Salutations!
Welcome to the 2022 TCS New York City Marathon Preparation Thread! The NYC Marathon will be held on the morning of November 6th, 2022 thru the streets, avenues, and 5 of NYC’s bridges.
This is a dedicated thread chronicling the progression of our preparations and accounts of key performances leading into November. I have broken my own training for the NYC Marathon up into 2 Stages. I am currently in Stage 1 which will run until the end of May. As of June 1st, Stage 2 (the absolute most important part of these preparations) will commence. Stage 2 is very very important and will dictate whether or not we acquire all of our objectives leading into November along with the Big Day itself on November 6th. Stage 2 will be subdivided into 3 phases - Phase Red, Phase Blue, and Phase Black.
Phase Red is when the bulk of the volume and intensity of race preparations will take place. This Phase will run 12 consecutive weeks and the average training load will be at or north of 100 miles per week (but realistically knowing my nature and history of being a loose cannon with fanatical extremist zeal and lust for mileage and speed it will probably be closer to 110-115 miles per week). I will set a cap of maximum highest weekly mileage for a single given training week not to exceed 150 miles. There will already be a solid base to work with already as a result of Stage 1 from the weeks prior leading up to this absolutely critical time. Phase Red will consist of high mileage/high intensity training. Most training runs will most certainly never be below 10-12 miles and these runs will be at a cruising velocity of 6:20 per mile pace, bare minimum. Track interval work and hill work is also going to be the deciding factor of what actually takes place when we roll up to the line in Fort Wadsworth. As this is all transpiring there will be racing taking place on both the roads as well as Cross Country and also Track and Field performances at the middle distances. There should be no less than 6-8 long range runs of 20-25 miles and usually on Sundays, pace will vary. Going into all of this there will already been amassed plenty of these LRR’s from Stage 1 (I already have 4 runs over 20 miles in as of January).
Phase Blue is the Draw Down Period where over the course of about 6 weeks we will be scaling back on the total weekly mileage, first reducing volume and then intensity. This will be a controlled descent of a specific percentage of the total weekly training load. At week 12 of Phase Red will realistically be around 105-110 mpw. By the end of Phase Blue this training load will be roughly halved. By the end of October we will be around 50 mpw. The idea behind this is to maximize the training efffect. By tapering one’s training over a certain amount of time and in a controlled manner, all of your training coming into the fall and other performances on the roads, XC trails, and track will carry its own momentum and inertia. You will be doing half the load and resting the body for what’s to come while the weight of your training from weeks and months before will carry you thru and assuming your body will respond to the training regimen, the anatomy and chemistry that goes along with all of this will deliver.
Phase Black is the Kill Zone. This is the two weeks prior to Race Day. This is what is known as “What’s in the tank is in the tank” time. There will be NOOOOOO hard training or any other racing taking place and under NO CIRCUMSTANCES. This is the calm before the Big Storm of our entire Lifetime.
I will be posting here, I hope once a day, with accounts of training of the day or any race that is completed.
This is our big moment. Decades in the making. We will run many many many performances after this but THIS single performance, at least for me internally, is my self-imposed Judgement Day.
We only have one shot at this……..🔥
