Author: theDNF

My 18-week training block for the Jersey City Marathon starts today. According to the 18/70 plan from Pete Pfitzinger’s Advanced Marathoning, today is a rest day. After a rough week at work that was also spent frantically preparing to host a few friends for a Christmas party, I will take it!

It was hard for me to get on board with taking the day off. I didn’t run on Saturday or Sunday either; Saturday I needed every minute to get my house ready for guests to arrive, and Sunday I was sleeping off the party, shoveling snow, and getting the house back to normal for the week ahead. I definitely wasn’t idle! Still, another day without a run feels icky.

That icky feeling is probably anxiety. I don’t feel as prepared for this training block as I thought I would feel when I signed up for the race a few months ago. I wanted to show up having fully regained my 2:52 form from last December; I don’t have the mileage in my legs to confidently say that I have, and I don’t have the race results either. Here’s what I do have:

• A new post-collegiate 5-mile best from June
• A sixty-mile week from October
• An 84:52 half, run conservatively off of illness and injury, from November
• A recent wholehearted adoption of cross-training
• A plan

The way I see it (or that I’m trying to see it) is that I may not be showing up as a race-ready 2:52 guy, but that I may not need to be, either—that’s what the training block is for. An under-trained but experienced runner, with some recent successes and pleasant surprises at shorter distances, who is ready to do the extra work at the margins, is someone you can bet on.

It’s who I’m betting on.

So I’m resting today. I’m trusting my plan and my body and I’m resting. The big work starts tomorrow with a four-mile tempo—probably on the treadmill, after the snow we just had—and some core exercise. I’m ready to show up and see what happens.

Sunday: 12 miles. I tried to run this like another Pfitz MLR but ran out of gas around 8 miles and jogged it in. I wrote on Strava that I needed better sleep and more patience. I’ve been working on sleep again, and as far as patience goes I’m planning to slow down my training paces to start this block.

Pfitz bases all aerobic work from recovery to long runs on marathon pace, which I’ve been assuming is 6:30 because that’s my goal. However, I’m not that guy right now, so I’m going to move the goalposts to 6:40—2:55 pace. That gives just enough wiggle room on my other paces that I think I’ll be able to handle Pfitz’s training better.

Monday: Day off. After bonking on my long run, and knowing that my training plan sets aside Mondays for recovery, I thought this was a good idea.

Tuesday: 7 miles. Did a core routine out of Advanced Marathoning in the afternoon. It went pretty well, except I noticed some imbalances that I’ll have to work to correct over the next few months. This was to be expected seeing as I hadn’t done any core since April!

Wednesday: 8 miles at MLR effort. Not as many miles as I wanted because I ran out of time, but I felt good. I also did some strength work in the afternoon, also out of Advanced Marathoning. I was sore for a few days after this, but in a good way. I need to be doing this more, and I plan to.

Thursday: 7 easy with 30 minutes on the bike at lunch.

Friday: Another 7 easy. I had the day off from work today, so I also did some yardwork that was long overdue. My neighbor has a massive oak tree, and my yard was piled with weeks’ worth of leaves. This was more of a workout than I expected, but I’m glad I got it done.

Saturday: Party prep. No run.

This Week: 41 miles. Not what I expected for this week, but I had a lot of life stuff to work around, and still got some gym work and cross-training in. I’ve been telling myself the last few weeks that this build is not going to be pretty. There are going to be a lot of hurdles in the way. My success will depend on my ability to shuffle out of bed when it’s really early and I’m warm and sleepy, to sneak off to bed when I’d rather stay awake, and to make the training fit when I’m busy with important things. None of this comes naturally to me, but I’m working on it and getting better at it. If I can say the same about my running in a few months, that’s not a bad place to be.

Baby: My son has had a busy week! He spent the night of the Christmas party with Grandma and Grandpa, which was a treat for all of them—not to mention my wife and I! But we missed him, and we were glad to have our chicken home to roost on Sunday. I built a fire and we all sat together and watched it and listened to Christmas music. After a really chaotic week, it was good to slow all the way down and enjoy our first Christmas season as a family of three.

He also learned to pull himself up, which meant I was racing to lower his crib before bed on Sunday night! It has been incredible to watch him take to another new skill so quickly over the last day or so, after trying and trying without any luck for the last month or more. He’s been growing up just like that John Green quote: slowly, and then all at once, over and over again.

