Feature Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash If you were to ask which marathon training plan is the most popular, I’d probably say Hal Higdon. He is frequently recommended on r/Running and r/Marathon_Training to new runners, and when you look at the Google Search data people look for information on him much more frequently than … Read more
Feature image by Dietmar Rabich on Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 4.0 Time flies, and just like that we’re it’s almost time for the United NYC Half Marathon. Seems like just yesterday I was running Fred Lebow – and March seemed a far way off. This training block started off slowly. The first couple of … Read more
I’ve had a bit of a rough start with this training cycle. Early on, I don’t think I was quite fully recovered from the Fred Lebow Half. And last week, I had to deal with the heat in Florida. I’ve hit my mileage goals, but I haven’t had any great workouts. That said, things started … Read more
Training for my spring races is heading in the right direction. The first week was a little rough, but last week was an improvement. This week will, hopefully, continue that trend. Although it’s shaping up to be the kind of week where I’m more focused on mileage than on quality work. But if I can … Read more
This weekend, I published an analysis of the new Boston Marathon qualifying times – and whether they hit certain age groups harder than others. As I concluded that analysis, I noticed that the distribution of runners in the Boston Marathon and across all marathons in the United States were quite different. The 45-49 age group … Read more
Last week was the first in my transition from the Fred Lebow Half to my goal races for the spring: the NYC Half and the Jersey City Marathon. It didn’t go great, and I’m hoping this week goes better. In last week’s long run, I bombed out on the tempo sections. So this week, I’m … Read more
Last week, I put together an analysis showing the average marathon times of runners throughout the United States in 2024. A question tangential to that analysis was how the average finish times changed from 2023 to 2024. Specifically, as I’ve analyzed data for the Boston Marathon Cutoff Tracker, I’ve noticed that a slightly higher percentage … Read more
This spring, I’ve got two big goal races: the United NYC Half Marathon in March and the Jersey City Marathon in April. I ran the Fred Lebow Half Marathon last month, and from late December through January, that’s what I was “training” for. Although it wasn’t really long enough to be a solid training cycle. … Read more
Ever wonder what the average marathon time was? Well here’s a meaningless number: 4:25:33. That’s the average time for all marathon finishers in 2024. But marathon performance varies quite a bit along two dimensions: age and gender. If you don’t group runners by age and gender, that average tells you more about who the runners … Read more
The best time to run a marathon is either in the spring or the fall. The weather is (usually) mild. Because who would want to run a marathon in the freezing cold of January? The only problem with this is that to run a marathon you’ve got to train. And that involves running consistently for … Read more