FROM NON-RUNNER
TO MARATHONER.
The ladder from your first 5K to a marathon start line — how long it actually takes, how to prepare for a half, and how many races I think you should run before the full.
4
Distances on
the ladder
12–18
Months from beginner
to marathon
16–20
Weeks in a
marathon block
2
Half marathons
before the full
Section 01
YOU CLIMB IT.
YOU DO NOT JUMP IT.
It is technically possible to go from the sofa to a marathon in under six months if you are healthy and stubborn. I would advise almost nobody to do it. The people I know who got injured or fell out of love with running are, without exception, the ones who skipped a rung.
The route that works is the boring one: 5K, then 10K, then half marathon, then marathon. Each step teaches you something the next one assumes you already know.
5K
The one that changes your identity
This is the distance where you stop being someone who is trying to run and become someone who runs. From genuine zero, nine weeks of run/walk gets you here — that is the whole NHS Couch to 5K programme. Do a parkrun. It is free, it happens at 9am on Saturday in nearly every town in Britain, and nobody is watching you.
10K
The one that teaches you pacing
Twice the distance, but the jump is much smaller than it sounds. This is where you learn that going out too fast is a decision you pay for at 7K, and where easy running finally starts making sense as a concept rather than a slogan. Give it two to three months after your first 5K.
HALF MARATHON
The one that is genuinely hard
21.1K. A real distance that deserves respect — but also, for most people, the most rewarding race they ever run. Far enough to require training, short enough that the training still fits inside a normal life with a job and a family. Some runners stay here forever, very happily.
MARATHON
The one that rearranges your life slightly
42.2K. The step from half to full is not double. It is a different sport, with a different relationship to time, food, sleep and your weekends. Completely achievable for an ordinary person — and it should be the fourth thing you do, not the first.
Realistically, from complete beginner to marathon start line is twelve to eighteen months if you want to arrive healthy and still enjoying it. That sounds slow when you are impatient. It is nothing at all when you look back at it.
Section 02 · The Half Marathon
HOW TO ACTUALLY
PREPARE FOR 21.1K.
The half is the distance I recommend most and love most. Hard enough to mean something, short enough that training for it does not consume your life. Here is everything I would tell a friend over coffee.
BEFORE YOU START THE PLAN
You should be comfortably running 5K, three times a week, without it wrecking you. That is the entry requirement. If you are not there yet, the half is not the next thing — another eight weeks of 5K is.
GIVE IT 16 TO 20 WEEKS
Novice half marathon plans run 16 to 20 weeks, and if you are new to running, closer to six months is kinder. There is no prize for compressing it. The only thing a rushed build produces reliably is shin splints in week seven.
THREE RUNS A WEEK IS ENOUGH
One easy, one slightly harder, one long. That is the entire structure. Four is fine if your life allows it. Three, done consistently for four months, will get you across that line comfortably — and three is a number you can actually protect when a child is ill or work runs over.
THE LONG RUN IS THE PLAN
Everything else is supporting cast. Build it by about a mile a week, with a shorter recovery week every third or fourth week where you cut it back. Peak somewhere around 11 to 12 miles — you do not need to run the full 13.1 in training. Race day adrenaline and the crowd cover the rest, and I promise you they do.
RUN THE LONG ONE SLOWLY. SLOWER THAN THAT.
The single most common mistake, and I made it for a year. Your long run should feel almost embarrassingly easy — conversational, unhurried, the pace where you feel slightly silly. That is what builds the engine. Running it hard just makes you tired, and tired is not the same as fitter.
PRACTISE EATING AND DRINKING
Anything over about 90 minutes and you need to take something on. Work out what your stomach tolerates during training, not on race morning. Gels, jelly babies, a flat energy drink — it genuinely does not matter which, only that it is not a surprise to your body on the day.
Section 03 · My Advice, Not A Rule
HOW MANY RACES BEFORE
YOU RUN A MARATHON?