My training block for the 2026 Jersey City Marathon is starting soon, and I just finished reading the relevant chapters of Pete Pfitzinger’s Advanced Marathoning to get ready. I think I will be following the 18/70 plan. If everything had gone perfectly this year, I would have loved to push for the 18/85, but I had too many setbacks to make that realistic.

As it stands, I am not even certain the 18/70 is realistic. After trying a “medium long run” this week, I’m starting to worry about the intensity of Pfitzinger’s training plans. I was able to handle a MLR on Thursday, but the recovery from it was hard; I ended up taking Saturday off this week and still came apart on my long run the next day. Marathon training was already going to be a balancing act as a new dad. Choosing the wrong plan could make it even harder.

I have to be certain that Pfitz, well, fits.

I’m fortunate to have a sort of built-in “trial period” owing to the plan’s 18-week duration. I usually schedule a 16-week block, for no reason other than that’s how long I trained for my first marathon, so I can always pivot to something I’m more comfortable with if Pfitz absolutely destroys me over the first two weeks. I’ll commit to following the plan as written to start, and reassess then.

I want to be able to follow the 18/70 plan to the end because the ideas behind it make a lot of sense: your long run and medium long run are the most important days of the week, with tempo days next in importance and hills and intervals as gravy. It’s easy to recover from a tempo run, so the MLR is done the very next day to stack important work and leave more time to freshen up for the long run.

The long runs are hard as hell, though, building up to 14 miles at goal marathon pace within a 20-mile run. It’s tough to get three quality days done in a week, but what happens when one of your quality days is that? My goodness.

In theory, if done properly, the plan will have me ready just in time for each big workout as it comes. In practice, a lot of runners can attest that this is true. But in my experience, I have no experience with this plan whatsoever. More than ever before, we will have to see what happens.

Sunday: 4 easy with my “long run” group. Didn’t have much more in the legs after my race the day before. Nice to get out there and be social before getting back to the workweek.

Monday: 4 very easy, plus 30 minutes on the bike at lunch.

Tuesday: 7 easy. Found a “Your Speed” sign that was sensitive enough to report my running speed. This is the dream.

Wednesday: 7 easy. Sleep was a problem this week and I started to feel it here. I sprinted past that speed sign today, but a car was going by at the same time just like in that scene from The Office. Bike at lunch.

Thursday: 10, in an attempt at a Pfitzinger-style “medium long run.” I ran the last 6 at sub-7-minute pace and felt pretty good. Was tired afterward, though.

Friday: 5 very easy. Realized today I wasn’t sleeping enough to recover from the half plus Thursday’s uptempo effort.

Saturday: Realized today I just didn’t want to run, so I didn’t. That’s when I know I’m too tired.

This Week: 37 miles. I need to be doing more than this, even considering my recovery needs after the half. I just didn’t sleep enough to give this my best shot. I will be thinking about this headed into next week, and soon into the start of my training block.

Baby: My son was home sick today after a brief fever on Sunday. His mom gamely stayed home to watch him so I could go to work and stay on top of some deadlines coming up. He hates naps, so this was not a super fun assignment, but they made the most of it. They both were in good spirits when I got home with a rotisserie chicken for dinner.

We brought him along to pick out our Christmas tree this weekend, and now it is fully (and beautifully) decorated. It hasn’t quite taken over his imagination yet, but we know it will; the puppy gates should be here tomorrow.

The week of Thanksgiving is a busy and important time for all of us, but it is especially so for runners. Thanks to the popularity of turkey trots, Thanksgiving is the only holiday where you can wake up early to go for a run, and people treat you like you’re only a little crazy.

Thanksgiving is also one of the rare times when nearly every runner in town will be at the same race, and that race is also likely one of a small handful you might run every single year. The competition—against the field, and against your many younger selves—is fierce. The weather is… well, at least you can bet it won’t be too hot. What’s not to love about a turkey trot?

For many years, my Thanksgiving race was the Rockland Road Runners Turkey Trot in Congers, NY. My grandma lived in nearby New City and hosted Thanksgiving dinner every year, so most years I would stay overnight, run the trot, and come back to help set up for the holiday. By chance, my high school and college team captains were both regulars at the race too, which meant I always had a friendly face to turn to in the thousands-strong crowd.

From 2010 until 2018, I ran the trot six times. Looking back at my results now, a lot of things stand out to me.

Sitting here ten years on, I suddenly remember my college captain texting me when I missed 2012. It was my senior year; I had been cut from the team the previous winter and I hadn’t run since. I showed up for 2013.

