This past week marked the first week of a 12 week build toward the California International Marathon (CIM) on December 7, 2025. I’ll be sharing data, insights, and other information to give an insight on how I plan my traning progress.
CIM will be my 7th official standalone marathon (not counting two Ironman) and my second this year, after my recent personal best of 3h4m in a local race in the Atlanta suburbs. I’m going into it with some big goals, this time being a shot at a sub-2:20 marathon. That would be a ~4-minute personal best for me—doable but not easy! CIM is a notoriously fast course, and this year is serving as the USA marathon championships, so the field will be deep, giving me plenty of talented people to run with (or right behind for a nice draft).
There are new things I'm trying on this build up, considering a few things.
- I was on track to a sub 3hours race in August. I feel that I faded out in the last 6 miles due to lack of proper long runs and durability. (Insert link here when I write about this race!)
- Even though sub 3 hours is a great goal, my goal is to keep building endurance long term, and reaching new heights in the endurance ladder. (Insert link about long term goals and principles too!)
Week 1 (September 15–21, 2025)
Last week was the last week I was in recovery mode from Boston or Bust. I have planned an easy week, sprinkled with two key workouts. A longer run in the weekend and a hard strength training session. This was going to be a hard week to get a lot of volume as I was alone with the kids during the weekend and it got even harder as I got sick in bed Wednesday, but, despite the inconveniences and thanks to some family help, I was able to get the key workouts done.
Here are the totals of the week, pretty easy week overall.
But most important is the Zones data
Considering that I'm using a 7 zone break down here, out of ~5hrs of running, 4h10 mins are done in a traditional Zone 2, with 30 mins on Zone 1 and 20 mins in Zone 3. When looking at overall workout times, ~95% of the work was done in the aerobic ranges (Zone 1/2).
Key Workouts
Sunday Long Run: Easy run to start adding volume. It started a bit later than usual, and I had limited time to do my usual 10 mile loop, so I had to push it a bit harder than what I'd like, but, still, a controlled effort through the workout.
What's next
Next week will show a sharp increase in total workout duration, going back to the last 6 months average of 12-14 hours of exercise, also, a focus on long runs, as the week after I'll do a really long run, but I'll explain that next week!