6 days to go!

We are officially less than ONE WEEK away from the 2025 Chicago Marathon! I could not be more excited!! I am also incredibly overwhelmed, and have a zillion thoughts swirling through my head as I get ready for race weekend…

If you’ve been following along on my journey on YouTube, you’ll know that I have been posting a series of videos as part of my “2025 Chicago Marathon Training Series”, where I go over how I deal with some of the mental aspects of training, particularly living in a place where running can often feel so so difficult. As I reflect back on this little series I made for YouTube, I realized that most of these videos are more generalized/helpful tips based on what was going on for me specifically that week in training (and what I wanted to share with you all). I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I do want to provide additional detail regarding my workouts, what the weather has been like training throughout the summer here in Palm Beach, and how I’m feeling about MY race now that we are officially one week out!

And if you haven’t yet subscribed to this newsletter, you can do so by clicking “subscribe” in the top right-hand corner of the page, so you never miss a post!

And now… buckle up for a very detailed recap on my training with examples 🙂

background on my training throughout this cycle

I had come into this training cycle coming off of a pretty strong build for the 2025 Boston Marathon. I ran a 2:59:07 in that race, with almost 0 hill training and feeling pretty awful on race day (sometimes that just happens, and that’s life…). Still, I had a super solid training block, and was averaging mostly around 80 miles per week, doing a combination of Pete Pfitzinger’s 18/85 plan and Jack Daniels’s (RIP) 2Q plan. The reason why I chose to do a combination of these plans, is that I had done several training cycles using Pfitz 18/70, and I found that I didn’t love having VO2 Max work towards the end of my training build – I was itching to incorporate speed throughout the cycle so my legs could maintain a bit more turnover, so that’s where Daniels comes in.

I do have a few issues with the Daniels plan in general, my main one being that his entire Daniels Running Formula book purports that you should periodize your training, build mileage steadily, and do a whole host of other things that he explains in extremely complex formulas and charts, and then the 2Q plan effectively throws all of this reasoning out the window to come up with random logic off which to base this entire program. That being said, the 2Q program is really solid, but also insanely difficult lol.

The entire premise of 2Q is that you basically have two key workouts per week incorporated into a long and longer run. For example:

These two workouts are all really Daniels prescribes in the plan, so the rest of the easy miles of the week are up to you.

I opted to do a combination of Pfitz and Daniels because the structure of the Pfitz program is backed by his entire Advanced Marathoning book (with sound explanations), so having examples for why medium long runs were OK after speed days served as helpful context, for example. However, as mentioned, there is a lack of VO2 max/faster speed work throughout the majority of the plan, and I also like having marathon pace runs in my long runs WAY more than Pfitz prescribes. The reason why I did not blindly follow the 2Q plan from Daniels is because the workouts (on top of an 80-90 mile week) are INSANE, especially for someone working a full-time job and trying to start a business. That Q1 above was an example of an easier workout that Daniels has in his plan, so while I did like to follow Daniels for the pure structure and flow of the plan as a whole (he also intersperses way more VO2 work throughout the entire training block than Pfitz), I typically modify both of these prescribed quality workouts because they’re way too intense, especially for someone regularly training in 82 degrees (27.8 Celsius) and 78 degree dew point (25.6).

That being said, if you want to go down a rabbit hole of stalking my Strava, you’ll see that my workouts do loosely follow this approach – though often having to adjust due to the heat. One of the key pillars of marathon training for me has been to be extremely consistent in terms of mileage, workouts, etc., and up the ante justttt a little bit week by week (nothing crazy). I feel like this principle alone has helped keep me injury-free for so many years while also getting faster and faster over time.

beginning of cycle

Towards the beginning of this training cycle, I started out running about 70ish miles per week (which was very comfortable for me) and adding in a couple speed work days inspired by the 2Q plan, and working up from a 12 mile weekly medium long run (in addition to the two quality days) to a 15 mile medium long run. One thing to note, is that in the beginning/middle of my training cycle, I work up my mileage slowly for a few weeks, and then cut back down. For example, even though I started at 70 miles per week, by the 4th week in training I was already at 79 miles per week, but then the next week cut down to around 60 (it would’ve actually been a bit more, but we were traveling so I had to take a day off).

