Of the last 29 weeks, I’ve run 40-mi in 26 of those and at least 30-mi in all of them (there were three weeks that I was traveling for a conference in April otherwise, I would have had 40-mi).

My only running goal is to be running — even if it’s just 1-mi at 15-min pace — when I’m 80-yo, like my “coach”.

This is an idea that has come up a lot for me on recent runs. With the exception of three weeks of travel in the beginning of April of this year, I’ve run 40-mi or more each week. This “streak” or consistency started in roughly November of 2024. In order to reach my 2024 yearly goal of 1500-mi, I had to pick it up at the end of the year and run 4-mi a day. It was during these runs that I realized that I really enjoyed running daily. I decided then that a 2000-mi yearly (40-mi week / 5.5mi day) goal wasn’t unrealistic and would really force me to run daily — even on those days where I really didn’t feel like it, but knew I’d appreciate it once I was out there running.

I was talking to my “coach” about something I’ve been building on lately which is that I think most marathon training plans encourage the wrong behavior for a sustainable lifetime of marathon fitness. My lifetime goal is to be able to run a marathon at any time. Give me a week notice and I’ll run it.

Maybe these common marathon training block “ramp ups” are targetted at folks wanting to run one marathon to say they’ve done it and be done; in which case I think these “ramp ups” are probably the correct approach. But for a lifetime of marathon fitness, I think there is a lot you can do in 30 or 40 -mile weeks.

I think a 30-mi “A+” week is just as effective as a 40-mi “B-” week — I would say I do 40-mi B- weeks. As I’m better and enjoy consistency more than I enjoy a really good effective run on every single run.

Some of this idea builds on this notion of not going out and trying to set PBs on every single run.

I do three “focused” runs per week:

  1. Monday - fast intervals: starting at marathon race pace and negative splitting from there.
    • 7mi - Season peak this ends up being 2mi warmup, 3-4mi workout and 1mi cooldown
  2. Thursday - 5k tempo run: about 1-min faster than marathon race pace.
    • 5mi - Season peak this ends up being 1mi warmup, 3mi workout and 1mi cooldown
  3. Saturday - easy (no pace goals for most of the year) long run.
    • 24mi - Season peak this ends up being 15mi-24mi

These long runs will start USUALLY in April at 10-mi and work up to 24-mi in July. Obviously, schedules will change based on race date.

On the other days of the week, I have zero expectations or goal, just 5.5mi of active recovery. Work on holding back. You’ll also notice that these three “focused” runs usually total around 30mi. And I think in these 30mi I know I can improve quite a bit, mostly on the long-run days. The Monday and Thursday runs I do give it my best and negative split. But the other 10mi of the 40mi per week, I have TONS of room where I could improve if I ever wanted. I really don’t see the need to work up to 70-80mi weeks. I’ve done it. It’s not enjoyable and it’s easy to get injured.