If you’re seeing this now and are wondering “why didn’t I see this if it’s been up since July?” It hasn’t.
Backdating posts FTW, y’all. The magic of the internet. I started this post months ago, and then felt weird publishing on a backdated time schedule, because I didn’t want to inundate inboxes with a bunch of asynchronous content. Turns out, you can now uncheck a box to sneak older posts into the timeline where they belong. So, here we go!
*rewind your brain and pretend it’s July 2023 and not February 2024*
Hello friends! Long time no talk. I miss you. Getting jazzed about what feels like a high school mean girls mall brand of clothing has been tough lately. But you already knew that. Blame the YouTube comments section. I’m still shopping, but I’ve got other things going on that fill my cup. So let’s talk about those instead. <3
ICYMI on social media, I’m running the 2023 NYC Marathon – and If you know me in person, you know I’m a spreadsheet junkie. I plot out the usual things like budgets, but I also keep tabs on things like every single cent I’ve spent at lululemon, and all of my symptoms back when I was cooped up at home with COVID that one time.
As someone who enjoys dabbling in content creation, it’s always a given that I want to take the world along as I train for this year’s race. I dropped the ball hard when it came to sharing last year’s training journey. I don’t even want to know how many miles of running footage are eating up my phone’s memory, that never got edited and shared.
To me, training for a marathon is more about the training cycle as a whole. Yes, race day is SO MUCH FUN, but the reason it’s so much fun is because of all of the work you’ve put in along the way. My older training diaries are simply that, I did X on this day and it felt ____. At the end, I’d take a little note of how many miles I’d run so far.
This year, I wanted to put it all on steroids. Spreadsheets are my happy place, and infographics make the columns and rows so much more fun to look at. At the writing of this post, I’m 5 of 19 weeks through training, but I struggled to create a format I liked before I laced up for Week 1 Day 1.
Maybe it took a month to finally translate the visions in my brain into something shareable, because a bar graph with only two rows of data is a little bit weak sauce. But a month? Now we’re talking. Now that I’ve got a 4+ week data set to play with, it’s time to geek out. I’ve been spending my summer vacation poring over Google Sheets and Canva for way too much time, but I’m pretty excited to share what’s come of it.
I am once again running for charity, the V Foundation for Cancer Research. If you enjoy this type of content, please consider supporting me with the blue donation button below, it would mean the world to me and all of those who benefit from the V Foundation’s efforts.
Week 4 of 19: an Overview
Why 19 weeks? In 2022, I did a 20-week build, given that it was my first crack at the marathon distance. In 2023, I decided 16 was a better idea to prevent burnout. That was the intention until I signed up for a half marathon in mid-September for fun. I tend to give myself 12 weeks for a half, so I tacked 3 weeks onto the front end of the training cycle to make sure I had 12 in the lead up. Hence, a weird ass 19-week training cycle.
Pics or it Didn’t Happen
I swore to the moon and back that I would NOT scrimp on strength work this year. I didn’t buy the lululemon Studio mirror with the intention of looking at myself in it, I got it to DO SOMETHING with it.
Also, summer vacation. Lots of time for (literal) hot girl walks when you don’t have to work.
Pace Zones & Distribution
In June of 2023, obtained my RRCA Coaching certification. After several years of running on vibes and whatever Joanna said to do, I wanted to better understand the importance of different types of workouts, and how they played into the big picture of things. Naturally, once I had a better understanding of the different pace zones, I had to track those too.
I also chose to track these metrics to see if I was actually adhering to the ever popular 80/20 Rule… that 80% of your mileage should be super easy, so that you’re primed and ready to send it on that 20%.
Fun fact: I’m the wussiest of wusses when it comes to speedwork because I’m a perfectionist who doesn’t like to fail. You can see here… I’ve been rocking and rolling too much on the cautious side of things.
As for the Long Run Progression, I adopted the same 3+1 strategy as I had been doing for half marathons. Build for 3 weeks, dial it back and absorb the fitness for 1, and repeat. For months.
OMG SHOES
Did you think that the author of a blog originally about outfits wasn’t going to keep tabs on what she was wearing? Shoe mileage is important to me. It helps to keep tabs on which are about to be run to nothing, which probably already are.
I don’t kick a shoe out of the rotation when it hits an arbitrary number, I still go by feel. But, the mileage distribution in this case shows how different shoes are used for different workouts, and how often.
I do my best not to wear the same shoe all the time. I try to keep the muscles a little bit confused, so they’re not so dead set in their ways that one slight change to a new shoe model will throw off my entire gait. Some say “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” but I’m on team “stay frosty!”
Show Me the Money!
One would think the the fundraising progress slides may be a moot point at the real time of publication, but… they’re not. Because I’m running the race again in 2024! Please consider making a donation if cancer research (or supporting me as a fellow athlete and internet friend) is a cause that resonates with you.
I’ll admit that fundraising got a bit of a slower start in 2023 than it did the week prior. Even though I signed up in February, 5 months went by and I was only halfway there.
The first month is in the can… time to move on to the next one.
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