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This week was the first solid seven days of running I’ve put together since June, probably. This was partly because I’ve been getting the hang of my son’s current routines, and partly because I’ve simplified my week into three essential workouts: long run (Sunday), hills (Wednesday), and tempo (Saturday). I’m betting this will be all I need to build fitness for a little while. The result is a streamlined week with no fancy sessions or hero workouts, fewer decisions to make, and more time for organizing the rest of my life.

On Wednesday I went back to my usual hill loop and put down my best set yet, then did some split squats afterward for an extra boost. These hill workouts were working really well before Sunset and while I felt a little rusty last week, I’m feeling sharper now.

Saturday was a three-mile tempo on the track. After a very late night with some friends visiting from out of town, I approached this conservatively and dialed down the pace as I went. I have some friends who like to do summer tempo runs that get longer every week. I think if I run these around half marathon pace, I can follow a similar format.

Sunday was an easy 12 with my usual long run group. It was a lot of time on my feet in some pretty sweaty conditions, so I didn’t exactly feel spectacular, but the aspect of training I am probably missing the most right now is the endurance you get from long runs. The long run is also the easiest day to add miles, in a way—what’s two or three more miles if you’re already going ten? Do you really want to turn that nice and easy half hour on Monday into something 50% longer?

Long runs, tempos, and hills attack three critical components of fitness: endurance, efficiency, and power. If I do them properly (and sleep properly!), I should be able to do them every week without burning out. Consistency gets results. If this works, I can donate my copies of Daniels Running Formula to the local library.

My goal for the upcoming Mercer County Half Marathon is to keep expectations low and get an honest appraisal of how I’m doing this year. Was Sunset a fluke, or maybe just not as big a surprise as I thought it was? Or are we still stacking bricks and ready to improve on last year’s fitness? I’m going to go out around 85-minute pace and look for the answers.

Running 2:50 full marathon pace for half the distance shouldn’t be a tall order if I’m in the shape I seem to be in; on a good day I’ll be able to finish strong and see what’s in the tank. Looking at past results for this race, there might be other people in that pace range to compete against. If I’ve got company in the later miles, I want to stick my nose in it and see what happens.

Before all that, I’ll be on vacation on LBI with my in-laws. If my son sleeps better than he did upstate, it could be the perfect way to set up the race. Either way, it will be nice to get away with family, but I’m really crossing my fingers for a restful week!

I signed up today for the Mercer County Half Marathon on August 31 because I’ve realized I’m not going to train properly if my actions don’t have consequences.

I’ve been pretty good the last few years about training regardless of whether there’s a race on the calendar, but all it took was one week of awful sleep to show me that “Maybe I’ll run a half in November and then target a BQ in 2026!” wasn’t getting me out of bed in Q3 2025. I have literally stayed in bed instead of running several times in the last two weeks.

I attribute this to having my priorities properly sorted: right now, mastering my son’s new routines is demanding a lot of my time and energy, and running while I’m already tired just isn’t as important as saving my battery for pickup and dinner and dishes and chores.

Another potential solution to my problem, you might have noticed, is not being tired—maybe a lot to ask of a new parent, but also maybe not. I’ve known for a while my bedtime habits have been slipping. I crawl into bed too late and can’t seem to resist scrolling mindlessly on my phone. I’m leaving miles in my pillow.

I made the decision to sign up a few days ago and it has already lit a fire under me. I am going to bed earlier and running more, and even running workouts again. I set a modest goal I think I can achieve with the amount of training I’ll be able to squeeze into the next three weeks. I’ll base my fall racing plans on the results.

Sometimes you can get by with the carrot, and sometimes you need a stick. As of now, I’m racing in three weeks no matter what I do; the only thing worse than racing poorly would be not racing at all. I’m not worried about this. I know how to train, and how to race. What I am still learning is how to organize, simplify, and motivate. Stick it is.

