“Howdy all!”
We were starting marathon training again, except we were not organizing group runs.
I called it our “wonky year of COVID marathons.” That was the honest description. People were ready to train. Chicago and Boston were eighteen weeks away. The normal Prospect Park Track Club marathon group still did not make sense.
We built a different version.
There were three plans based on the mileage people were already running. Everybody could see all three in one Google Sheet. We put in a rough mileage outline and promised to keep at least the next week or two filled with specific workouts. If the group was handling the work well, we could adjust. If somebody needed more or less, they could move between plans.
The main instruction was not complicated: start with the plan that matches your current mileage.
That mattered because marathon excitement can make a person do stupid things in June. The race still looked far away. Adding miles too quickly was an easy way to make it feel much farther away.
The community part moved online. Each major marathon had a Discord channel. We planned virtual office hours every couple of weeks for questions about the training. As races got closer, we would help runners taper and tune the plan for the final weeks.
I had coached the Chicago group through a nervous race weekend before COVID. This setup was less social and more technical. It was a spreadsheet, a chat server, video calls, and a lot of trust that people would run the work on their own.
My own week was already full. I was beginning the TRX job while Apply was still producing new sticker concepts, production notes, and retailer catalogs. The photo from that weekend is my outdoor workout setup in the heat: rower, kettlebells, barbell, handwritten rounds, and an 83-degree weather reading.
The marathon note ended the way I actually felt about it: stay calm, trust the process, and things will go great.
Then I gave everybody my Discord username.