After having some fun with running gamification in Part 4.10, it’s time to return to the real world. Rather than continuing with another structured series, I’ll be switching to a more traditional blog format.
Over the coming months, I’ll document my marathon training block from May to September 2026, sharing my successes, failures, setbacks, lessons learned, and hopefully a few breakthroughs along the way. These posts will serve as both a personal training journal and a way to keep those of you who have been following my journey up to date.
Instead of writing about events long after they happen, I hope to take you along for the ride in real time—as the training, challenges, and milestones unfold.
One of my long-term running goals is to complete all of the World Marathon Majors. My first milestone is earning the Six Star Medal, followed eventually by the newly introduced Nine Star Medal as additional Major marathons are added.
Of all the World Marathon Majors, Boston is unique. Unlike the others, there is no general lottery. Entry is earned through qualification alone. For my current age category, the qualifying standard is under three hours. However, because demand exceeds the number of available spots each year, simply meeting the qualifying standard is rarely enough. In recent years, runners have generally needed to be five to six minutes faster than the official qualifying time to receive an invitation.
That means my realistic target is a marathon time of under 2 hours and 55 minutes.
That journey begins here.
Before looking ahead, I think it is worth reflecting on what happened at my very first marathon: the 2026 BMO Vancouver Marathon.
BMO Vancouver Marathon 2026
The BMO Vancouver Marathon took place on May 3, 2026, and marked my first attempt at the marathon distance.
Looking back, I could not have asked for a better training block leading into the race. My fitness was steadily improving, my workouts were going well, and my training data suggested that, under ideal conditions, a sub-three-hour marathon was within reach. Over the year leading up to the race, my Garmin-estimated VO₂ max increased from 45 to 57, while my lactate threshold pace improved to 4:12/km. Every metric suggested that I was in the best shape of my life.
To me, this race felt like the final examination of my freshman year as a runner—an opportunity to see how much I had truly improved and to discover what I was capable of over the marathon distance.
Just one year earlier, I could barely run three kilometers without stopping. Through twelve months of consistent training, I had transformed from someone who struggled to complete a short run into someone standing on the start line of a marathon. Regardless of what happened on race day, that transformation alone made me incredibly proud of how far I had come.
There was, however, one concern.
Two weeks before the marathon, I had raced a 10K and strained my right quadriceps. Although it had improved, I wasn’t completely confident that it would hold up over 42.2 km. That uncertainty stayed in the back of my mind throughout race morning.
I arrived at Queen Elizabeth Park about two hours before the start. I wanted plenty of time to warm up, eat my final pre-race meal, hydrate, and make the obligatory pre-race bathroom visits. While waiting, I bumped into my good friend, Dr. Billy Lin. We wished each other good luck before heading to our respective events.
The weather, unfortunately, was far from ideal.
By the time the race began, the temperature was already approaching 18–19°C under clear blue skies with virtually no shade. Combined with the rolling hills of the BMO course, it was shaping up to be a challenging day. As the morning progressed, the temperature climbed to approximately 25°C, making an already demanding marathon even more difficult. The combination of heat, direct sun exposure, and elevation turned the race into far more of an endurance test than I had anticipated.
In summary, the course begins with a gentle downhill before reaching its biggest challenge at around the 9 km mark. Here, runners face a sustained climb that includes a daunting two-kilometer section with gradients approaching 7%. The climb is followed by several long, steep downhill sections before the halfway point that are notoriously punishing on the quadriceps—exactly the muscle I had injured just two weeks earlier.
The final 10 kilometers of the course are relatively flat, offering an opportunity to settle into a steady rhythm before one final uphill push to the finish line.
I had done my homework thoroughly. I studied the course profile in detail and developed a pacing, fuelling, and hydration strategy tailored to each section of the race. I even wrote key reminders on my forearm so I could refer to them throughout the marathon, including the locations of each aid station, planned fuelling times, and elevation profiles for different sections of the course. My goal was to remove as much decision-making as possible on race day and simply execute the plan.
Standing at the start line, I felt a mixture of excitement and nervousness.
I was eager to find out what I was capable of, but I also had no idea what racing a marathon would actually feel like. Even before the gun went off, I noticed occasional twitching and cramping sensations in my calves and quadriceps, which certainly didn’t help my confidence.
Fortunately, the atmosphere was incredible.
The crowd buzzed with excitement, volunteers were full of energy, and everyone around me shared the same combination of anticipation and uncertainty. Conversations with fellow runners helped settle my nerves, and before long the countdown began.
The race was underway.
My original race plan was to average approximately 4:15 per km, putting me just under the three-hour mark. To stay conservative, I deliberately started closer to 4:20 per km.
Within only a few kilometers, however, I realized the conditions had changed the equation.
The sun beat directly onto my back, and I could feel my body overheating much earlier than expected. Although the pace itself wasn’t particularly aggressive, the perceived effort was noticeably higher than during training. At every aid station I poured two or three cups of water over my head and body in an attempt to keep my core temperature under control.