I don’t even remember running my course best in 2010, but I sure as hell remember falling a few seconds short of it in frigid conditions in 2018. A lot changed in those eight years. I tucked into bed one Thanksgiving night as a kid going through the motions, and woke up another Thanksgiving morning as a working adult with the goal to run a marathon someday. I’m much more proud of 2018.

I won an age group medal in 2018, and so did my college captain. He left before the medals were handed out, so I held onto his. Despite a few attempts to log some miles together over the years, I still haven’t gotten it to him. I think about it every Thanksgiving.

I also think about my grandma. I stopped running that turkey trot after 2018 because that was the year she passed away.

My grandma was a lifelong athlete. I have some track medals from her school days tucked away somewhere, but I didn’t know about them until she passed. What I remember was how she joined us for a ski trip every year, well into her seventies and well into her cancer diagnosis. It’s maybe more accurate to say we joined her; she regularly skied 30 or more days a year.

She played tennis too, and swam laps to stay in shape for ski season. At 69, she completed her first triathlon. She became the kind of athlete who won her age group just by showing up.

My grandma was really good at showing up: ski trips, birthdays, graduations, a random summer trip to the Ben & Jerry’s factory, and more than her fair share of high school track meets. She was always there, always interested in us, always listening, always kind.

She spent three years dying of cancer and lived every minute of them. She made amazing stuffing every Thanksgiving. She was one of the most incredible people I will likely ever know.

Because of my grandma, and my friends, those turkey trots will always live close to my heart in a way few other races can. People (myself included) talk about Boston and other big races like the high holy days of the running calendar, but there may be no more sacred day for runners than Thanksgiving—our day to shine, our day to share, our day to sweat and suffer and smile, together.

For the first time since 2018, I ran a race over Thanksgiving weekend. Time will tell whether this is a new tradition, but right now I am so, so thankful for it.

Sunday: Needed a day off after a big comeback week last week.

Monday: 7, a little quicker than my usual easy day but I felt good. Took a detour from my usual route which was nice.

Tuesday: 4 easy. My low iron worries were starting to get to me today, and my run suffered a little for it. Bike at lunch was also a little off.

Wednesday: 4 easy, and much better.

Thursday: Took Thanksgiving off. It’s a little tricky to run on the years we’re with my in-laws because of all the travel, and with the baby in the picture now I figured I would save the hassle. Next year we’ll be more local, so I’m hoping to get back to a proper trot in 2026.

Friday: 3-mile shake-out for the NCR Half. Jogged to Falls Road Running Store to pick up my bib, and was a little thrown off by how downhill it was to get there. This turned out to be good mental preparation for Saturday, even if it might have been a little more physically costly than I wanted the day before a race.

Saturday: I ran the NCR Half Marathon in 84:52, good for eleventh place and first in my age group. This is technically a half marathon PR for me, though I probably ran about the same or slightly faster in some stretch of the 2024 Jersey City Marathon. That’s a slightly unfair comparison, so all things considered I’m still very happy with the race.

As I wrote last week, I had no idea what to expect, so I set a lot of really loose goals and told myself I’d see what happened. Having my brother-in-law, who was also running the half, there with me helped keep the mood light.

The race started with over 100 feet of elevation loss in the first mile, which was a shock to the system. As everyone’s paces started to settle down on flat ground, I found myself a group and tucked in. We hit the second mile in about 6:40, which was faster than I thought I’d be going, but I felt fine.

The great thing about longer races is you can talk to people. Here, I met Connor, who was planning to make a push at mile 3 or so. I figured the worst that could happen was I might eventually have to back off, so I went with him. We spent the next few miles chatting it up at 6:30 pace. So far so good!

Connor was a great running buddy, but eventually we realized I was feeling better than him and he encouraged me to push ahead. As soon as I did, I felt how different it was to be running that fast alone. While we were running together, I was shouting support for other runners as we passed them coming back from the turnaround. Once I was alone, I shut the hell up. I needed to focus.

Fortunately, I had something to focus on; there was a runner just a little ahead of me, and I was gaining. Suddenly I was ticking down toward 6:20 pace. It was getting harder now, but I still felt good. By mile 10 I pulled even.

I spent the next three miles trying to run away from this guy, but he stuck to me like glue. In the quiet of the woods I could hear every footstep. At times it was all I could hear. I kept pushing.