I’m not sure why I thought I could undo eight awful nights of sleep with just a few nights of slightly good sleep. I don’t think it’s right to call it optimistic; maybe aspirational, or desperate, would be better. I really wanted to get back out there.

I ran eleven miles last week and most of it felt pretty bad. I haven’t quite rebalanced the scales yet.

The good news is my son is back to his regular sleep patterns as of the end of last week. The even better news is I was able to get a long run in with the boys on Sunday.

The bad news is all that stuff I said earlier, plus I’m irritable today, plus my son has not enjoyed starting solid foods recently. I haven’t exactly been on this side of the highchair myself, so it’s new for all of us. It’s all new all the time with this guy.

It feels like ages ago when my wife and I were in a comfortable routine with the baby, and things were clicking, and yet it was only a month ago. That’s comforting and maddening in equal turns, though not as maddening as realizing USA 800-meter silver medalist Cooper Lutkenhaus wasn’t even alive when Obama was elected, and now he’s run 1:42. Compared to that, I can fathom a difficult month.

Speaking of USAs, what a meet! It was certainly more interesting than the rest of my weekend of yard work and carrot puree interpretations of Jackson Pollock, and I will sound a lot more pleasant if I write about that, so here are some rapid-fire takes:

• Donovan Brazier’s comeback is the feel-good track story of the year, Cooper Lutkenhaus is the future, and you should never leave home without Bryce Hoppel. The men’s 800 meters was the highlight of the meet and one of the strongest teams we are sending to Tokyo.
• Another feel-good story in a meet full of them: Emily Infeld is my age and she just won her first national championship! I’m not saying I could be racing in Eugene next summer, but I’m not not saying that. Too bad the 10K was only on Joymo, which is a real streaming service and not something Alex Predhome made up as a joke.
• The biggest bummers of the meet were that Yared and Athing didn’t make the team, and that Shelby did. I hope Goose can sneak into Tokyo via the Diamond League final, but admittedly I have no idea what that looks like. Maybe Citius Mag can crunch those numbers now that the 10K teams are settled.
• Sydney is going to get a rare challenge in the 400 meters. It’s exciting to see her in a position where she may not win. I think the American record goes down in Tokyo no matter what happens. She always shows up for championships.
• Don’t let Cole Hocker dictate the pace in a 5K! And certainly don’t give him the inside lane with 100 to go! Unless you want me howling with excitement at my TV. Then, go right ahead, but be warned I don’t pay as well as a Nike contract bonus. Grant and Nico must be fans of the blog.
• Everybody seems to love Noah and Kenny’s spat in the 200-meter final, but I don’t. It immediately erased what I saw as the real story of the event—Noah Lyles has been injured for months, only returned to racing very recently, and just ran 19.63 looking smooth as hell! He is extremely talented, and in far better position than we might have thought to defend his title next month, but instead of getting excited about that everyone is focused on the pro wrestling of it all—including Noah! Pass.
• Melissa Jefferson-Wooden is still on a heater. She looks like a favorite in both of her events. At the very least, I think she’s my wife’s favorite runner right now; Grand Slam may be broke, but the athletes certainly got paid in exposure! Seriously, though—get these folks their money.

See you next week, when hopefully I’ll have better sleep and a happier baby at the dinner table and more miles in my legs. As always, we’ll see what happens.

Looking back at my last blog, I’m more than a little surprised at my positive outlook. I spent the second half of my vacation even deeper in the pain cave than I started. There were highlights—it was still a vacation, and my first one with my first child—but overall it was a slog. I need a vacation from my vacation, and not for any of the fun reasons.

I got my first decent night of sleep in a while last night. It was amazing to be back in my own bed. I can tell I’m on the mend, but I still skipped my run this morning.

I’ve skipped a lot of runs lately. I’ve run a grand total of two miles since my last post, and they sucked.

That really sucks.

I’m trying hard to balance running against everything else going on in my life, and for the first time in a while I can feel it going wobbly, and for the first time in even longer I’m wondering if I can do this at all.

