20-Week Fox Cities Marathon Training Plan

The 2027 Fox Cities Marathon is scheduled for September 19, 2027, so the 20-week window opens around May 2, 2027. Treat that as the outside edge of the window, then line week one up with the plan's normal weekly rhythm.

Use the longer window to make the early build calmer, not to add five months of hard training. The plan should begin close to your current load, hold most running easy, and delay the biggest race-specific work until the middle of the cycle. The course does not change the opening load you can handle, so choose from your current mileage and recent longest run before adding race-specific terrain.

Build general durability first. Add the race's hills, flat sustained running, downhill exposure, heat, or humidity in layers after the weekly rhythm is stable, then make the final long runs the most course-specific. Train for the Fox Cities Marathon on genuinely flat ground and in humidity. A course with 439 feet of climbing across 26.2 miles gives your legs no variation for three or four hours, which is harder on one set of muscles than rolling terrain, and the September start typically sits near 92% humidity.

Do not double weeks or cram missed mileage into the remaining calendar. Use your current mileage, recent longest run, experience, goal, and available days to choose a plan that can enter at an appropriate point while preserving the taper.

Close to it. The Fox Cities Marathon runs between 684 and 823 feet with 439 feet of climbing and 480 of descent across 26.2 miles, so no rise on the course is long enough to change your race. In September the limiting factor is almost always humidity rather than terrain.

It starts at 7:00 a.m. at the UW Oshkosh Fox Cities campus, 1478 Midway Road in Menasha, and finishes at Riverside Park, 500 E. Wisconsin Avenue in Neenah. It is a point-to-point course through the Fox River valley, so plan how you will get between the two ends before race morning.