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
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