Kid, wife, job, house. Daycare. Chores. Family obligations. Running. Running blog. Who has the time? My wife and I can barely get a minute in front of the TV together. I’m supposed to BQ?

At the same time, I ran my fastest 5 miles since college a month ago. Even last week, before daycare germs and a sleep regression and a hard foam mattress and no air conditioning left me feeling hopeless (and hopelessly tired), I was looking up. I’m still thinking about signing up for a half marathon in five weeks—as a tune-up. Somewhere under the murky surface of the present moment, something is still working.

Or I’m delusional, but you know me by now; I’m not usually confident enough to pull off delusional.

What I am is of two minds. Is running at this level at this stage in my life impossible, or is it already happening? Should I be patient, or should I be realistic?

Two wolves: determination and despair. It’s gonna be the one I feed.

Time to get some sleep.

Last week was my son’s first week at daycare, and my wife’s first week back at work, which meant new routines for all of us. For me, that meant an earlier wakeup to run and be ready in time for daycare drop-off.

Even when my wife took on drop-off duties, I still got up early. It felt good to start my day ahead of schedule, and to be available to help with the morning send-off, and to beat the summer heat. This was working great for me! I could have it all!

Or, I could have if I had slept enough. I didn’t change my bedtime to match my new morning alarm, and I paid dearly for it. Over the course of five days, I wrote a series of checks my body couldn’t cash and hit the weekend like Wile E Coyote hitting the bottom of an Arizona canyon. Yikes!

This is not my first time overtraining. It’s not even my first time overtraining since my son was born. But it sucks every time.

I’m writing this from my family vacation upstate, and I had aspirations of kick-starting my summer mileage once I got out here. Instead I’ve spent a lot of the first two days with my feet up and my nose in a John Scalzi book. I feel like a Victorian housewife convalescing in the countryside after a “nervous episode”.

And at the same time I feel so energized. Our new routine, though challenging—imagine being on an F1 pit crew for a six-month-old baby—was clicking. Work was clicking; I honestly wish I could write an explainer for the cool problem I’ve been tackling because I’m genuinely excited about it. I was so fired up to pour myself into summer. I still am. I just have to wait.

Fortunately, there are worse places to wait.

Today was my son’s first day of daycare, which you think would mean I was less busy today than normal, but you would be wrong. Thankfully, I have had a post under glass for months, for just such an occasion. Please enjoy this essay about birding while running.

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“What do you think about when you’re running?”

Anyone who runs has probably heard this question at some point in their life, and everyone has their own answer. It’s a fair question; running certainly gives you a lot of time alone with your thoughts. Everyone has their own answer for this, too.

For decades, music has been running’s favorite tandem activity, though podcasts and audiobooks have recently moved in on that turf. As long as you stay aware of your surroundings, these are all great ways to pass your time out on the roads. If you like to keep your ears open and find your thoughts getting too loud for comfort, though, you may be at a loss.

Thankfully, I have a solution: birding.

Birding is a wonderful hobby by itself, but birding while running supercharges both activities simultaneously.

My wife and I got into birds as a hobby on our honeymoon in Hawaii a few years ago. It was the longest time we had spent together outside our native Northeast US biome, and we were fascinated by all the new birds we saw. As an aside, we were also fascinated by the familiar birds we saw there—neither of us expected to see pigeons on a picturesque beach in Maui, but there they were.

My wife loved the common mynas that flocked around our hotel, with their stylish yellow eyeliner. I would go running in the mornings and share my sightings over breakfast; my favorite spot was a feeder in Lahaina that routinely attracted a flock of Java sparrows. When we drove the Road to Hana, we were greeted on the far side of the island by chestnut munias, and it felt like an extra reward for making the trip.

My wife and I came home from Hawaii as birders, and that practice has transformed my running.

