Blueprint week for a sub-3-hour marathon

I’ve just had a near-perfect week in running.

Disclaimer: a niche and narcissistic post because running a marathon under three hours is very “niche”! Also, my use of the term “blueprint” is overly ambitious. There are many ways to train. But my method worked for me. You can read about my sub-3-hour marathon here. I’m not by the way training for my next marathon yet, haven’t even signed up (I sure plan!) but I stick to my weekly routine anyway. So this is not a “training plan”, rather a sample steady-state (meaning you’re already in good shape) week. My goal is to run 2.49 next year.

So last week was one of the best ever in my running journey. It just felt that way — my mileage, types of training, and how I felt. I wanted to leave a record of it.

Overall: 58 miles exactly, so 8.2 miles per day on average, 2 interval sessions, 1 fartlek, 2 easy runs, one long run

Monday — rest day, no running

Tuesday — 10x 1000m intervals

Evening run (5 pm start, local high school athletic track)

• 1.5 miles warm-up at 7:49 min/mile pace
• 10x by 1000m with a 200m jog in between, so 2.5 lap intervals with a quarter of a lap jog in between. My 1000m intervals are at 5.45/mile pace so around 3 min 40 sec.
• Cooldown of 2 laps (0.5 miles). Actually, the cooldown should’ve been longer — usually, I do a full mile.