Charlotte Marathon 2026 — Training Calendar

Target Paces & HR Zones

Norwegian Singles — What & Why

• Runs in the Tuesday slot for Weeks 1–5 (Jul 20–Aug 23) — five sessions total, all broken-interval (short floats, no continuous blocks): 3×15min → 2×20min → 3×17min → 3×15min (Week 2 actually executed as 2×18min+1×10min, an in-session call — see Jul 28 change note below), then NS retires as Tuesday converts to standard VO2/interval work in Week 6.
• Total accumulated sub-threshold time still ramps and settles back for the cutback (~45min in Week 1, 40 → 51 → 45min across Weeks 3–5), but every session keeps 2:00 floats between reps rather than running as one unbroken block — floats are what keep HR resetting and the session repeatable rather than sliding into tempo/threshold effort.
• Target: sub-threshold effort (~2.0–2.5 mmol/L), proxied by HR 148–153 bpm and pace 7:05–7:15/mi — deliberately sub-maximal and repeatable, not a hero effort. This is the "singles" version: one session per day, unlike the true Norwegian double-threshold protocol.
• Purpose: raise the aerobic-threshold ceiling early, before marathon-specific MP and VO2 work take over the Tuesday/Thursday slots in the build proper.
• Run on the treadmill through the heat window (see below) so effort stays controlled and comparable week to week.

Tuesday / Thursday Quality-Day Assignment

• Weeks 1–5: Tue = Norwegian Singles (sub-threshold). Thu = VO2/Interval work.
• Week 6 onward: Tue = VO2/Interval work, Thu = Tempo/Threshold + MP work — this reverts to the original day assignment once NS retires, rather than carrying forward an earlier version of this calendar that had swapped the two (Tue = Tempo/Threshold, Thu = VO2/Intervals) for the whole block. Flagging this explicitly since it's a change from what was previously published.

Standing Protocols

• Heat protocol (through mid-September): Tuesday/Thursday quality sessions on treadmill with Wahoo Tickr for pace precision; outdoor easy runs and long runs governed by HR caps, not pace, when dew point exceeds 65°F.
• PTT protocol (daily, non-negotiable): 45-second single-leg isometric hovers ×2/day, big-toe anchor cue, cadence target 178–182 spm. Rate awareness weekly (target ≤1/10); if it exceeds 2/10, extend the current cutback week by one.
• Fueling: 90–100g carbs/hour with water-chaser rule on every run 16mi+, starting Week 8. Sodium pre-load (1,000mg) the night before and morning of the race-simulation long run and race day itself.
• Goal Review Checkpoint (Week 9, Sep 14–20): assess whether tempo and MP workouts are hitting targets comfortably. If yes, stay at Goal A (3:05). If it's a grind, shift to Goal B (3:07–3:08) — still a significant PR over the 3:15:30 Delaware time. As of Sep 6, this is now informed by Saturday's 6mi tempo block (6:45–6:55/mi) embedded in the long run rather than the withdrawn Hit The Brixx 10K — arguably better data, since it reflects pace control under real long-run fatigue rather than a fresh taper effort.
• Hip prehab (added Sep 6, starting Week 8's Monday lift): clamshells, single-leg glute bridges, monster walks, single-leg RDLs — folded into the existing Monday strength session, 2×/week, light to start. Added proactively given quad-soreness-altering-landing-mechanics concern; not a response to any current flag.

What Changed in This Update (Sep 19, 2026)

• Week 10 restructured around travel to Athens, GA for the UGA–Oklahoma game (Sat, Sep 26) and the drive back Sunday. Saturday's 20mi w/12mi-@-MP long run moved up to Friday — full MP content preserved, consistent with the Week 7/8/11 precedent of protecting the bigger dose over the smaller one.
• Friday's long run trimmed from 20mi to 18mi to avoid a ~4:30am start. Cut comes entirely from the warmup/cooldown (4mi easy + 12mi MP + 2mi easy); the MP block itself is untouched.
• Thursday's MP session pulled back to easy + strides — the concern is stacking a quality/intensity day immediately before Friday's long run, not mileage itself, so this stays a full-length easy day rather than a shortened one.
• Saturday and Sunday carry normal easy mileage (~8mi and ~9mi) rather than bare shakeout runs — easy-effort mileage doesn't carry the same loading risk as a second hard session would, so there's no reason to sacrifice it just because the long run moved.
• Net effect: Week 10 lands around 58mi, close to the original 60 — this is a resequenced week, not an absorption week like Week 11.

