Chicago: 46 days 🏙️ The series begins (1 of 7)

Sunday October 11 · 7:20 am

46 DAYS

Six and a half weeks. Enough to build — not enough to improvise.

What Chicago actually demands  ← today

The course, October weather, and why flat doesn't mean easy.

Your goal pace, with real numbers

How to calculate it from your current fitness, not your wishes.

The key session of the block

The long run with marathon pace: how it's built and when.

Race nutrition and hydration

What, how much and when — rehearsed in training, not improvised.

The taper explained

Dropping volume without losing sharpness. And why you'll feel odd.

Logistics and race plan

Corrals, gear check, meeting point, and the plan B if it's warm.

Race week

The last four days. Nothing new, everything rehearsed.

Your tasks this week

① Don't add a new long run. Injury risk rises disproportionately when you increase weekly volume or long-run distance in the final weeks [PMID:32421886]. If you didn't run 32K a month ago, now isn't the time to try.

② Start rehearsing hydration and kit. In these weeks' long runs, not on race day. Chicago has aid stations every 2-3 km — you need to know how much and when to drink under effort.

③ Protect sleep like it's a session. Recovery depends as much on sleep and stress management as on the training itself [PMID:41922043]. These aren't the weeks to move house or lose sleep to nerves.

④ If you have health questions, check them now. Family cardiac history, unusual palpitations, or years without a check-up. Now — with time to act, not the week before [PMID:23989386].

My perspective as a coach

Chicago rewards whoever respects the process and punishes whoever trusts the course's potential alone.

I've seen runners with solid PRs go out running "whatever pace the day allows" instead of the one they planned — carried away by the energy of the start and the flat terrain — and pay for it in the second half. And I've seen runners with less natural speed execute perfect races simply because they respected their plan regardless of what the pack around them was doing.

The race isn't won in the first 15 kilometres. It's won — or lost — between km 30 and 38, when the flat terrain no longer matters.

📖 Full Chicago guide — 5 PMIDs · 11 min · weather, logistics and race strategy

World Athletics Ultimate Championship

Kerr and Ingebrigtsen, both, in the same 1500 — by exceptional invitation

Remember Project 222 from last week? Josh Kerr, the 3:42.66 miler, has just received an exceptional invitation for the Budapest 1500. And Jakob Ingebrigtsen — who already had an automatic place in the 5000 as reigning Olympic champion — will also run the 1500.

Why it matters: exceptional invitations were capped at one per discipline for this inaugural edition. The organisers broke their own rule and expanded the 1500 to 13 athletes, deciding that without both it could not in good faith be considered a full lineup of the greatest athletes on the planet. With Cole Hocker and Isaac Nader already in, that 1500 puts four global champions in one final.

The context you don't see: this championship exists to settle who's best among the best — world champions, Olympic champions and Diamond League winners — with a historic $10 million prize pot. It's a new format for athletics, and this first edition will decide whether the model works. We'll be following it.

Your question today

Are you running Chicago this year? Or is your fall marathon a different one?

Reply with which one and the time you're chasing. I'll tailor the examples in the coming editions to what you send me.

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Coach Henri

USATF · TrainingPeaks · Certified Functional Strength Coach

See you next Wednesday with edition 2: your goal pace, with real numbers.