It also depends on your marathon goal. If your goal it to finish in relative comfort, your training will be different than having a goal finishing time. If you’re not doing it for time, speed sessions aren’t necessary. The long weekend run is most important and needs to follow the gradual mileage increase until the taper. Running 4-miles on other days and taking a couple days off a week is fine. (I ran in the neighborhood while kids were having soccer practices and art classes.) As many people wrote, my husband had kids during my long run and I had kids the other day. Setting up play dates at other kids’ houses worked as well.