What Changed in Prior Update (Sep 10, 2026)

• Week 9 mileage increased from ~41mi to ~47mi — genuinely easy aerobic volume, not intensity. Rationale: Week 7's low mileage (~35mi) wasn't recovery, it was a maximal 10K race — real cardiovascular/neuromuscular stress despite the low volume. So the real load sequence is Week 6 (52mi, threshold work) → Week 7 (10K stress) → Week 8 (54mi: MP quality + a race + a 19mi MP long run) — three consecutive weeks of genuine stimulus, exactly what a cutback exists to absorb. The cutback's actual job — reducing quality-session frequency and cumulative stress — is already accomplished by Saturday's tempo long run being the week's only hard dose; there's no physiological reason to also bottom out total mileage. This also matches the ~46mi figure the Sep 6 update's own narrative referenced as the target ("recovers ... most of the way back toward the original 46mi target") but which the summary table's ~41mi hadn't actually reflected — flagging that discrepancy plainly since it was a real inconsistency in the prior version of this file.
• Thursday, Friday, and Sunday extended with additional easy mileage. Tuesday (easy + strides), Wednesday (run club double), and Saturday's tempo long run are untouched — the goal is smoothing the aerobic floor, not adding a second hard session or touching the Goal Review checkpoint itself.
• Net effect: Week 9 now steps down less sharply from Week 8 (54mi) and steps up less sharply into Week 10 (60mi) — 54 → 47 → 60 instead of 54 → 41 → 60, without adding any load that works against the cutback's actual purpose.

What Changed in Prior Update (Sep 6, 2026)

• Hit The Brixx 10K withdrawn — Saturday's long run now carries a 6mi tempo block (6:45–6:55/mi) instead of a race. Worth naming plainly: this isn't obviously the "easier" swap. A maximal 10K is ~40 minutes all-out; 6 continuous miles under 7:00/mi inside a long run is a comparable duration of sustained, controlled-hard effort. Thursday's short tempo is pulled back to easy + strides to protect this as the week's one real quality dose, same "protect the higher-value session" logic used for prior schedule conflicts — two hard tempo efforts 48 hours apart works against a cutback week's job. Week 9 mileage revised to ~41mi (12mi long run in place of the ~9mi race-day structure). The Goal Review Checkpoint stays on Saturday, now informed by this session instead of the 10K.
• Superseded below: Week 9 restructured around a second 10K — Hit The Brixx, Sat Sep 19, Charlotte — following the Sep 6 Around the Crown 10K. Rationale: Sep 6 was compromised by heat/humidity and a course hill in mile 5 (HR pegged at 159–165 bpm through the back half while pace collapsed to 7:56/mi on the hill mile) — a real physiological effort but not a clean read on current fitness or 10K pace. Miles 1–4 that day held 6:33–6:40/mi controlled, suggesting sub-40:00 is realistically in range on a better day. Week 9 was already a natural landing spot: a cutback week with the standing Goal Review Checkpoint already built in, so a maximal 10K here does double duty — real current-fitness data feeding straight into the Goal A/B decision.
• Thursday's short tempo (3mi @ tempo) pulled back to easy + strides — sits only 2 days before another maximal 10K effort, and this is a cutback week with no need to bank extra intensity on top of the race itself.
• Saturday's 14mi easy long run replaced with race-day structure (~1.5mi out / 10K / ~1.5mi back), same shape as Week 7's and Week 8's race restructuring.
• No hard long run added to Sunday — this is the one place this deliberately diverges from Week 8's precedent. A 1-mile race is low-glycogen, low-damage, and safely absorbed alongside a full long run the next day. A 10K is a real sustained aerobic/glycolytic effort, closer in physiological cost to a hard tempo run — stacking a long run on top of it the very next day would work against the cutback week's actual job (letting fatigue settle before three straight 60mpw weeks begin in Week 10).
• Volume added back as genuinely easy aerobic mileage, not intensity, after further discussion on Sep 6. Wednesday's AM easy run lengthened, Friday's shakeout reverted to normal length (Saturday's own 1.5mi warm-up already covers the pre-race-shakeout purpose), and Sunday changed from rest to an easy recovery run. None of this touches Thursday's pulled-back intensity or adds a hard long run — it's aerobic filler on days that were already easy, which doesn't fight the cutback week's job of letting fatigue clear before Weeks 10–13. Net effect: mileage recovers from ~38 to ~44mi, most of the way back toward the original 46mi target, without reintroducing the loading risk a restored long run or Thursday tempo would have carried.
• VO2/Interval target pace band corrected in the paces table above (6:05–6:15/mi) — the old 6:20–6:30/mi entry was leftover from before the Aug 6 recalibration and hadn't been updated in this reference table.
• Hip prehab added, starting Week 8's Monday lift — clamshells, single-leg glute bridges, monster walks, single-leg RDLs, folded into the existing strength session. Proactive addition following a week that surfaced (and resolved) transient bilateral knee soreness alongside known quad fatigue — not itself a response to any unresolved flag, just closing a gap in the hip/glute strength work that supports lateral knee stability.

