Episode 122: Marathon Race Prep, The Power of Easy Training, and Gratitude Mindset
In this week’s episode, we start with a quick reflection on strength for sport and for everyday life, including Katie’s insights on how new parenthood has turned daily routines into real-world strength training. We then do a deep dive on common marathon race-week questions: from sleep and fueling to pacing strategies and how to think about heart rate and pacing in the moment. Finally, we discuss research showing that consistent easy mileage is one of the strongest predictors of marathon success, why Zone 1 training is often where the biggest gains happen, and how shifting from “I have to do this” to “I get to do this” can change your mindset for both racing and life. Check it out!
Main content
Katie:
Strength for sport but also for daily life
Mom life = huge strength workout all of the time
Walked to/from the gym yesterday (about a mile) with parka, boots, baby on front carrier, gym backpack on back, and fully stocked diaper bag in one hand. Total weight = 38 lbs with an offset with the one handed diaper bag carry. This requires major core stability and is a huge motivator for me making strength such a big focus right now!
True to an extent in many other scenarios too. Train for your event but also train for living life.
Marathon pre-race call insights
Marathon season has begun for a handful of my athletes! Some common questions I’m getting in pre race calls:
What if I can’t sleep the night before the race?
What to eat for later race starts
What to eat during race week
How to think about race week workouts
What to do if it’s really hot
Related: Marathon pacing strategy
10/10/6 strategy
What to do if you get going and your HR is really high right away
How to think about pace vs. feel vs. HR on hilly courses
And a fun related question: “if I’m feeling good, HR is in goal range, and my pace is speedier than it’s been in training (like happened at my last half marathon where I crushed my goal pace by like 20secs/mile) should I still pull back out of abundance of caution? Or truly just go by feeling and assume my body will tell me if I need to pull back”
Feel all the way! This is not uncommon due to a combo of adrenaline, taper, and race day magic.
Caveat: you do need to know yourself and make sure you trust in your ability to go by feel
Kat Matthews on gratitude mindset
Link here
“What is one small shift in habit or mindset that makes the biggest difference in your performance and career?”
“Genuine gratitude to be able to do what you want and to feel tired from doing what you want to do”
Going from “I have to do this” —> “I get to do this”
Something I would add: “I’m choosing to do this”
Most notable in periods of injury, time off, etc. -- think about what you would have given to “get” to go out and run 10 miles, even in the snow/sleet/heat/cold etc.
This is useful for sport but also for different phases of life. Yes sometimes I feel the urge to go do something for myself while being nap trapped with a sleeping baby on me. And then I remember that I *get* to have a sleeping baby on me whose entire world is just the rise and fall of my breathing, and that is such a fleeting thing in the grand scheme of his and my life, and I am so grateful for that.
All goes back to different eras/phases etc.!
Jim:
The easier you train the faster you finish
Authors include Alistair Brownlee
Marathon Training Analysis: Easy Miles Beat Race-Pace Work
Summary: A data-driven study of 425+ verified marathon runners reveals that consistent, easy-paced training is far more effective than high-intensity race-pace sessions for achieving faster marathon times.
Key Details:
* Volume matters most: Every additional 100 km (60 miles) of total running distance over 6 months correlates with ~4.4 minutes faster marathon time.
* Easy training wins: 1,000 extra minutes (16.6 hours) in Zone 1 (easy pace, >10% slower than race pace) associated with ~7 minutes faster finish.
* Too much race-pace training backfires: Every extra 100 minutes (1 hour 40’) at or faster than race pace links to 0.9 minutes slower finish time.
* Consistency beats intensity: Running frequency and active days are stronger predictors than volume metrics alone.
* Long runs overrated: The "long run" effect disappears after controlling for total volume—distance matters more than single long efforts.
* Optimal longest run: 25-35 km (15.5miles - 21/22 miles) (60-85% of marathon distance) appears to be the sweet spot. You don’t need to run a marathon to train for a marathon.
* Baseline fitness crucial: Starting pace in the first 30 days explains 34.5% of marathon time variance.
As we discuss, fitness should be a multi-year, multi-decade project. Your best marathon (and other endurance race results) may be years ahead of you - that’s both exciting and daunting!
In sum, marathon success is built on patient accumulation of consistent, mostly easy miles rather than over indexing on race-pace sessions. (You need some speed work to run your best marathon, you just probably need a lot less than you think.)
This article dovetails nicely into another article I read this week by Joel Filliol…
* Zone 2 training may lead some athletes to train too fast during easy sessions. Mission creep!
* Going too hard on low-intensity days is one of the most common training errors, leading to injury, illness, and burnout. A good metric for easy is capping HR at 60% of your max HR. Getting athletes to slow down is often our first job with a new client.
