January to May 2026
January
January marked a slight shift in my goals for running, with the primary focus shifting towards having as much fun as I could with running. While Glass City would remain on the calendar as the “target race” for the season, I wanted to also re-dip my toes into competing on the track, which was something I hadn’t done regularly since the winter of 2020 (aside from a one-off 5000m in 2024). Making this decision in January smack in the middle of the collegiate indoor track and field season meant that I wouldn’t have time for 5000m-specific training, but the itch to compete outweighed any concerns about not “running my best”.
In the tail-end of 2025, my weekly mileage had been hovering around 60 miles a week, and I followed that up in the first two weeks of January 70 and 60 miles, respectively. Workouts included a Mona-fartlek, hill repeats, and a more “vO2-max” type session with 400m repeats. Other than long runs of 17 and 15 miles, the rest of the runs were easy recovery runs.
Week 3 focused on my debut on the track for the season, with the 5000m race at Hillsdale College’s Wide Track Classic. Wintery conditions meant that I no longer had access to a track, so the workout on Tuesday consisted of 10 by 1 minute reps on 90s rest at paces that varied from 5k pace (5:05/mile) to well-faster than 5k pace (4:35/mile) (not a very well-controlled workout!). With this last workout in the legs, I headed to Hillsdale for the race Thursday afternoon. I don’t have intermediate splits, but I’m fairly certain that I ran a positive split (as I am prone to do), but I held on for a second-place finish in 15:44.20. With sub-16 being the goal going in, I was happy with this result and was eager to get into some more races. Little did I know that this race would be the best of my (short) indoor track season.
The final week of January saw a return to a more marathon-focused training week, with a “super-week” of just over 100 miles. Not only did I sharply increase the mileage here, but I also accomplished this with only two doubles. At the time, I was expecting to need to take 10-14 days off in the beginning of February (long story short: thought I was getting a tooth extracted; tooth is still in my mouth), so the plan here was to give myself a big stimulus to recover from. Sessions this week included steady-state intervals on a treadmill (which I found surprisingly difficult), and 2x4 miles at marathon pace (faster, but easier than the treadmill steady-state session?). Capped the week off (Feb 1) with the first 20 mile run of the season, and finished off the month of January with 281 miles (up from 214 in December).
February - A Step Backwards
I began the month initially thinking that I was going to be forced to take some time off, but it turned out that the tooth I thought I was going to have extracted wasn’t (I’m glad to still have the tooth, but it would have been much cheaper to have just yoinked it out!). The first week still was a bit lower in volume (31.5 miles with 3 days off), partially due to the high volume the previous week, but largely due to being a bit busy with other things.
Without the anticipated time-off from running, I decided to enter into a meet that I have always been curious about: GVSU’s Big Meet. My hope had been to get into a heat with slightly faster runners to pull me along to a new season’s best. The week started with back-to-back workouts on Monday and Tuesday: 3x3k at sub-threshold on Monday, and 10x400 on 90s off of 90s rest on Tuesday. Easy runs followed on Wednesday and Thursday in anticipation of the race on Friday. Drove out to Grand Rapids on Thursday afternoon, and made some less-than-ideal choicess for dinner Thursday night. Woke up early on Friday to drive out to Allendale, and got in a warmup before the start of the meet on the indoor track. Fortuneatley I was in the second heat to run that morning, since I found myself stuck in the bathroom for most of the first heat, but managed to make it out in time to change into my spikes and get in a few strides before my race. In a first for me, there were pace lights programmed for our race; I don’t remember the times they were set to, but there were three of them, and had I followed the slower of the three I would have found myself with a new season’s best. However, I did not do this, and instead I went out with the lead pack, running extra distance by being in lanes 2 and 3 for the first couple of laps. I started to slow down quite considerably, which was illustrated to me by all three sets of pace lights passing me over the course of the race. I finished 20th out of 29 in the race, with a time of 15:54.89, which while still under 16 was a bit of a disappointment due to how I had built up the race in my head in the week leading up. Wrapped up the week with a shake out on Saturday and 16 miles on Sunday for 60 miles on the week.
The third week presented another opportunity to race, again at Hillsdale. The only workout I did this week was a strange session where I only had access to half of a track, and so I wound up running 30x200m, which looking back upon now I’m now sure what kind of stimulus I was expecting to get from this was? But anyways, the race on Saturday was a bit smaller of a field than what I had raced against at GVSU (4 total in the field as opposed to 29). Ran even slower this time around (16:02.14), but still managed to finish second overall after letting the leader go off right away from the gun. Was much less disappointed with this race than I had been with the previous week’s effort, but didn’t like that I was continuing to move backwards. However, with the indoor season winding down, this gave me a few weeks to try and turn things around before testing myself again in the outdoor track season.
The final week of February saw a return to slightly higher mileage, with 88 miles. Workouts included an 8x1km off of 90s rest at slightly-faster than threshold, and 10km continuous where the plan had been to go at 2:40 marathon pace, but the legs were feeling good and ran the equivalent of 2:32 marathon pace. Bumped the long run back up to 18 miles, and moved on into March knowing that I had less than 2 months until Glass City.
