October 10th and 11th brought an epic return to marathon racing in the US via the Chicago and Boston Marathons. The conditions were tough for many, but the energy and magic were amazing anyway.

I was in Boston to run and experience one part of that myself. In this episode, I break down my post-marathon musings that might be helpful in you processing your races too.

With fall races on the horizon again (or already done), you will soon be faced with the question: how do I continue to improve in my next training cycle? In this episode, I talk about 4 over-arching principles and 7 things to consider for finding improvement within your next cycle. For example, should you increase volume or intensity? Or should you add strength or focus on recovery?

I will answer these questions and more and also help you hone in on the incremental improvements needed to reach your long term potential.

Congrats to everyone who ran in the Berlin Marathon this past weekend. It is so amazing to see major marathons happening again after such a long break!

With that as inspiration, I put together this episode with final tips for the London, Chicago, and Boston Marathons including general tips for all three races and individual tips for each one. I talk about course logistics, course strategy, and weather considerations for all three. If you are racing one of these, then this is a must-listen!

The long run might be the most important run in any half marathon or marathon training block. However if you want to get the most from your training cycle, you should be doing workouts within a few of these long runs to practice race pace, learn to run fast under fatigue, and build resilience to finish strong on race day.

In this episode, I give you the do's and don'ts for building and executing these workouts and then talk about specific examples for you to try yourself. Every elite athlete is doing workouts like these, and I believe you are worthy and able to do them as well.

We have produced at least 7 episodes for this podcast on race planning for various courses throughout the country from flat like Houston or Chicago to hilly like NYC, Boston, or Austin. Those episodes have been very prescriptive and may or may not be applicable to the course you might face soon.

In this episode, I give you 8 steps for building and executing your own marathon race plan in order to give you the best chance for success on race day. Listen, learn and then apply to your next goal race so that you can start smart and finish strong!

Other race planning episodes include episodes 5 (general marathon), 8 (Austin), 14 (Boston), 46 (general all distances), 56 (Houston/3M/Austin), 98 (NYC), and 101 (CIM). Episode 150 talks about mental tips for race day.

So you want to do a half marathon before your marathon? Or a 10K before your half marathon? Great, but let's talk about it...

In this episode, I give you all the things to consider when doing a prep race including how to define and choose your goals for it, how to execute it whether you are racing all out or not, and of course, how to make sure it becomes an additive piece to the overall path to your "A" race. It's exciting that races are back again, just make sure you get the most out of every opportunity to toe the line!

Training paces and race paces are correlated, but they do represent separate and distinct decisions on the path to your goal. In this episode, I talk about 6 factors to consider when choosing your race pace - purpose, experience, race history, training results, risk tolerance, and of course, the conditions on the day.

Consider these factors, and then once you lock in a target, develop a race plan around it, put the blinders on, and go for it!

Here is the link to the AIU decision on Shelby Houlihan:

https://www.athleticsintegrity.org/downloads/pdfs/disciplinary-process/en/7977-Award-Reasoned-FINAL.pdf

In episode #240, I talked about the importance of slowing down in order to achieve your full potential. Unfortunately, that is so much easier said than done for many athletes. In fact, I think this is the single hardest concept for any runner to embrace fully in their training. As a result, countless runners are hitting plateaus or are chronically injured.

In this episode, I give you 6 things to do in order to internalize and execute on this core training principle. I promise it is simple, but that doesn't make it easy!

This topic might be the single biggest topic for questions that I get as a coach. What paces should I train at? How do these paces change with weather? What if I can't hit them? How should my training paces inform my race pace? What does this race result mean for my training paces? And I could go on...

These are all good and valid questions, but many of them are underpinned by common misunderstandings about how training paces work. In this episode, I try to bust some of those myths while laying out 9 truths about training paces and how you should use them.

Who else is going through Olympics withdrawal like me?!? I'm happy to have more sleep but definitely miss the inspiration of the Games. In this episode, I talk about 5 inspiring stories and athletes from the Olympic Games and how we can apply those lessons in our own training. Yes, we can learn from the best athletes on the planet. And yes, they are more like the rest of us than we think!