As the race went on, I quickly realized that repeatedly pouring water over myself to stay cool had an unintended consequence. The water soaked the salt tablets that I had taped to my gel packets, causing them to dissolve and fall apart. Suddenly, my carefully planned nutrition and hydration strategy was no longer intact, and I had to improvise for the remainder of the race.
After only five kilometres, I made what I believe was the correct decision.
Rather than stubbornly chasing my original goal, I adjusted my expectations. I slowed to approximately 4:30–4:50 per km, shifting my target toward a finish around 3 hours and 15 minutes.
Throughout the race, I continued checking in with my right quadriceps, wondering if the previous injury would return.
Fortunately, it never really did.
Another surprise came with my race nutrition. During training, I had no trouble tolerating energy gels. On race day, however, things were very different. Whether it was the pre-race nerves, the heat, or a combination of both, the gels seemed to sit in my stomach rather than emptying normally. With each gel, I developed increasing abdominal discomfort and felt as though everything was simply sloshing around in my stomach.
By the 30 km mark, I made the decision to stop taking gels altogether. I threw away the remaining ones, partly because I didn’t think I could tolerate any more, and partly to lighten the load I was carrying. Looking back, it was another reminder that race day doesn’t always unfold the same way as training. Even a nutrition strategy that has worked perfectly for months may need to be adjusted when race conditions, nerves, and environmental factors come into play.
Other than my stomach, I actually felt remarkably comfortable. My pacing remained controlled, my breathing was relaxed, and I genuinely believed I still had plenty left in the tank.
By the time I reached the 32 km mark, I felt confident enough to begin increasing my pace again.
That decision lasted only a few kilometers.
At around 35 km, I noticed a mild discomfort along my right quadriceps. Within moments, that discomfort migrated into a sharp pain on the outside of my right knee.
I stopped immediately.
After a quick self-assessment, I recognized exactly what had happened.
I had developed iliotibial band syndrome.
I attempted to restart running several times, but each attempt ended almost instantly as the sharp pain returned. Eventually, even walking became difficult.
For the next fifteen minutes, the emotional roller coaster was almost harder than the physical pain.
I felt disappointed.
Frustrated.
Angry.
Devastated.
After months of disciplined training, it felt as though everything had fallen apart just seven kilometers from the finish line. It became even harder emotionally as progressively slower pacing groups caught and passed me.
Yet despite everything, one thought never crossed my mind.
I was going to finish.
Even if I had to crawl, I wanted to earn that medal.
The Longest Seven Kilometers of My Life
Shortly after I stopped, my wife, Susanna, and my good friend, Terry, realized something was wrong. They had expected me to cross the finish line much earlier, and when I didn’t, they came looking for me along the course.
Seeing familiar faces at that moment meant more than I can put into words.
They stayed with me and walked beside me for much of the remaining distance, encouraging me to keep moving. Looking back, I am incredibly grateful for their support that day. Without them, those final kilometers would have been far more difficult.
Ironically, once I accepted that my race was over, I began to notice things that I had completely missed while racing.
The seawall around Stanley Park was beautiful. The crowds lining the course were incredible. Volunteers continued cheering just as enthusiastically for runners at the back of the field as they had for the leaders hours earlier.
Gradually, my disappointment gave way to gratitude.
The final seven kilometers took me over two hours to complete.
Every step was painful. Each time my right foot left the ground, a sharp pain shot through the outside of my knee. I eventually developed an awkward limp simply to reduce the discomfort enough to keep moving.
As hundreds of runners passed me, many offered words of encouragement, pats on the back, or simply a smile. It reminded me that despite racing against the clock, marathon runners are ultimately part of the same community.
Near the finish line, something happened that I will never forget.
As I approached the final few hundred meters, spectators began chanting my name from my bib.
“Leo!”
“Come on, Leo!”
“You’ve got this, Leo!”
Soon it seemed as though hundreds of people were chanting my name in unison: “Leo, Leo, Leo, Leo ….”
Those cheers carried me through the final stretch.
By the time I reached the finish line, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Crossing that line felt nothing like I had imagined months earlier, but it remains one of the proudest moments of my life. Although my official finishing time was 4 hours, 44 minutes, and 55 seconds—far from the sub-three-hour marathon I had trained for—it represented something far more meaningful. I had refused to give up. Despite the injury, the pain, and the disappointment, I crossed the finish line under my own power and earned my first marathon medal.
Medical staff quickly approached and offered me a wheelchair. I politely declined. Perhaps it was stubbornness, perhaps pride, or perhaps I simply wanted to finish the journey on my own two feet. Looking back now, I’m still not sure whether that was the smartest decision.
Respect the Marathon
Although the race did not go according to plan, I do not look back on it as a failure. If anything, it gave me an enormous amount of respect for the marathon distance.
A marathon is unlike any other race.
You can feel completely comfortable for the first 30 or even 35 km and still have everything change in a matter of minutes. The marathon has a remarkable way of exposing even the smallest weaknesses in your preparation.