A sample week at the beginning of my training cycle (started training on June 9, 2025 for a full 18 week cycle):

  • Mon 7/7: 6 easy
  • Tue 7/8: 10 easy
  • Wed 7/9: 12 total with 3 x 1.5 miles at LT effort + 3 x 400m this is an example of a workout I adjusted from Daniels (4 x 2T) because it was SO insanely hot out (83 degrees and 78 dew point with sun). I also lifted later in the day.
  • Thurs 7/10: 8 easy
  • Fri 7/11: 15 easy
  • Sat 7/12: 8 easy
  • Sun 7/13: 18 total (4 warmup, 4MP effort, break, 4 MP effort, 1 mile off, 2 faster than MP, cool down). Also insanely hot out.
  • TOTAL = 79 miles for the week

So this was a “peak week” for me in the earlier phase of training – but towards the end of this training cycle, I was doing weeks bigger than this for multiple weeks on end.

middle of training cycle

In the middle of the training cycle, the structure of the week pretty much stayed the same, but mileage was starting to push more consistently into the low 80s. Here’s a couple examples of what that looked like:

Late cycle

These final few weeks before the taper are when I like to hold higher mileage and start adding in some doubles. I was loath to add in doubles at all during this cycle because it’s frankly just way too hot to run twice a day in Florida, but I wanted to get my mileage a little bit higher, and was also going through a lot of stress in my life, and having a second run on some days really helped clear my head. Pfitz does prescribe double runs in the 18/85 plan as well, but I played around with adding the doubles on different days to see how my body would respond. And even though I didn’t do too many of them (no more than one double once a week), I found that they actually DID give me a little bit of an endurance boost, so that was nice! Perhaps in the winter as I train for Boston, I’ll experiment with adding in some more doubles throughout the training cycle and see how I fare.

Peak week mileage example:

Taper (~3 weeks out)

Now, we are fully in taper mode with Chicago only 6 days away! I typically like to do a 3 week taper, but the first week, especially coming off of multiple 90 mile weeks in a row, isn’t that drastic of a reduction in mileage.

For my first week of taper (two weeks ago), here’s what it looked like:

This second week of taper was a bit more rough. I was really struggling after the trip to New York – it’s almost like the 2 days away from running in the heat made me not heat acclimated anymore (just kidding, but still… I’ve been feeling TERRIBLE this whole week)! Often times, we feel a lot worse during the taper than we do at any other point in our training, and that’s OK – it’s just our body recovering and doing its thing, and it’s COMPLETELY normal to feel awful in these final few weeks.

Pretty much every single workout this past week felt like a bit of a slog, and I think I might be coming down with a little bit of a cold too (another common thing many runners go through during these final few weeks):

What’s Next

This week is really all about resting up my body for the race, so I will probably be at a total of about 55 miles including the marathon and one rest day! I am a little concerned given how difficult my workouts have felt this past week or so, but I think feeling awful during the taper is something every runner goes through and nothing to feel too concerned about. Hoping that I can pull off my sub-2:55 in Chicago in SIX DAYS!! But, even if I don’t, I will have walked away from this training cycle knowing that I have gotten fitter – even if race day for whatever reason doesn’t show it. And even if I haven’t actually gotten fitter – marathon training is really just about enjoying the process, loving putting in the work, and taking the time every day to dedicate to yourself. So as long as I keep loving the training, I’ll keep on racing!

I hope you enjoyed a little bit of this deep dive into my training – let me know if you have any questions down in the comments below and if you guys are interested in seeing more detailed write-ups of my key workouts throughout the training cycle!

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