What Changed in Prior Update (Sep 1, 2026)

• Week 11 restructured around travel to St Simons, GA for a brother's wedding (Sat, Oct 3, 6pm). No running possible on the two travel days (Thu Oct 1, Sun Oct 4). Thursday's continuous threshold session (6mi @ 6:40–6:45/mi) is dropped entirely rather than relocated — there's no open slot for it that doesn't stack quality days back-to-back or break the fixed Wednesday run-club constraint. This is the one real loss this week.
• Saturday's 20mi w/12mi-@-MP long run moved up to Friday, Oct 2. Full MP content preserved — the long run is the higher-value stimulus of the week's two quality efforts, so it's the one protected, consistent with the Week 7/8 precedent of not sacrificing the bigger dose for the smaller one.
• Saturday becomes an easy run (was the long run day) — kept deliberately easy given the 6pm wedding; not a quality slot.
• Sunday's travel day costs nothing structurally — it was already Easy/rest in the base plan.
• Net effect: Week 11 volume drops from a planned 60mi to ~44–48mi. This is a larger dip than a normal cutback, but it lands as an unplanned absorption week in the middle of three consecutive 60mpw weeks (10–12) — reasonable timing heading into Week 12's 20mi race-simulation dress rehearsal for the v5, not something to backfill elsewhere.
• Recovery spacing actually improves. Tue MP → Wed easy → Thu off → Fri long run adds a full rest day between quality efforts vs. the original Tue→Sat gap. The Friday long run to Week 12's Tuesday VO2 session is now a 4-day buffer instead of 3.
• Open items for race week, not yet decided: fueling logistics for a 20-miler away from home (same protocol, unfamiliar routes/aid), and which shoe (Specter 3 vs. MagMax Nitro) runs Friday's long run given no recovery buffer before the evening wedding.

What Changed in Prior Update (Aug 18, 2026)

• Week 8 mileage restored from ~36mi back up to ~54mi — the mile race does not warrant 10K-style taper treatment. An all-out mile is ~5–6 minutes, overwhelmingly neuromuscular/anaerobic, with minimal glycogen depletion and comparatively little eccentric muscle damage — nothing like the 25–40 minutes of sustained aerobic/glycolytic stress a goal 10K effort produces. The Aug 6 update correctly restructured Saturday around the race (out/race/back) but also softened Tuesday and dropped the week's long run entirely, which over-applies 10K-taper logic to a much smaller stimulus.
• Tuesday Q1 restored to 5×1mi @ MP (was softened to easy/strides-only). No physiological reason to sacrifice a real quality dose 4 days out from a 5-minute race.
• Thursday Q2 threshold session unchanged — sits a comfortable 4 full days post-10K, no conflict with Saturday's mile.
• Saturday's race-day structure (~1.5mi out / race / ~1.5mi back) unchanged — this part of the Aug 6 revision was already right.
• Sunday changed from Easy/rest to the long run (~19mi w/ 10mi @ MP) that Saturday's race displaced, rather than dropping it from the week. MP segment stays conditional on how the legs feel coming off Saturday's race — back-to-back race-Saturday/long-run-Sunday is real loading, but the mile's low fatigue cost makes that an acceptable trade.

What Changed in Prior Update (Aug 6, 2026)

• VO2/Interval pace recalibrated from 6:20–6:30/mi to 6:05–6:15/mi for Weeks 6–7. The original target was slower than current 10K pace (~6:20/mi) — by Daniels' I-pace framework, true VO2max-eliciting Interval pace should be faster than 10K pace, so a rep pace at or slower than 10K pace lands in threshold/cruise-interval territory rather than true VO2max stimulus. Applied to Week 6 (5×1000m) and Week 7 (6×800m) — the sessions built as the pace-checkpoint for this phase.
• Week 10 (6×1000m) and Week 12 (5×1000m) VO2 paces left as originally labeled pending confirmation — the Sep 6 10K will provide a real, current 10K split to true these up against.
• Race links added: Sep 6 10K confirmed as the Around the Crown 10K; Sep 12 mile race confirmed as the South End Shuffle.
• Week 8 Saturday (Sep 12) restructured for the South End Shuffle mile race — replaced the planned 19mi w/10mi-@-MP long run with an easy ~1.5mi out, the race, and an easy ~1.5mi back (~4–5mi total). Week 8 volume dropped from a planned 57mi to ~36mi as a result.