The Merlin app, by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, was invaluable for learning the names of all the unfamiliar birds I saw in Hawaii. It is a Pokédex for birds. It is also Shazam for birds, identifying them by sound as well as sight. I never stopped using the app when I got home, and it felt like meeting the birds I’d known my whole life for the first time.

I’ve learned that each song sparrow interprets the music given to him a little differently, so you should listen for the voice and not the melody. Blue jays, being corvids like crows and ravens, are also surprisingly vocally versatile—and one of the few colorful birds you’ll still see in winter!

I’ve learned the difference between crows and ravens: mainly, it’s size. You know when you’ve seen a raven because it’s big. If you get to hear it, there’s no mistaking.

Unlike lots of other local birds, robins do dig for worms, though I suppose it’s the earlier ones who actually get them. I love when I spot one having a successful hunt. Good job, little guy!

Starlings sound like R2D2. Cardinals sound like sci-fi lasers. If you’re an idiot, like me, you might confuse a robin call for the less common northern flicker and get your hopes up. Catbirds are unmistakable, though—they sound like cats.

Learning your local birds brings them into focus. Suddenly that foraging flock in the park isn’t just “birds”. If you’re me at the local track in the early springtime, it’s robins and juncos. By the pond it’s  duck, duck, goose, and the anticipation that maybe I’ll see a heron or an egret too. One time I saw a double-crested cormorant. Seeing uncommon birds feels like hitting a winning lotto ticket, even if it’s a $5 scratch-off prize in the form of a red-tailed hawk flying particularly low.

From goldfinches to grackles, I could go on and on about all the birds I’ve seen running. I saw a bald eagle near my in-laws’ house in central Jersey. That was a jackpot.

It can be so easy to treat your well-worn loops and routes like a treadmill: familiar, repetitive, boring, rote. Just something you have to do while you’re waiting for your next workout. Birding lets every run surprise you—sometimes just a little, and sometimes a whole lot. Maybe you hear a mockingbird practicing its repertoire, or you see a bird you haven’t seen in a while, or you see a bird you’ve never seen in person before, or you see a bird you’ve never seen at all. Remember to look it up on Merlin when you get home!

Besides the fact that you can do both outside, running and birding have something else in common that makes them great partners. Running and birding both create pride of place. Your local birds and your local running routes are special because they’re yours. When you take the time to know them and treat them like they’re special, it feels like having a bigger house. Having lived in this corner of Essex County for ten years, I’ve run a lot of streets, seen a lot of birds, and met a lot of people. My house feels pretty big.

I’m not saying running or birding will make you a better member of your community, but they certainly could.

What I am saying is that running and birding are two great hobbies that get better together. I would even say that doing both kills two birds with one stone, but that seems against the spirit of the post.

Turn your next easy run into a bird outing. See what you find.

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The island of Maui, while beloved by honeymooners, is far more importantly home to over 160,000 people, and that home was ravaged by wildfires just a few months after my wife and I returned from our trip. Recovery is ongoing.

The Maui County government maintains a website for community organization and resources called Maui Nui Strong, and it includes a list of charitable organizations responding to the continuing needs of wildfire victims.

While I was struggling to stay on the cross country team in college, I also took a few classes in creative writing, and a couple of those were in poetry. I don’t write as much as I’d like—or, I don’t write well as often as I’d like—but every once in a while an idea pops up and I have to (pardon me) run with it.

Given that my readership is so small, and I have little else to post this week, I think I’ll share something that came to me this afternoon:

Untitled

If Boston was the cradle of our country,
it grew into her teenage bedroom:
rowdy and aspirational,
moody and cold—
a walled garden
of perfect essays and SAT scores,
an underdog,
cursed by Bambino,
redeemed by Papi,
saved by Meb,
sainted by Des.
The last stop for everyone
who will never make the Olympics,
which is everyone,
give or take.

I skip my run this morning and do the dishes,
water the plants,
fix coffee in our remodeled kitchen
(but not by us);
gray skies over Jersey.
It’s mornings like these I stop sweating
and count my luck:
a morning without Boston,
without obsession,
allowing myself to age for a moment
before I continue
the remodel of the last half-decade.
I’ve gotta get to Boston
so I can enjoy more mornings like this
in peace.

