Hello!

In about 5 weeks I'll be running my first marathon, and I've been following Hal Higdon's Novice 2 plan, found ehre: http://www.halhigdon.com/training/51138/Marathon-Novice-2-Training-Program

The next few weeks long runs are like this:

week 13 - 19m

week 14 - 12m

week 15 - 20m

week 16 - 12m

week 17 - 8m

week 18 - marathon

My question is this... I've been training with a good friend since the beginning, and so far we've managed to run al of our long runs together except one. Well, unfortunately for week 15, the 20 miler, we can't make our schedules coincide and if we leave things like they are we'll be stuck running it solo.

We were thinking of running the 20 miler either early, or later. I think running it during week 16 (on a friday, which is when we have been doing most of our long runs), would probably be best, but that would only leave us a 2 week taper. I've heard some people say that the usual 3 week taper is too long anyway, so I wanted to see what the general consensus on here was, before we make our adjustments. The other part of this is that if we do move our 20 miler to week 16, what should we run week 15? It doesn't make sense to run two 12 milers in a row, so we were debating on 15 or 16 miles, but again, I'm interested to see what others think.  We REALLY want to run this last long run together if at all possible.

Any tips/advice appreciated!!!