Nobody can make you do any of this. Plenty of people run a marathon as their first ever race and finish it. My advice is based on what I wish I had done, and on watching friends do it both ways.
6+
Parkruns or 5Ks
before anything else
2
10K races
minimum
2
Half marathons
before the full
12–18
Months from
beginner to marathon
Two halves, not one. This is the part I feel strongest about. The first half marathon teaches you the distance. The second one teaches you how to race it — how to pace the opening miles, what to eat, what your body does at mile ten, how to talk to yourself when it gets bad. You cannot learn those things once. And every one of them is a thing you will need at mile twenty of a marathon, where there is nobody to ask.
Space them out. Ideally run one half in the spring and one in the autumn, then build toward a marathon the following spring. A marathon block is sixteen to twenty weeks on top of an existing base — it is not something you bolt onto a body that has just finished a race two weeks ago.
And do the small races. Do the muddy village 10K with forty people and a cup of squash at the finish. Race day is a skill in itself — the sleeplessness the night before, the queue for the toilets, starting too fast because everyone else did, the strange loneliness at the halfway point. You want to have felt all of that several times before the day it actually matters.
One more thing, and it is not about training. Pick a marathon you have a reason to run. Twenty weeks is a long time, and there will be a morning in week fourteen, in the dark and the rain, when the only thing that gets you out of the door is the reason. Fitness will not do it. A time goal will not do it. A reason will.
Section 04 · The Majors
THE STARS PEOPLE
SPEND A DECADE COLLECTING.
★
★
★
★
★
★
★
★
★
If you have ever seen a runner with a strange multi-coloured medal that clearly is not from any one race, that is a Six Star Medal — and it took them years, a great deal of money, and quite a lot of luck in ballots to get it.
The Abbott World Marathon Majors is a series of the world’s most significant city marathons. Finish one and you earn a star on your AbbottWMM profile. Collect the full set and you are awarded a physical medal that cannot be bought, entered for, or fast-tracked. There are roughly a few thousand Six Star finishers in the entire world. It is the closest thing recreational running has to a summit.
The series has grown recently and is still moving. Sydney joined in 2025 as the seventh Major, and Cape Town became the eighth in 2027 — the first African race in the series. Shanghai is in the final stage of candidacy, and if it passes, a Nine Star Medal is expected to follow. The original Six Star will continue to be awarded alongside it.
Correct as of July 2026 · Always check the official race sites before planning
THE EIGHT, IN CALENDAR ORDER
TOKYO
JAPAN · MARCH
BALLOT, CHARITY, TOUR OPERATOR
Ballot opens around August. Charity entry is expensive by UK standards — a pledge of roughly ¥200,000. Tour operator packages are the most reliable route for overseas runners, and the most expensive.
BOSTON
USA · APRIL
QUALIFYING TIME ONLY
The only Major with no general ballot. You have to run a qualifying time — and then beat it, because the field is oversubscribed every year. See below.
LONDON
UK · APRIL
BALLOT, CHARITY, GOOD FOR AGE
Your home Major, and the hardest ballot on earth — over 840,000 applications for around 17,000 places. The charity route is the realistic one, at roughly £2,000–£3,000 in fundraising.
CAPE TOWN
SOUTH AFRICA · MAY
BALLOT, TOUR OPERATOR, CHARITY
The newest Major and the first in Africa. Currently the easiest of the eight to get into, which will not last — ballots always tighten once a race gains Major status. 2027 race is 23 May.
SYDNEY
AUSTRALIA · AUGUST
BALLOT, CHARITY, TOUR OPERATOR
Joined in 2025 and immediately oversubscribed — around 123,000 ballot applications for the 2026 race. The field is expanding toward 40,000 finishers, so the odds are better than London, for now.
BERLIN
GERMANY · SEPTEMBER
BALLOT, CHARITY, TOUR OPERATOR
The fast one — flat, wide roads and more world records set here than anywhere else. The ballot is a straight lottery with decent odds, and the charity route is well organised for overseas runners.