I’ve gotta get to Boston
because that’s where it started,
and that’s where it ends:

We begin again with our hero in Jersey,
the Hero’s Journey completed—
swords into plowshares
into birdhouses
and herb gardens and preschool.
A chickadee fledges,
forages, furrows its brow,
burrows into mother.
Gray skies overhead,
weather that could always be something else:
hot, humid, static.
Static on the TV screen
moving endlessly,
shifting, waiting
for the latest prestige dramedy to drop
and binge.
This one’s about family,
the one on the couch,
shoes on the rack,
medal on the mantle,
head on the pillow.
I set my alarm;
run tomorrow.

See you next week.

This past Thursday was the Sunset Classic 5-miler in Bloomfield. My employer partly sponsors this race, so we always get a group together from work to run and share a pizza dinner afterward. It’s also a big draw for the local running community, with several clubs showing up in large numbers. Between my local running friends and my coworkers, it’s a fun night of familiar faces all gathered around my most precious hobby. What’s not to like?

Coming off the birth of my son earlier this year and the few months of uncomplicated training (and increased stress levels) that followed, I was apprehensive about this year’s race. In my last post, I wrote about the 30:56 I ran at Sunset 2023 as a possible benchmark, with my post-collegiate 5-mile best of 30:23 as an afterthought for a potential A-plus day. As the race got closer, setting up these goalposts almost felt like a mistake, as I had no idea what kind of shape I was in and had now given myself something to live up to. General apprehension turned into the specific, steady background hum of anxiety.

I tried to simplify: by the time the gun went off, my only goals were to get out in 6:15 for the first mile, get to the top of Sunset Ave without overextending myself, and see what happened after that.

What happened after that was I ran 29:51, which is the fastest I’ve run over that distance since I ran 8K (close enough) in 27:58 as a junior on my college cross country team. That was in 2011.

As I reflect on the race, I have several questions, and several plausible answers.

How did I misjudge my fitness by this much?

While I knew deep down I’d love to break 30 minutes on the Sunset course, I assumed that would be a goal for 2026 at best. Here, I was nervous about blowing up completely trying to break 31. Why was I so worried?

My first guess is I underestimated the impact of all the hill workouts I ran over the last several months, as well as the strides and strength work I put in. It wasn’t much, but I suppose it was more than doing nothing. I just thought it was closer to nothing than what I ended up getting out of it.

Also, Dad Strength is real. My shoulders and chest felt much better after five months of lugging my son around than they did when I was an office worker with no kids and no strength routine.

Speaking of my son, I think he was a big reason why I was keeping my expectations low. I didn’t want to be too aggressive and set myself up to fail (a mistake I nonetheless made right out of the gate). I didn’t want to strain against my new circumstances trying to do something I could try again at next year—but I also assumed that if I did strain, the circumstances would overpower me. Even with strong workouts coming in almost every week, I listened to that fear instead of the data.

It wasn’t just fear that I couldn’t be a dad and a runner at the same time, either. Thirty minutes is a nice round number, one I haven’t broken since I was in college and in close to the shape of my life. I like a nice round number when I’m changing the volume on my TV, or calculating the tip at a restaurant, but when running I find them intimidating. Round numbers ask questions of you. So, you think you’re a sub-30 guy?

Turns out I am, but I didn’t believe it on the starting line. Which raises the next question:

How did I run so much faster than expected despite my lack of confidence?

The short answer here is an unusually strong mental performance, but I want to elaborate because I finally noticed and put a name to a few things after this race.

First, I went into the race with a simple, action-oriented plan that made it easy to maintain a flexible and resilient racing mentality out on the course. The best races I have had over the last few years—my 4:58 mile in 2023 and my 2:52 marathon in Rehoboth come to mind, as well as this one—went as well as they did because I gave myself simple instructions: “compete more,” or “be patient,” or, in the case of Sunset, “go out in 6:15, climb the hill, and see what happens.”

