runs fun.

Then come August, I'll be ready to officially start training.