CHICAGO
USA · OCTOBER
BALLOT, CHARITY, TOUR OPERATOR
Lottery entry opens each spring. Oversubscribed, but nowhere near London-level odds. Flat, fast and famously loud — the crowd support carries you through the last 10K.
NEW YORK CITY
USA · NOVEMBER
BALLOT, CHARITY, 9+1 GUARANTEE
The biggest field of the eight. Guaranteed entry by running nine local NYRR races plus volunteering once, or through the ballot and charity routes if you're coming from overseas.
Getting In
FOUR WAYS THROUGH
THE DOOR.
There is no fifth. Everything you read about getting into a Major comes down to one of these.
THE BALLOT
Free or nearly free. Also mostly futile.
Every Major except Boston runs one, and they are all oversubscribed. London is the worst at around 2%; New York is roughly 4%. Berlin, Chicago, Sydney and Cape Town are meaningfully better. Enter every ballot you can every year — it costs almost nothing and it takes ten minutes — but never build a plan around winning one.
A CHARITY PLACE
The realistic route, and the one with a point.
Charities hold guaranteed places and give them to runners who commit to raising a set amount — usually £2,000–£3,000 for London, varying elsewhere. It is a genuine commitment and you should not take one lightly. But if you are running for a reason anyway, this is the route that turns your race into something beyond a medal.
A QUALIFYING TIME
For most of us, a long-term project.
Boston requires one. Berlin and Chicago offer guaranteed entry to runners who hit published standards. Berlin asks around 3:10 for women; Boston’s standard for women 18–34 is 3:25 for the 2027 race. These are serious times — but they are also a legitimate goal to build toward over several years if racing is what you love.
A TOUR OPERATOR PACKAGE
Guaranteed entry, for money.
Official travel partners hold blocks of places bundled with flights and hotels. For Tokyo it is effectively the only reliable route from the UK. Expect to pay well above what the trip would cost independently — you are buying certainty. Legitimate, and worth it for the races you cannot otherwise reach.
The Difficult One
BOSTON DOES NOT
HAVE A BALLOT.
Boston is the oldest annual marathon in the world and the only Major you cannot enter with luck or money. You run a qualifying time at a certified marathon, or you do not go. For most people chasing the stars, Boston is the one that takes years — and it is usually left until last for exactly that reason.
Women · 2027 Qualifying Standards
The Part That Catches People Out
Hitting the published standard does not get you in. It gets you into the application pool — and every year that pool is bigger than the field. The organisers then accept only those who beat the standard by a margin, and that margin moves annually.
Recently the effective cut-off has run roughly five to seven minutes faster than the published time. So a woman aged 18–34 aiming at 3:25 should realistically be training for something closer to 3:18–3:20 to be confident of a place. Plan for the cut-off, not the standard.
My Honest Advice
YOU DO NOT HAVE
TO COLLECT ANYTHING.
I want to be careful here, because the stars are genuinely wonderful and also a very effective way to spend ten thousand pounds without noticing. Flights, entries, hotels, tour packages, time off work — a full set is a serious financial project, not just a running one. Plenty of people chasing it are quietly stretched by it.
If you do want them, the sensible order is the boring one. Start with the ballots you can realistically win — Berlin, Chicago, Sydney, Cape Town while it is still new. Enter London every single year because it costs nothing and somebody has to win it. Leave Boston until you have several marathons behind you and know what you can actually run. Tokyo whenever the money makes sense.
And know that your first marathon should almost certainly not be a Major. They are enormous, expensive, oversubscribed, and emotionally loaded. Manchester, Brighton, Edinburgh, Yorkshire — these are excellent races you can simply enter, and a far kinder place to find out what 26.2 miles does to you.
SIX STARS IS A BEAUTIFUL THING
TO CHASE. IT IS NOT A MEASURE
OF WHETHER YOU ARE A RUNNER.
MINE IS MY DAD.
WHAT IS YOURS?
I did not start running to get fit. I started because I did not know where else to put it.