With a quarter mile to go, those footsteps crept up alongside me and darted off into the distance. I didn’t let it dampen my spirits, and kicked home to the finish. My wife was waiting for me.

I waited at the finish to congratulate Connor, who ran a huge PR himself, and some of the other runners I met on the course, and then my brother-in-law. The atmosphere at the finish line was perfect: crisp and clear and cozy, a pleasant merry buzz in the air. Everyone was friendly and having a good time. Cheesesteaks were waiting for our crew at home.

There really is nothing like a turkey trot.

This Week: 31 miles and a solid half marathon! If I can run two of those by April, I’ll get the 2:49 I’ve been after since Rehoboth. I’m currently reading Advanced Marathoning and looking forward to the work.

Baby: My son had his first Thanksgiving, and it did not disappoint. Dinner was a huge hit—he had turkey, stuffing, applesauce, and sweet potato, but mashed potatoes were his favorite! Our family had a lot of fun doting over him, and he was happy to be doted upon. On Saturday, he had a great time with his grandma while my wife and I were at the race.

I know how special this is.

I am running again! As I wrote last time, it’s amazing what a difference it makes to be exercising regularly again. The difference is even clearer when I can finally resume my exercise of choice. I am feeling even closer to my old self.

That said, I kept up some light biking this week, as promised. I really want to keep up this habit through my upcoming marathon block. I’ve done my last few blocks on a similar template, and it feels like time to shake things up.

To that end, I’m also ordering a copy of Pete Pfitzinger’s Advanced Marathoning. I’ve been a Daniels follower since I got back into running after college, but I’ve heard plenty about others’ successes with “Pfitz” programs and I’m curious. I’ll be hitting the books these next couple weeks to put a plan together before training officially starts.

In other news, I got a call from the doctor with results from the blood tests I took at my sick visit last month. My iron is seriously low!

The confusing and frustrating thing is I feel fine. Iron deficiency has a reputation for causing extreme fatigue, like stuck-in-bed fatigue. I finished a 60-mile week right before I took that blood test, and I did that on top of all my other responsibilities as a husband, father, and employee. My energy levels leave a lot to be desired in the absolute sense, but for someone in my position I think I’m doing pretty well!

I have a referral to a hematologist, and I’m trying not to worry in the meantime about how little sense this makes to me. Low iron affects a small but meaningful percentage of endurance athletes, and treatment is easy and effective. I am hoping that I could even feel like a whole new man after a transfusion next month, but I’m also hoping that low iron is all I’m dealing with. Doctor Google has been a poor consult.

In light of my results, I’m thinking even harder about how to approach my half marathon this weekend. I already knew a while ago that I wouldn’t be racing it up to my usual standards, but now I need to manage the fact that my blood is an ongoing question mark. My iron was low a month ago, and my previous blood test was at least five years ago, so I have no idea what my results might look like today. Is my hemoglobin still normal? Or am I about to hit a wall like none I’ve ever felt before when I run this half?

My plan is to be very conservative this week and at the race. If I can turn it into a decent progression long run, that would be a win. After that, I’ll keep running and biking easy until my appointment with the hematologist. I think I’ll be getting an iron transfusion then which should put a lot of worries to bed.

If all goes well, that will be just in time for my marathon block to start.

Sunday: 5 miles. Felt rusty, with little aches and pains and plenty of awkwardness. The first run back is always a little weird.

Monday: 6 miles in the morning, which still felt awkward. 30 minutes easy on the bike at lunch.

Tuesday: 7 miles, still feeling bad. Knew right then I’d be cutting back on Wednesday. 30 minutes on the bike at lunch.

Wednesday: 4 very easy. Felt a cold coming on. 30 on the bike.

Thursday: 7 miles and finally feeling a bit better. Bike.

Friday: 7 again, tired.

Saturday: 5 with a friend on the local Turkey Trot course. The Ashenfelter 8K is a very well-loved (and competitive) race, but I still haven’t run it even after living in the area for the last ten years. I’m traveling for Thanksgiving this year, so maybe in 2026 I’ll finally get my mug.

This Week: 41 miles, plus two hours on the bike. Not bad for my first full week of running in over a month! Hitting the bike last week definitely set me up well here. Let that be a lesson to me about the power of cross-training!

Baby: My son is ten months old today! He is happy and healthy and so much fun, except when he is teething. He has been extremely cranky the past couple days, especially for him, so I’m hoping we have some new chompers to show for it soon. We are eagerly looking forward to his first Thanksgiving and, soon after, his first Christmas! It’s going to be a lot of fun sharing this special time of year with our special-est little boy.