People who talk about performance talk a lot about process-oriented goals, rather than outcome-oriented ones. Maybe I’m learning this a bit late at 33 years old, but they really do work.

There was something else I noticed about the instructions I gave myself on Thursday, the ones after I’d gotten to the “see what happens” part of the race plan. My self-talk was patient and gentle: “stay right here,” “don’t force it.” Maybe it’s me, but I always imagine the self-talk of a personal-best performance will sound like something out of Rocky.

That’s not to say I didn’t have moments where I was aggressive—namely, at the tops or bottoms of hills and other places on the course where I was naturally tempted to slow down, I looked at the runners ahead of me and stepped on the gas. It was important to keep going. After I got back up to pace, the gentle talk would return: “that’s enough,” “just keep rolling.”

If I were in a worse headspace, I might have panicked about the pace being too hot. Instead, I was calm and open-minded. “See what happens” left me a lot of room to work.

While it felt like a mistake leading up to the gun, setting a few different time goals also gave me a lot of room to work. I knew after three miles that I was going to blow past my course best. I knew after four that I was going to beat my post-collegiate best. It wasn’t until maybe four and a half miles that I really seriously considered pushing for sub-30. I think if that had been my goal from the beginning, I wouldn’t have made it.

With only 8 seconds to spare, I likely also wouldn’t have made it if the weather hadn’t been extremely favorable for a late-June evening race. After hitting the high nineties just a few days earlier, temperatures were in the low seventies by gun time. There was a light breeze. The humidity was tolerable—a miracle for summer in Jersey. Simply put, I will likely never have a night like that for the Sunset Classic ever again.

I’m glad I put myself in the best possible position to capitalize.

How should I adjust my goals for the future?

For the first time since 2011, I am once again a sub-30 guy. It feels really good. Now, I’m thinking about where I’m going from here.

Five miles in 29:51 is worth about 18:05 for 5K and 2:53-low for the marathon, according to VDOT. I’d love to be running 17:30 and 2:49, so this doesn’t move the needle much on pure numbers, but we can look at how I’ve run in the past to see what this might be worth for me, specifically.

In 2023, I ran a 2:57 marathon in April, 30:56 at Sunset in June, and a 4:58 mile in July. Taking a minute off that 5-mile time has me feeling good about those other two distances. It has me thinking I’ve lost far less fitness than I expected since Rehoboth and the birth of my son. If I spend the summer building mileage, how far can I go from here? Is a sub-80 half marathon (6:05 pace) possible by fall? Am I on track for sub-2:50 (6:29 pace) by next spring?

I guess we’ll see what happens.

After a mild May and a cool and rainy start to June, the first heat wave of summer is here. Heaven help us all.

Right now, the forecast for my race this week is favorable, but it’s on the other side of several days of high-90s temperatures with feels-like-the-inside-of-a-dishwasher humidity and absolutely no wind. I spent a brief 45 minutes mowing the lawn around 7 this morning and came inside dripping. After sitting in the office parking lot all day, my car thought it was 109 degrees at quitting time. We’re in the shit.

My plan is to cut back even more than I had originally planned in the run-up to Sunset, and let the heat make up the difference in training stimulus. I will not be doing any more than a half-hour jog each day between now and Thursday, and even that looks like a lot of work from where I’m sitting. With any luck, the heat dome will lift and I will feel like the first day of fall on the sixth day of summer.

This weekend I met up with some friends for a workout, which is always better than going alone. These guys have made a summer tradition of weekend tempos that get one mile longer every week. This week was five miles. Joining them for the whole workout would have meant racing five miles five days before racing five miles at Sunset, so I rode the bus to halfway and called it a day.

