A friend of mine is running his first marathon on November 12th and is starting his training regimen tomorrow (he's been running some up to this point as well). He's 19 years old and decided not to run cross country or track for his college team (transfering to another school for academic aid and major) any more after turning his ankle before nationals. He was planning on using Hal Higdon' advanced marathon training plan, but wanted me to find out if that was the bets plan available for him. Now I'm an avid reader of training books and documentaries and any other book about running or runners or coaches and I also love to read these boards (and have learned a lot from all these things and I create my own workouts all winter and summer in prep for x-c and track), but I do not feel like I can help him out in marathon training at all. I do however feel like several people on this board could be very beneficial to him in that regard and possibly know of a better training plan for a marathon 5 months away.
He has run close to 27 minutes in 8k for cross country and is roughly a 9:30 two-miler. However, his times don't reflect his potential as he's battled injuries the last 3 years. After not running his soph year of high school, he came out his junior year and was running great until a hip injury sidelined him for the season. As a senior, he trained with me and was in great shape after months at 60mpw. Unfortunately, he fractured his foot after running through pain at the conference race. The kid should have been a two-time all-state runner but couldn't stay healthy. He had a good freshman x-c season and broke 9 indoors at 3000 meters on a poor track. He has decent speed and good endurance (probably more endurance than speed though so a 10k/marathon suits him better). He'd like to break 2:40, or at least that's what he told me today. He's currently a little out of shape after working in North Carolina with a rafting company for several weeks but has run some and has somewhat decent fitness right now.
I just think he should be doing more than what Mr. higdon describes and other types of workouts as well to perform at his best come November. If any of you can, could you please provide other marathon training plans that are good and that he could look over and possibly use. If any of the top coaches past and present have published any marathon plans, could you post those as well. Preferably, if any coaches that visit this site like Canova, Rubio, Cabral, Tinman, Daniels, Vigil, etc. etc. could provide a sample marathon training guide that they would have someone like this use, could any of you post that? Basically, any help is appreciated and please help if you know of a better training guide than Higdon's or if you yourself can provide a training plan for a Nov. 12th marathon for my friend. Thanks for taking your time to read this and please help if you can.