Joe Klecker On His 130+ Mile Training Weeks, 2:05 At The Boston Marathon + 2026 NYC Marathon Goals

<p><em>“Going into my first one, we played it pretty safe. We really wanted to work on strength and didn’t touch much work faster than 5:00/mile pace. Then going into Boston, we pushed the envelope a little bit — like, okay, we’ve got one on the board, let’s go for a big one.”</em></p><p>We’re kicking off our pre-NYC Marathon interviews and my guest for today’s episode is Joe Klecker — an Olympian, 2026 Boston Marathon top-ten finisher, and in eleven days, a returning TCS New York City Marathon competitor. He ran 2:05:56 at Boston in the spring, which puts him in the conversation with everyone we’ve been talking about this fall, and he goes into New York off what he described to me as his best training block yet. There were seven weeks above 130 miles and a peak at 135.</p><p>This is a training-heavy discussion for the freaks. I think the part I enjoyed the most was thinking through with Joe on his theory of what a former 5K and mile specialist has to do to actually become a marathoner from the inside out?</p><p>That was him. He’s spent the last two marathon builds trying to rewire his physiology for an event that is fundamentally different from everything he trained for across the first fifteen years of his running life. He ran 60:02 at the NYC Half in the spring. He shares basically all of it on Strava and through his Suunto posts on Instagram.</p><p>So for the training obsessives, we talk mileage, the fueling evolution from New York to Boston to now, what he wants to fix from last year’s race, how he thinks about the OAC internal competition with Patrick Kiprop and Ryan Ford, who are all set to race alongside him.</p><p>____________</p><p><strong>SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS</strong></p><p><strong>SUUNTO: </strong>The Suunto Run 2 is their new flagship watch built specifically for road running and the marathon. You get around 10 days of battery with daily use and 24 hours in performance mode with dual frequency GPS. The watch also tracks your sleep, HRV, and training balance, so you know when to push and when to back off in your workouts. <a href="https://suunto.pxf.io/7XBXMA">⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠If you&#39;re in the market for a new watch, check out the Suunto Run 2⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠</a>.</p><p><strong>KAIZEN: </strong>kaizen is a training app that starts with your running history to set the baseline and then updates around the training you do. kaizen looks at the bigger picture of your training to know your current fitness. The app translates your last fe