What you're looking at
This is not a sample plan or a template with your name pasted on it. The page calls Pheidi's real plan generator — the same code that builds plans for people using the app — and shows you what comes back. Change the race date and the whole calendar moves. Change your experience level and the starting long run moves with it.
How the plan is built
Every plan works backwards from race day, then divides the weeks into four phases: base (aerobic foundation, roughly the first quarter), build (quality sessions enter), peak (the hardest weeks), and taper (volume drops so the work turns into fitness). The long run climbs on a three-up, one-down cycle, so every fourth week steps back rather than the graph climbing forever. That step-back is not lost time; it's when adaptation actually happens.
Beginners get one extra safety rail: the plan refuses to raise the long run more than 50% above where it started in any single step, and inserts bridging weeks if the jump would otherwise be too big. That's why a beginner plan sometimes comes back longer than the weeks you asked for.
Where the paces come from
By default every run is prescribed by effort, on a 1–10 scale. That's deliberate. A pace derived from a goal time tells you what the goal demands, not what you can hold today, and beginners chasing a demanded pace on easy days is the single most common way training goes wrong.
Give the builder a recent race result and it has something real to work from. It runs your time through Jack Daniels' VDOT formulas — the same maths behind our VDOT calculator, so the two agree to the second — and every run gets a target pace alongside its effort, plus the full zone table. Note what it does not change: the distances. Volume comes from your experience and the days you can run; pace comes from measured fitness. Those are different questions, and Pheidi answers them separately.
Use a race from the last six weeks or so, at the longest distance you've recently raced. If you want to see what your current fitness is worth at your goal distance, the race time predictor does exactly that.
What the app adds
Generating a plan is the easy part; every plan builder on the internet can do it. What nothing static can do is change. In the app the plan redistributes missed runs within safe limits, drops load for holidays, runs a four-week return protocol after an injury, adjusts for heat, exports to your calendar and watch, and tracks what you actually did against what was planned. That's the difference between a plan and a coach, and it's why this page shows you week one rather than pretending the PDF is the product.
Choosing your inputs
Race distance
Pick the race you're actually entered for, not the one you'd like to do. If you're undecided, read the training plan guide first — the jump from half marathon to marathon roughly doubles the weekly cost, and it's worth knowing that before you commit a season to it.
Experience level
Be honest here, because it's the input that does the most work. Beginner means under a year of consistent running or coming back from a long break. Intermediate means a year or more of regular running with at least one race finished. Advanced means several years, structured training, and a body that's proven it tolerates volume. Picking a level above yours doesn't make you fitter; it just raises the starting long run.
Days per week
Three days will get you around a 5K, 10K, or half marathon. Four to five is where most runners chasing a time should be. Six is for people whose bodies have already earned it. The builder caps the number by experience level, so asking for six as a beginner gives you the beginner ceiling instead — that's the guard rail working, not a bug.
Race day
The date anchors everything. Week one lands however many weeks before it the plan needs, which means a race that's closer than the plan is long simply starts you partway in. If the start date the builder shows is already behind you, that is the honest answer to the question: there isn't room for the full block before that race. Pick a later one, or start where the plan says and accept you're joining it mid-flight.