So I discovered a marathon a month after my last one, that I want to do. Well, a week and a half have gone by, so only a few weeks left. So do I try some bit of ramp up and then almost immediately ramp down? Or just keep low-level running and throw in one distance run in the middle? (Gonna do a race plus mid-long this Sunday anyway.) Surely some of you people are some of those lunatics that are accustomed to doing marathons in quick succession. I've never done it, but just can't resist a particular one upcoming.

It kind of depends on how quickly you recover from the last one. Assuming you feel fine but you only have 3ish weeks left, my suggestion is that you get in a couple 17-20 milers on the next couple weekends which may or may not leave you with one weekend before the race to officially call 'taper'. With races this close together, you have to modify your approach to what a real taper offers. Keep a tempo run in there, or minimally some fartlek, each week. Keep your mileage up. Or, if you cut your mileage way back after your first race, get it back up there. This is my most important suggestion. And if you get achy or your body complains, ditch the next race. Depending on how you've been recovering, you are taking on additional risk by ramping back up. As always, pay attention to the signals. Do not expect to set any land speed records. Although you can train to run the followups faster... in fact, my best times and PRs have always come in the 3rd or 4th marathon I do in rapid succession (1 per weekend)... you probably won't do that this time. I feel crappiest in follow-up races where I dropped my mileage, btw. You can find a 4 weeks-between-races plan at the back of Pfitzinger and Douglas' Advanced Marathoning book. If you look at halhigdon.com, I think he's got stuff out there for running races fairly close together too. Good luck. Doing it this way isn't for everyone, but it can be fun and it is a definite challenge.

Which race?

Someone said 'candyman' three times.

When I did this last spring, I took it pretty easy the first week, went moderately long (15-18) the next weekend and then tapered with about 8 to 10 on the remaining weekend. Rinse, repeat. I just treated the first one as a long training run for the second and the second as a long training run for the third.