In my case, my cardiovascular fitness was never the limiting factor.
My engine was ready, but my chassis wasn’t.
My muscles and connective tissues simply weren’t resilient enough to withstand 42.2 kilometers of pounding on a warm, hilly course.
In hindsight, I was fortunate that the injury occurred relatively close to the finish. Had it happened ten or fifteen kilometers earlier, there is a very real possibility that I would not have finished my first marathon at all.
That experience humbled me.
It reminded me that finishing a marathon should never be taken for granted, regardless of fitness level or finishing time.
And strangely enough, despite everything that happened, crossing that finish line only made me want to come back and try again.
Recovery: Harder Than I Expected
The marathon itself was only half the story. The recovery that followed was far more challenging than I had anticipated.
After the race, I performed a more thorough assessment of my right knee and quickly realized that I had injured it quite badly. Walking was painful, and for the first few days I could barely get around. Even cycling, which I had planned to use for cross-training, was too painful.
It wasn’t just my knee that was exhausted.
My entire body—and especially my central nervous system—felt completely drained. I had very little energy to do anything. My sleep quality deteriorated, my resting heart rate remained unusually high, and my heart rate variability (HRV) dropped dramatically. It was obvious that my body had taken a tremendous amount of stress from the race.
I knew recovery would take time. I just didn’t realize how much time.
Being unable to run for several weeks was mentally much harder than the physical pain itself. Running had become such a regular part of my daily life that suddenly losing it left a surprising void.
Ironically, that was one of the reasons this blog grew into what it is today.
Writing became my way of staying connected to running while I couldn’t actually run. Although I wasn’t able to train physically, I could still learn, reflect, organize my thoughts, and hopefully help others avoid some of the mistakes I had made. Sharing my experiences made the injury feel meaningful rather than simply frustrating.
Over the following six weeks, I focused almost entirely on recovery.
I was diligent with my rehabilitation exercises, strength work, foam rolling, mobility, nutrition, and sleep. I treated recovery with the same discipline that I normally devoted to training.
Progress was slow, but it was steady. I went back to the very beginning of my journey: walking. In many ways, I felt like I was “walking the talk” once again, just as I had when this journey first began two years earlier. At first, walking was all my body would allow. So I gradually increased the distance, one walk at a time. My wife and kids also joined to keep me company and saw how much I struggled.
Eventually, I began adding a few tentative jogging steps between walking intervals. Those few steps slowly became a few minutes of running. Week by week, I was able to extend the jogging intervals while reducing the amount of walking.
It wasn’t glamorous, and it certainly wasn’t fast, but it reminded me of an important lesson: recovery, like fitness, is built one small step at a time. Sometimes, the fastest way back is to be patient enough to start over.
As expected, the time away from running came at a cost. I gained a bit of weight, lost a noticeable amount of fitness, and watched many of the performance metrics I had worked so hard to build begin to decline. During this period, my Garmin-estimated VO₂ max fell from 57 before the marathon to a low of 52 during recovery. At first, watching those numbers drop was discouraging. However, I reminded myself that this loss of fitness is temporary—it can always be rebuilt. The priority was not chasing performance metrics but allowing my body to heal properly. Once I was healthy again, I knew the fitness would return.
In many ways, I believe I learned more from this marathon than I would have if everything had gone perfectly.
The Next Quest
Not long after I began recovering, I found myself doing what most runners eventually do after a difficult race.
I signed up for another marathon.
This time, my target is the Georgina Marathon in Ontario on September 13, 2026.
This race will be my first serious attempt at achieving a Boston Marathon qualifying time.
At the time of writing this post, I am already four weeks into my new training block. My weekly mileage has gradually increased to approximately 55 km per week, and my VO₂ max has finally begun slightly climb again after its post-marathon decline.
This training cycle feels different.
The previous block taught me that my cardiovascular fitness was already capable of running a fast marathon. But the problem wasn’t the engine, it was the hardware.
At BMO, my engine was strong, but the wheels fell off.
This time, my primary goal is to build a pair of “steel legs.” I want stronger muscles, more resilient tendons and connective tissues, and a body capable of tolerating the pounding of 42.2 km. Along the way, I hope to regain the fitness I lost during recovery and build an even stronger aerobic engine than before.
The goal remains ambitious: a marathon under 2 hours and 55 minutes.
Will I get there?
Honestly, I don’t know.
But that’s part of what makes the journey exciting. Over the coming months, I’ll be documenting my training week by week—the good workouts, the bad workouts, the inevitable setbacks, the lessons learned, and hopefully, a successful Boston qualifying attempt.
Whether I succeed or fail, you’ll experience the journey with me in real time.
In the next post, I’ll summarize my training since the BMO Vancouver Marathon and share how my recovery has progressed. I’ll also discuss my recent VO₂ max and lactate threshold testing at a sports performance laboratory, including what I learned, how the results compared with my Garmin estimates, and how those findings are shaping my training plan as I prepare for my Boston Marathon qualifying attempt.
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