In the future I hope I can join them for more. I have been quietly wanting to feel ready to race a half marathon by the fall, and that is exactly the kind of workout that can get me there. Right now I need to weather the heat dome, stay fresh, run Sunset like a fall breeze (briskly), and let the last few months of training soak in.

After that, bring on the summer miles. Just please spare me the heat.

The Boston Athletic Association gifted me a lead-in to this week’s blog when they imposed a new rule for downhill marathons starting with the 2027 qualifying window.

These have always been a small and weird corner of the qualifier pool, so I don’t expect the impact on qualifying times to be large, but it does feel more “fair” to know there is some sort of standard for Boston-eligible courses. If the Olympic Trials and the Olympic Games have a limit on net downhill for qualifying times, surely it makes sense for the “People’s Olympics” to do the same (and for that limit to be much less stringent, at 1,500 feet).

I’ll be very curious to see what local runner and data cruncher Brian Rock has to say about this. Brian has made a name for himself online predicting the Boston cutoff time the last several years. He, and others like him, have made it much easier for me personally to prepare for the emotions of the September application window; I knew my 2:53:45 had a shot in 2024, but not a good one, and I know my 2:52:48 this year is in no way fit to travel. I expect Rock will look into the impact of downhill races on the cutoff time, and I will take anything he has to say on that pretty seriously.

In the meantime, I’m just trying to get through another week of training toward a five-mile race later this month. Here’s how I’m doing:

Sunday: 8 miles easy at the beach. I ended up stuck at the drawbridge leaving Belmar and made some conversation with a few runners, who I wound up yapping with for the next two miles.

Running is absolutely great for this. It’s similar to the experience I have skiing—people are in a good mood because they’re doing something they enjoy, and you’re doing the same thing, so you’re also in a good mood and you have something in common right away. And running is way cheaper than skiing!

Monday: 3 miles easy.

Tuesday: 7 miles easy with strides. I have been adding distance to my Tuesday and Thursday runs to bulk up my weekly totals. So far so good.

Wednesday: Hill repeats. I added two more repeats to my usual set this week and slowed them down to simulate how I’ll run the hills at the Sunset Classic later this month. The slightly slower pace made a huge difference in how I felt, and I was still able to send the last rep as fast as any I’ve done in a shorter set. I’m really enjoying seeing the effect that hills and strides have had on my running these past few months. It’s starting to raise my expectations for Sunset.

Thursday: 7 miles easy. I was sorer than usual from the hills the day before and the extra mileage this week.

Friday: 4 miles easy with strides. Still sore.

Saturday: 3 x 1 mile at tempo pace (6:01, 5:59, 5:55) with 1 minute rest. This went really well thanks to the weather, which has taken a turn for the cooler lately. The fact that I’m hitting these times while stretching out my mileage has me thinking seriously about a personal best at the Sunset Classic.

In 2023, I came off my first sub-3 marathon in April to set a ten-second personal best over the five-mile Sunset Classic course that June. I finally ran the hilly course correctly (read: conservatively), and I had a lot left over the final miles. I felt great.

My workouts in 2023 didn’t indicate that I was in any special kind of shape, but I put it together on race day for a really pleasant surprise. My workouts this summer have me several steps ahead of where I was two years ago, even having to rebuild after my son was born, so I am now trying to decide what my goals should be. I have two times in mind:

1. 30:56 (personal best for this course)
2. 30:23 (best five-mile performance since college, set in 2018)

The big question underlying this exercise is how much endurance I still have after running mostly low mileage since December. I ran 30:56 off the strength of a marathon block, with middling workouts on the track. I ran 30:23 on a flatter course, in cooler (read: freezing cold) conditions, seven years ago, off less mileage and more speed. How does 2025 compare to either of those?

I’ve decided, at the very least, that I want to give myself the best chance possible of finding out. I’ll be dialing back the mileage just a bit until the race; the past two weeks at 40-plus have been encouraging, but tiring. I’m going to sharpen up, full send at Sunset, and regroup for some bigger mileage this summer.