March
As much as I love writing paragraphs, I think we can summarize March rather quickly with short, week-by-week summaries.
- Week 1: 63 miles on 5 days running with Monday and Tuesday off; Sessions included 5x2000m sub-threshold and 13km at MP; no long run this week.
- Week 2: 81 miles with 1 session of 8 by 1000m sub-threshold and a 20 mile long run with 4 by (3 mile MP, 1 mile off).
- Week 3: 84 miles with a single session of 12 by 400m on 60s rest at 75s/rep; also made my outdoor track debut at the IWU Polar Bear Classic with a 5000m time of 15:53.98; followed this up with a 20 mile long run on Sunday.
- Week 4: 67.4 miles with 1 day off; single session of 5x2000m at sub-threshold; bonked out of a workout on Friday, and then finished the week with a 20 mile long run.
April
Began the first week of Glass City month by entering into yet another 5000m race, this time at Michigan State. Managed to finally get under my season opener and ran 15::37.84. Didn’t execute the best race tactics here, but was happy to finally see an improvement from what I had run in January. The only other session was a tune-up of [8x400m at goal 5k pace with 2:00 rest](https://www.strava.com/activities/17927633620. Capped off the first week by running my longest long run of the block with a 40km run on Sunday, to bring the weekly mileage up to 80.
The next week was more focused on marathon prep, with the sessions consisting of 12x400m on 60s rest on Tuesday and 4x3200m at MP on Thursday. Long run was shrunk down to 16.7 miles, and hit 74.5 miles overall for the week on 6 days of running.
Up next was the week prior to Glass City, and the main feature was racing the 5000m at the Hillsdale GINA relays. Was a bit confused when I showed up to their football stadium/track to find a special teams practice being the only activity happeining in the stadium; as it turns out, in the time since I had last raced outdoors at Hillsdale, they had built a brand new track-specific facility (which, luckily, was very near-by). The race itself was (spoiler) the best of the season; I went out with the leader, and managed to maintain the pace they had set when they began to fade, and was able to hold on and win the race in a season’s best time of 15:25.22. A storm rolled in right after the race, carried by the winds that had made the race a bit challenging (really great conditions once the storm had rolled through; wish I had been quick enough to have been seeded into the fast heat later that evening!). The only session I had this week was a tune-up of race pace 400m reps on Tuesday, and with no long run the week’s total mileage amounted to 63.7 miles.
I plan on documenting my thoughts on Glass City in a separate post, so I’ll end my re-cap of April by saying that over the course of the final (full) week of the month, I ran 58.5 miles with a single tune up of 3 x mile at marathon pace, and then 1 by marathon at MP (~6:00/mile, 2:36:55 chip/2:37:00 gun).
May
The return to running post-Glass City was quick, as my hope was to turn around quick from a strong, but not all-out effort in Toledo to then race once more on the track before the end of the collegiate season. Did I need to run another 5000m less than 2 weeks post-marathon? Probably not, but with no other opportunities to race on the track I figured I’d be feeling a bit of fomo if I didn’t get in at least one more. So I set my sights on the Harrison-Dillard Twilight at Baldwin-Wallace college 10 days after Glass City for the real closer for the block.
The first week of training after Glass City I started with a shakeout 4 mile run the day after, and then after taking Tuesday off (busy, but otherwise felt like I could have run), I did additional shake-outs Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday; made my first trip to the Potawatomi Trail on Friday for 15 miles, and finished the week with 10x400m at 5k pace with full rest to start getting tuned up for the next week’s race. Total mileage of 48.3 miles for the week.
Leading up to the race, the only session I did was 2 by 1600m at 5k with 4:00 walking rest, which served as more of a dress-rehearsal than a fitness-building effort. Going into the race I was hoping to improve on my time at GINA, but some tactical blunders on my part lead to that not happening. The race went off with the pack not really stretching out at all, and after a few laps things started to get way more physical than I’ve ever experienced in a race. Wanting to get out of the fracas and into lane 1, I ran up into the lead and lead the race for a couple laps. This is absolutely not where I should have been; the race was won in 14:47, and I am nowhere near sub-15 shape. Despite going out too hard and subsequently losing steam, I still managed to hold on to run 15:27.00; again, not what I had hoped for, but reflecting on the first 5 months of the year, I’m happy with where things ended up.
The remainder of the month was not as consistent as I wanted, with one week at 80 miles but every other under 60. Moving on into June, I’d like to get more regimented with my training, as I don’t have any big races on the calendar and thus the focus is just on building a strong base that I can then spring-board off of next year to try and run sub-2:30 in the marathon next spring. Ideally I will be getting the mileage consistently back into the 80-90 mile per week range, with a lot of sub-threshold work along with a weekly or bi-weekly “wildcard” session that will be something other than threshold (vO2max, hills, etc). But I did end the month with a higlight, re-claiming my crown at the Run to Climax 7k with a 22:45.4 time, and improvement from my 24:10 winning time last year (and more importantly: claimed the crown on Strava).