Toronto Waterfront Marathon

And I was like, okay, what's the race in Toronto, right? And then I checked up.

There's the Waterfront Marathon in October, right? And then I signed up for it even before I moved down.

And then that was, I would say, I said Milton Keynes was a post-structured training, but with Toronto, it was even more structured.

I had a 16-week block, right? And then I trained properly for it.

I followed a 16-week sub 3:30 plan from Runner's World despite having no previous running background, or more importantly, evidence that I was in 3:30 shape, and finished in 3:44.

I then raced the 2025 Toronto Waterfront Marathon using Marathon Handbook's sub three-hour plan, again, without fitness supporting that target and with very little running between the two builds.

I finished in 3:42.

The day after, feeling very disappointed, I signed up for the same race in 2026.

That would be your best option right now that you're taking it more seriously.

But if you don't wanna get a coach yet, then at least trying to push you in the right direction of a plan would be to run a shorter race, do a time trial, see where you are fitness-wise, and then choose a plan accordingly, so you're not choosing one that's either going to be way too challenging for you at the moment or not challenging enough and it won't push you.

Just looking at, uh, I found Jay's, uh, splits from the Toronto Waterfront Marathon last fall while you were talking there, Kaitlin.

And, uh-

Yeah.

so the the sweet time with this marathon so a funny story about this actually is so my my best friend who's getting married this weekend actually so she ran the toronto waterfront marathon last year and was the experience that we had so i came and to the marathon and i met up with her at let's say like kilometer 33 which is a horrible kilometer by the way It is like it is the like it's the people always talk about it as like this is where everything crumbles.

And I'm like, awesome.

Can't wait for that.

love all the things so I'm dragging her through the course she's she's starting to run again I'm like okay we're ahead of this guy and then obviously the guy continues to keep going forward and he ends up catching up to us and I immediately went into like fight or flight of it's happening again I'm watching this happen again is this happening to me like I'm just like in street clothes like there's nothing you know and it was like that like gut-wrenching feeling of oh my god but Surprisingly, what happened was, is the sweeper took her and ran with her into the finish line.

They didn't take her off.

They, the sweeper team of the Toronto Waterfront Marathon literally helped her and all of the other runners safely get to the finish line.

They did what they had to do to be able to open streets.

Like I say, here's the program.

And we usually... collaborate quite a bit like every training cycle like he's just sort of begun his next training cycle for Toronto Waterfront Marathon in October and he does want to go 235 I think yeah so he wants he wants to personal best I think he can do it like he's putting in the work and But every cycle we sort of look and we look at the last one and we look at mileage and workouts and what did he do last time? And what's just this next little lever that we can pull that might give him just that next little boost in fitness? Like we don't want to do it all at once.

And that's, I think, what's been kind of key to his success so far.

He didn't really start marathoning with any intention until 2019.

I got in a really great week of training.

So I am training for the upcoming Toronto Waterfront Marathon in October.

So last week I got in about 65 kilometers through the week, which is my highest weekly mileage in about two months since taking a bit of downtime after High Rocks and the marathon as well.

And then of course the ankle sprain.

So I trained with him all through 2023.

And targeted the Toronto waterfront marathon at the end in October of 2023.

And again, Real fit.

Training went really well.

He wanted me to do a 10K a couple weeks before Toronto Waterfront.

I did the 10K.

It exceeded my expectations for fitness.

Like, and so I wanted to rule out that it was any, like a fracture of any kind.

And so my question to you, before asking you the question next week about course cutoffs, because I also think that that is very relevant.

Running in costumes, you've seen it, I've seen it, I spent some time in the Guinness World Record attempt tent in 2024 before doing the Toronto Half Marathon.

Mm-hmm.

Shout out to my friend Jean-Marc, who was aiming to break the world joggling record, which is running while juggling.

Mm-hmm.

We'll be doing the Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

We did quite a bit of coverage of that, and we did a live show at the expo last year.

I believe we're doing a live event this year at a venue, which will be very exciting.