After several weeks of downer blogs with little to report, I am finally starting to mount a comeback.

Last week’s resolution to hit the bike has already paid off handsomely. I can’t actually say yet how much difference it’s made in maintaining my fitness, but the intangibles alone have been worth it. It feels great to start your day by breaking a sweat. It’s even better when you can add to the physical work with some mental gymnastics, courtesy of Connections and Revealed and cryptograms and sudoku. After my time on the bike, I was more focused at work and home. I felt more in control of my day.

For the first time in about a month, I feel in control of my training again. I took another test run on Saturday, and while I could still feel some pain in my rib, it was very faint. I tried a more substantial run on Sunday with similar results, so I think I’m just about ready to go.

My plan is to ramp up my mileage over the next few weeks while keeping my biking regimen intact. I think cross-training will be really important as I approach higher mileage, making my peak weeks even bigger while adding low-risk volume to my recovery weeks. It adds a new way I can mix up the recipe and avoid getting overcooked or stale. I could even swap biking for PT exercises during recovery weeks to reinforce my body for the next upswing. As long as that workout time is already on the schedule, there are loads of possibilities.

I’m starting to feel excited about running again. In that sense, this month of illness and injury might have been a blessing in disguise, or at least it might have a silver lining. I’m fresh and motivated and about to start a marathon block. Maybe it would be better to be a little more fit right now, but that’s still a pretty good place to be.

After about two weeks of pain in my ribs (and no cold symptoms), I went back to the doctor to see why I’m still so sore. As it turns out, I sprained a rib during my illness. This will likely take at least another two weeks to feel better, and there isn’t much I can do about it. This was not welcome news.

Rather than worry over how little I can do for myself, I’ve been trying to take heart in the things I can avoid doing now that I know what’s going on. For two weeks I was massaging the area and stretching it out, like you would for a sore muscle, but this was probably making my pain worse. Since I stopped doing all that—and started a prescription-strength anti-inflammatory regimen—I’ve been feeling much better. The hardest lesson for an athlete to learn is that sometimes it’s better to do less.

I didn’t run this week. It’s hard to do much less than that. It’s hard to do, period. I’ve been missing the lighter mornings now that Daylight Savings Time has ended. I’ve been missing the fall weather and foliage. One of my workout buddies heard great horned owls at the park, and I missed that too. Instead I’ve been grunting and groaning through ordinary tasks and watching my Garmin race predictions tick dispiritingly upward. I’ve been feeling simultaneously restless and exhausted.

I thought about running on Saturday because I was feeling pretty good that day, but opted instead to catch up on some light yard work. Even blowing the leaves left me a little more sore than I’d like. Just trying to keep our house in order feels like it’s setting me back. How am I supposed to start running again? Seriously, can anyone spare a rib?

Out of desperation, I forced myself to run on Sunday and quickly regretted it. Breathing didn’t hurt, but I could feel a tug on my ribs with every step. The ligaments I injured are not ready for impact yet. I stopped after a mile and considered my options.

For a while I’ve been hoping that I was never more than a few days from getting back out on the roads. Now, I’ve barely run in the last month. I need to exercise. It is time for something different.

Today I went into the office specifically to use the gym on my lunch break. I rode an exercise bike for the first time since 2010, when I was a clueless college freshman battling chronic compartment syndrome flare-ups and ultimately recovering from surgery. I rode for an hour and focused on keeping my heart rate on the easy side of my usual running zones. I broke a sweat. It felt great. I’ll be back again tomorrow.

The most important moments in my training over the last several years, as I’ve been trying in earnest to qualify for Boston, have been the ones where I finally made a pivot. Things eventually stop working, and when that happens you need to stop and strategize instead of putting your head down and pushing through—because eventually that stops working too.

The best thing that happens in times like these is you add something new that makes the sum of your efforts greater than it was before. In the past, physical therapy was the whole-body rebuild I needed to finally approach higher mileage. Going to therapy (the other kind) helped me find an emotional balance that restored function and order to my daily routines. Maybe some extra time on the bike has secretly been the key to building volume in my busy new-dad life. Maybe my office gym is Free Real Estate.

Maybe that’s just the beginning.

As I write this, I haven’t run since Wednesday and I’m still struggling with pain in my ribs from last month’s chest cold. I thought, last week, that I’d have the chance to do some easy running while I waited for everything to heal, but that didn’t pan out.

