In 2024, Alberta NDP decides who it is without Rachel Notley as leader

Since at least her days as premier, NDP Leader Rachel Notley has worn the same wristwatch. No luxury wrist bling — it's a digital number, though not as smart as an Apple Watch either.

Notley instead relies on the simplicity of a Garmin Forerunner 35 with a silicon wristband. Big digital time display, and it can sync with her phone's texts with her husband and her music player.

Most importantly, it serves her near-daily running habit. Tracks distance, pace, heart rate along with the kilometres of her morning routine.

At some point next year, likely in the first few months, Notley will announce that she's tapping the button on her watch's upper right corner. The stop button.

She'll declare an end to this ultra-marathon she's endured as leader of Alberta's New Democrats. She will step aside, having lifted them from fourth-party status in the legislature to one-term government and now a second consecutive term back in the opposition benches, across nearly 10 years in the spotlight.

Then, it's race time of another sort, a months-long jaunt to replace her.

The contestants have already been limbering up. And yes, to extend this tortured metaphor just one bit further, there does not appear to be a front-runner, rather three candidates at the front of the pack.

In addition to renewal, it also means the progressive party gets to be preoccupied for much of 2024 in the sort of leadership intrigue that has repeatedly preoccupied its political rivals, from Alison Redford to Jim Prentice to Brian Jean (catches breath) to Jason Kenney to Danielle Smith.

With Smith seemingly solid (for now) in her United Conservative leadership, it's the other side's turn to figure itself out. What is the Alberta NDP without Rachel Notley in charge?

Let's be clear — Notley has not announced any sort of departure yet. In a year-end interview that will be released later this month, she reiterated to my CBC colleague Janet French that she's not saying anything until she's ready to.

"As I've said before and I'll continue to say today, I'm going to take the time necessary to consider my future and consider all the various factors in that and I'll let people know once I've reached a conclusion," Notley said.

That's the official answer. Unofficially, it's widely understood in NDP ranks that Notley wanted to help guide her 38-member opposition caucus, half of whom are rookie MLAs, through the post-election process and their first legislature sitting this fall.

Many of them had been imagining (and/or bargaining for) which cabinet posts they'd get after the victory over Smith that never happened, so she had to temper their frustrations and assign all 38 an opposition critic's post. She has claimed full responsibility for her party's second consecutive loss, but the marked improvement over winning 24 seats in 2019 helped prevent New Democrats from demanding she exit promptly.

Many in the party owe her a debt of gratitude for lifting a perennial Edmonton rump party overwhelmingly dependent on union force into a competitive party with a broader progressive-centrist coalition that not only dominates the capital city, but is also strong in Calgary, and in May won the most votes in both major cities.