What Changed in Prior Update (Aug 4, 2026)

• Week 7 restructured around a goal-effort 10K on Sun, Sep 6. The race lands the day after Saturday's originally-planned 18mi/8mi-MP long run and only ~48hr before Tuesday Sep 8's planned MP quality session — stacking a hard MP long run, an all-out race, and a quality session with no true recovery day between any of them. Resolution: Saturday's long run cut to an easy 4–6mi + strides; the 10K itself serves as the week's specific-endurance/quality stimulus. Thursday's MP session pulled back to easy + strides (3 days out). Week 7 volume dropped from a planned 54mi to ~35mi as a deliberate trade, not a compliance miss.
• Week 8's Tuesday MP session (5×1mi) softened to easy/strides since it would otherwise fall only ~48hr after an all-out race. Thursday's threshold session (5mi continuous) became the week's first real quality dose instead, landing a full 4 days post-race. Saturday's long run (19mi w/10mi @ MP) left untouched — 6 days out is enough buffer.

What Changed in Prior Update (Jul 28, 2026)

• NS progression converted from continuous back to broken-interval for Weeks 3–5: the Jul 17 revision had Weeks 3–5 building to unbroken 40min → 50min → 50min blocks. After executing Week 2 as 2×18min+1×10min (deviating from the planned 3×20min, an in-session call) and reviewing HR data — average HR climbed from 143 to 149 to 152 bpm across the three reps even with 2:00 floats and pace holding rock-steady at 7:02–7:06/mi — continuous unbroken blocks this early in the build were judged likely to push HR through the top of the 148–153 sub-threshold zone with no reset available, undermining the entire point of NS (repeatable, low-fatigue-cost quality work). Weeks 3–5 revised to 2×20min / 3×17min / 3×15min, all with 2:00 floats. Week 5 total volume (45min) now steps down from Week 4 (51min) rather than holding flat, consistent with its role as a cutback week.
• Total NS volume trajectory changed from 40→50→50min to 40→51→45min. Slightly more total work in Week 4, less in Week 5 — the shape now tracks the cutback-week purpose (absorb fatigue) rather than repeating peak load into a recovery week.

What Changed in Prior Update (Jul 17, 2026)

• Norwegian Singles extended and re-sequenced: previously ran every other week (Weeks 2, 4, 6) as broken-rep sessions (5×6min → 6×6min → 6×8min). Now runs continuously Weeks 1–5 as a true progression (3×15min → 3×20min → 40min cont. → 50min cont. → 50min cont. hold), retiring one week earlier (Week 6 instead of Week 7) to match the reference plan's updated Jul 16 schedule note.
• Tuesday/Thursday quality-day assignment reverted from Week 6 on: Tue is now VO2/Intervals and Thu is now Tempo/Threshold + MP, undoing the swap this calendar had previously documented (Tue = Tempo/Threshold, Thu = VO2/Intervals for the full block). This follows the reference material's original day template literally now that NS has vacated Tuesday. Workout content itself wasn't changed — only which day of the week it lands on.
• Week 12 race-simulation long run capped at 20mi: was 22mi total w/ 16mi @ MP, exceeding a stated 20-mile peak long-run cap that the reference material flagged as an unresolved conflict without giving its rationale (likely PTT-tendon-related, but not confirmed). Trimmed to 20mi total w/ 14mi @ MP, holding roughly the same MP/total ratio. Week 12 total volume also dropped 62→60mpw, and the "Peak Volume" summary card was updated to reflect the new mileage ceiling (now a four-way tie at 60mpw across Weeks 10–13).
• Original plan assumed a June 11 start; this rebuild starts July 20, after the South Africa trip, giving 17 weeks instead of 22 — about 5 weeks lost, concentrated out of base-build volume rather than taper.
• Taper held at 4 weeks (Oct 19–Nov 14) to protect the tendon and consolidate MP-specific gains rather than cut recovery time.