* Zone 1 training (truly easy pace) allows for better recovery, higher training volumes over time, and fewer interruptions from overtraining. If your Basic Week is leaving your unmotivated, injured or sore, analyze HR zones and perhaps shift more toward Z1 HR zone training.
* Long-term chronic training load accumulation is the primary driver of endurance performance, not short-term high-intensity stimulus.
This is the key finding in the Norwegian elite coaches study. Training Session Models in Endurance Sports: A Norwegian Perspective on Best Practice Recommendations
(If you want to know why the Norwegians are dominating the Olympics, check out the above study.)
* New runners may need to start with walk/run combinations as their fitness develops.
And let’s not forget Joel’s timeless swim blog post: The Top 20 Rules for Faster Triathlon Swimming - now updated to 2026 with comments by Joel.
No Longer Recommending TrainingPeaks Virtual (& a general rant on TrainingPeaks)
Over the last few weeks, many athletes have experienced issues with TrainingPeaks Virtual (TPV). (After I wrote this, I realized that ALL of my athletes who are using TPV now are having some major issue.)
The most common problem is heart rate not connecting, which is crucial for me when tracking aerobic fitness progress.
More recently, athletes have also reported that warm-ups and cool-downs are not progressing correctly in resistance, which undermines the structure of the workout.
I reached out to TrainingPeaks and they said one of their recent updates caused the bug with the warmup and cool down ramps. I’m not sure if they have fixed that yet. It’s kind of a big deal for our athletes if that simple function doesn’t work.
For HR not connecting, they will need each athlete to reach to them to troubleshoot. This is an extra time burden most athletes don’t have.
Additionally, TrainingPeaks and TrainingPeaks Virtual are supposed to sync FTP values. This is one of the main benefits of working in the same eco-system. Unfortunately, many of my athletes are having to manually sync their FTPs between the two platforms and this has caused all types of confusion for weeks.
What This Means Going Forward
As of March 2026, I will no longer recommend TPV as the primary virtual training platform for my athletes.
My (cynical) sense is that there isn’t a lot of incentive for TrainingPeaks to improve and stabilize this platform as they give it away for free to Premium members. I can’t imagine anyone really chooses TPV over Zwift/Rouvy/TrainerRoad if they don’t use TrainingPeaks. In other words, it’s not a real commercial product trying to compete in the free market; it’s an add-on to an existing paid platform. TPV doesn’t add any additional revenue to TPs bottom line. See: show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.
I do believe the original developer of the TPV platform has put his best foot forward. I suspect with the growing user base and extra code / functionality requested by a larger audience that has overwhelmed and destabilized the platform. The result is growing pains playing out in real time and very untimely as it’s peak trainer season.
That said, I still think it’s worth trying if you’re new to virtual cycling. If TPV works consistently for you, then it can absolutely be an economical option—especially since it comes bundled with a TrainingPeaks Premium account. And maybe it will be stabilized in the future.
However, most of our athletes are extremely time-crunched, and an unstable platform isn’t an option when you have a limited window to train.
For now, I’ve personally switched back to Zwift for the racing, course variety, and overall technical stability and I’m recommending all of our athletes do the same to bridge up to the summer outside riding season.
And you should take all of the above with a grain of salt as my bias is that while I use TrainingPeaks as my main training communication tool and library, I am continually frustrated with their lack of data analysis tools and lack of AI integration. TP main data analysis approach is to create more charts which shows me a one-dimensional picture of a highly complex 3D data set.
And how they base FTP values is also extremely one-dimensional to a very dynamic 3D performance metric. Once you use other platforms that track power as a dynamic 3D model, you can’t unsee it.
TP, at the very core, is a massive data collection repository and yet its data analysis tools are many years behind and fundamentally haven’t changed since I started using this program over 15 years ago. If there is one platform that should embrace AI data analysis it is TrainingPeaks.
TrainingPeaks is the 500 pound gorilla in the endurance training world. But I’m on the lookout for the next gorilla to come eat its lunch. I’ll gladly join that gorilla and that tribe if they know how to provide real data analysis tools and insights.
Challenge or Resource of the Week
Katie: Katie Arnold’s Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
Read more about Katie Arnold here
Jim: TSS Abs on Back
I had an athlete ask about exercises that helped level my hips from anterior pelvic tilt. Megan from The Sculpt Society has a public Abs on Back video.
The magic of this workout is not the specific exercises which are solid but rather the frequency with which I do them. 3X - 5X per week seems to be working for me.
Gear Pick of the Week
Katie: Patagonia Refugio Daypack (on sale!)
Jim: USWE Rush 8 MTB Vest - great for nordic skiing and winter / spring bike adventures / long workouts. I still recommend the Salomon 12L ADV Skin for hiking / mountain running as the front carrying capacity is unparalleled.