When everything clicks on marathon morning, there’s no better feeling than crossing the finish line knowing that you left it all out there. But not every race is like that, and lots of things can derail your performance – the weather, a poorly timed illness, random life issues, or a federal shutdown that cancels your … Read more
Feature Photo by Leo Visions on Unsplash If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I’m a fan of Jack Daniels and his 2Q marathon training plans. But I’ve also got a lot of respect for Pfitz, and I read both Advanced Marathoning and Faster Road Racing early on in my … Read more
John Korir has had one hell of a year. He won the 2024 Chicago Marathon, and then he turned around and won the 2025 Boston Marathon. For someone who previously won LA in 2:09-2:12, ran Boston in 2:10, and ran Chicago in 2:05, it’s a big come up. From 2021-23, he was good. But in … Read more
Feature image by Julian Mason on Flickr. CC BY 2.0. A few weeks ago, I published an analysis of data that I collected from the Abbott World Marathon Majors Six Star Finisher Hall of Fame. It provided some insight into who the Six Star Finishers were – and the path they took to collect all … Read more
One week to go. Time to taper down – and second guess myself all week as to whether or not I’m actually ready for this race. Early on, my training was going ok. I didn’t bounce back from Fred Lebow quite as quickly as I would have liked, and as a result I don’t think … Read more
Feature image from Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 4.0 I saw a post on Threads this week that said something like, “Elite marathoners take at least a week off after a marathon – and so should you.” The post got mixed responses, but many people chimed in to agree with the original post. My response … Read more
Just two weeks to go until the Jersey City Marathon. Things have been looking up in the last few weeks, and last week’s workout at the Garden State 10 Miler was another indication that things are moving in the right direction. This week will start with one final workout – also at a race, the … Read more
Towards the end of last year, a group of researchers published a study based on a large sample of runner’s Strava data: The Training Intensity Distribution of Marathon Runners Across Performance Levels by Daniel Muniz-Pumares et al. I saw this article shared in a couple subreddits, including r/Marathon_Training. I’m pretty sure there was a thread … Read more
Last weekend, I ran the United NYC Half Marathon. The rest of the week was focused on recovery, and everything went to plan. At the end of the week, my legs felt great. My speed was back. And I was ready to attack these last couple weeks of training. Usually, I’d try to work in … Read more
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