After an (almost five year) hiatus – I’m pretty excited to be digging up my old blog and sharing a little more about my current running endeavors in a more formal way. I would say that I’m typically known for writing very lengthy, perhaps overly-detailed posts/articles which have always been really fun to write – I find it hard to pare down words and leave any details out. The problem with that, is that I came to lose some of the joy in writing and it felt like any race report, running-related anecdote or even just basic training musings became a huge, daunting task to put into words and fully complete. There are several, 90% finished drafts sitting behind the scenes of this blog that I never was able to maintain the momentum to bring across the finish line. Is this, perhaps, an example of how art imitates life? Seems oddly similar to a certain goal that I’ve been committing to, chasing, but failing to “get across the finish line” for a years: the elusive, sub 3-hour marathon. And so, why not tackle two birds with one stone! I’m registered to run the coveted Boston Marathon in its 128’th year on April 15th – just 15 weeks away and I’m going to write about it. Every Monday will be a Marathon Monday: I’m going to post a quick recap of my training and hopefully also share some of the lessons I’ve learned as a runner and that I now apply as a coach myself. In an attempt to keep things short and sweet, I’m going to timebox (aka set a time limit) for how long I’m allowed to write each week. As with all plans, including marathon training, things are subject to change so we’ll just see how this goes. Hopefully anyone that bothers to read this will relate to it in some way, or at least get a touch of entertainment.
Boston 2024 will be my 5th/sort of 6th attempt at running under 3 hours since I first put the goal on my radar in 2021. My last “attempt” was when I had planned to run the Vancouver Marathon in May 2023 but ended up injuring myself (and truthfully, putting myself out of my training misery) several weeks out, so I didn’t quite complete the training block or even get to the startline. Let’s call this “7th time’s the charm”.
The glaring question is: what do I need to do differently to succeed? I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t experienced bouts of extreme frustration at not reaching my goal yet but diving into that frustration is a topic for another week. Right now, I feel curious, optimistic and excited to start a new puzzle and see if I can’t put all the pieces together the right way, instead of getting to the end and realizing there were a few missing from the box the whole time.
My mindset and confidence in myself are the places I need to start and both are areas I’ve been working on for several weeks now. The last two times I attempted to go sub-3 hours – I was abso-fucking-lutely miserable. I had too much going on in my life and in my schedule. I wasn’t doing a good job of managing stress from work which bled into my sleep hygiene, how I was fueling my body and ultimately, how I was fueling my brain. I dreaded every workout and remember constantly feeling like I was slow and sucked. It was not uncommon that I would literally cry during some of the more challenging long runs or workouts. It wasn’t the workouts, it certainly wasn’t the coaching, and it wasn’t even the fitness – it was my mental fortitude.
You know how I know? The last several weeks I’ve been doing some “pre-marathon build” confidence-building workouts. Hitting the paces I’ll need to hit later in the marathon build but giving myself some more generous recovery, or fewer reps, and really just testing the waters while I get ready for the big stuff. This past week I started to get a little more serious and put together a workout in the Canova style suggested by Coach and friend Andy Reed (no, not the football one). For those who care, it was 5 x 1km at about 105% marathon pace with equal rest in time at about 80-90% of marathon pace. Even though it felt hard, I never worried through the workout whether I would be able to hit the paces and I was even able to run the recovery faster than I needed to. I finished thinking about how much faster and fitter I was than when I attempted a similar (but actually harder workout) a year ago – I distinctly remember suffering through this one and feeling completely demoralized about the paces I held. Just for fun, I looked up my splits from last year’s attempt and in fact, I actually ran them faster last year. It really opened my eyes to how hard I was on myself and how I really can’t blame everything I had going on for being “less fit”. I wasn’t less fit, but my mind was.
My motto for this time around is “Run hard, cry less”. I’m out of time, so “to be continued next week”. Thanks for reading!
Last week’s training:
Monday – 3km easy (normally this would be a rest day, but it was December and I was doing Strides’ Run Streak)
Tuesday – 16 x 400m, 40seconds waking recovery (Georgetown 400’s)
Wednesday – 5-6km easy
Thursday – 5 x 1km at ~ 105% marathon pace (MP), 4min rest, ~ 80-90% MP
Friday – total 7.5km easy split into two runs while I dropped off/picked up my car
Saturday – 1hr easy on trail
Sunday – 22km with 12km progression in the middle
This one time I went running 