By the numbers: race day is quickly approaching
Progress as the 4th quarter of my training block begins
What sports cliché do we wanna use here, entering the fourth quarter of marathon training?
It’s gut check time?
This is where the rubber meets the road?
Hold your four’s in the air?
It’s winning time?
I digress. But we’re four(!) Sundays away from my first crack at a 2025 Chicago qualifier, breaking 3:10, and setting a 43-minute marathon PR in the process. This is the time of the training schedule when you realize there are only 2 weeks left of mileage building until the taper begins, it hits you that you will need to start carb-loading soon, and you spend too much time reading marathon Reddit threads, getting pumped for people who had breakthroughs and laughing hysterically at horror stories of people hitting the wall, only to cry yourself to sleep hoping this isn’t you in the weeks ahead.
Race day is no longer a concept at this point and is a very real date on the calendar. I have mixed emotions on this, partially relieved that race day is almost here and that the monotony of training run after training run is going away. Each run becomes more focused, a chance to improve and get into the ideal race shape. I’m excited because I feel like I am in the best racing shape of any marathon I’ve run. My new shoes came last week. (Sidebar: you know you’re officially not a funny person if you take the “new issue day” scene from Wolf of Wall Street and make it about running shoes, calling it “new ISSHOE day”, thinking your spouse will laugh but it does not land.) But I am anxious about the normal things like logistics and making sure I have a clear pacing, nutrition, and hydration strategy. That is underway, and I plan on posting about race-day strategies in the coming week. And above all, what will the clock say when all is said and done?
The progress report: mileage increases and predicted race times
In my March update, I wrote how my projected finish time was 3:34, 24 minutes off the goal, and an average pace per mile projection of 8:12. I was entering the phase of training where mileage would peak, coupled with speed training in the form of repeats on the track, hill sprints, and runs at goal race pace. Through week 12 of training, my projected race time has improved to 3:23:11, with a projected pace of 7:45 per mile.
Numbers don’t lie, and that is still 30 seconds per mile off a Chicago qualifier pace. But the optimist can look at this and see a half-hour improvement from my marathon personal best set last year. With 2 more weeks of base building, some last-minute improvements will happen, and there will still be runs in the taper that will bring projected times down. But to what extent? That is still to be determined in addition to other questions. I find myself wondering how has the runs I’ve missed affected times And using the data I have, what can I realistically expect my final time to be? I’ll try to predict that later in this post.
The pessimist and running analytics folks will look to one indicator above all if a 3:10 marathon doesn’t happen, and I will be with them if I come up short on race day: average weekly mileage. From the research I’ve done, average weekly mileage is the one indicator that has the largest direct impact on marathon race times. The goal was to build to an average of 40 miles per week while trying to stay healthy. 40 was a magic number in that it was average miles per week of 3:10 marathoners.
I’ve been logging some big weeks lately. Since my last update I’ve done weeks of 36, 27, 48, and 50 miles per week. Yet I am still only averaging 33 per week through training. This number will increase over the coming weeks as I add some more mileage-heavy weeks, but I’m not sure 40 is realistic. Whatever that number is, it may come back to bite me, or leave little room for error on race day.
The benefit and cost of each mile: the previously established training effectiveness ratio
My self-made training effectiveness ratio was established in my March update, as an analytic way of looking at the improvement in in race times for each mile run. Initial results showed that each mile run was worth 4 seconds of improvement or decline.
Through last week (April 21st), I’ve covered 359.55 miles in training, and my total improvement since the beginning of the training block is up to 24:03. The per-mile improvement stayed at 4 seconds per mile run. While it was a little surprising to see consistency in this value it is the best data I have on hand to try and project what improvement is left to be had.
So let’s do some math:
The weekly mileage left in the next four weeks go as follows:
34 (this week)
50
26
6 (then 26.2 on race day)
That’s a total of 116 miles before race day. There are additional days at the track and other, shorter speed workouts that will add to the total, but let’s be conservative here. At 4 seconds per mile run, there is a total of 464 seconds, or 7 minutes and roughly 45 seconds that I am expecting to shave off. So, where does that leave us? Drum roll, please……
3:16:48.
Now, let’s see what’s been left on the table. Luckily, I only missed one additional run since my last update, so the total mileage missed this training block is 71. But at 4 seconds per mile, there is another 284 seconds left out there on the road. That’s another 4 minutes and 45 seconds. That would be:
3:12:03.
Ok, I’ll be honest here. That’s a hard number to look at, given that I’m chasing 3:10. Still a massive improvement. But hard to look at. The happy runner in me is positive and excited by a personal best. The analyst in me wonders if there is a way to improve the 4-second improvement and get a bigger return on my investment. The competitor in me says that if I am within 2 f**** minutes of hitting a time and I have anything left in the tank, it isn’t going to be pretty, but it’s going to happen. The whole point of this experiment was to test my limits and see what type of improvement was possible. There is still the possibility that these projections are aggressive and I am not in the shape I think I am. But in a sport whose ultimate measure is time, I am determined to find a way to squeeze out every last second.
I’m anxious for you! Hoping race day adrenaline/crowd-given endorphins can push you to your final goal!