I’m officially starting to freak out about the loss of fitness. Most of my October went up in smoke thanks to my illness and the injury that followed. It feels so stupid calling it an injury. I was running 50+ miles a week and hurt myself coughing too hard? Make it make sense!

But here I am. I couldn’t have picked a worse time to be such a diminished version of myself, as my wife recovers from several trips under the knife at the dermatologist, our son continues to need the full love and support that any nine-month-old demands, and we both still have to go to work and keep our house in order.

Mischief abounds in our house, as does separation anxiety, as do dirty dishes. Thankfully, Advil is in equally ample supply, but we’ve got our work cut out for us. My BQ is the last thing I should worry about this week, but I know I’ll make time for it (I’m blogging about it). I’m not one to miss out on a good worry.

Sunday: 8 miles, uncomfortable but OK. I really thought I could start building again from here. I was wrong, but I didn’t know it yet.

Monday: 4 miles, cranky and sore. Tried to do strides after, but the huffing and puffing between reps was painful so I stopped.

Tuesday: 4 miles, still sore. The rest of the day felt bad; I thought about taking a day off on Wednesday, but I didn’t want to give up just yet.

Wednesday: 3 miles, and felt awful the entire way. Should’ve trusted my gut.

Thursday: Struggled to sit up in bed without pain, no run.

Friday: See Thursday.

Saturday: See Friday.

This Week: 19 ill-advised miles. I felt worse at the end of this week than the beginning, with awful tightness and spasms in the morning that would make it hard to start each day, let alone run.

I’m really worried now about how long it will take to feel better. I can’t afford to put up numbers like this forever. I worked so hard to get back to marathon mileage this year, and I don’t want to lose that progress. I’m not even where I want to be yet to start my block for Jersey City.

Baby: My son is healthy as ever and unbothered. He is crawling very quickly now and intent on exploring our house. My wife and I are constantly learning what needs to be baby-proofed, and it turns out it’s almost everything. This guy is an Energizer bunny who hates naps. We’re lucky just to keep up.

We took him trick-or-treating on Halloween, even though he can’t eat sweets yet. He had fun grabbing candy at each stop, and I had fun holding him while he did it. I play a similar game around our house and I call it the crane game. It’s a hit with everyone except sometimes my wife, who doesn’t like seeing spices disappear off the counter!  (We put them back.)

The three of us ended up with an invitation to a neighbor’s house for their kids’ Halloween party, which was really kind of them and a great way to meet people from our block. Our son was a little awestruck by all the middle schoolers watching his every move, but everyone had a nice time! My wife and I got a preview of what our Halloweens could be like as our son grows up here, and we liked what we saw.

We also saw a lot of friends last weekend and this weekend, including their young kids who were so excited to play with our baby boy. He was chasing after the big kids every chance he got! He’ll be one of them before we know it.

I was finally—barely—well enough to run a little this week. While I may be back towards the sniffles side of the sickness spectrum, I’ve taken a lot of damage already that I’m still recovering from.

The muscles in my ribs have clearly been strained from coughing so hard and so often for over ten days; it hurts to take a deep breath, or to lift my child, or (especially) to cough, which I am still doing on occasion. Baby germs do not mess around. I haven’t been this sick in years.

My wife is maybe less ill than I am, but made up for it with some stitches courtesy of the dermatologist. Her physical activity—like lifting our son—will be limited for a time. We have been quite the pair! The phrase “my other half” has rarely been so accurate; together we are worth about one functional adult.

Our son is doing great, which is great, except handling an energetic infant in our condition has been a challenge. We simply cannot get well soon enough.

I have had to wrestle a lot this week with the anxiety of missing training time. Of course, there’s nothing you can do if you’re too sick to run, and until Thursday I was, but it’s hard not to think about the big goals I’ve set for myself and how they might be impacted while I’m laid up. I was just running 60 miles a week! What’s going to be left of me? Will it be enough?

I got a glimpse at an answer on Thursday (2 miles with my son in the stroller) and Friday (4 miles solo). My legs, as suspected, feel fresh and strong after some time off. I also feel a little clumsy, but I think I have the strength to get back to my target mileage soon.

The real question is whether I have the lungs to get back to my target paces before Thanksgiving, when I’ll be racing a half marathon. I don’t want a repeat of Mercer County, where I ran really poorly after a week of illness and fatigue, but it certainly looks set up that way right now.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot I can do about it. I can only listen to my body, take care of it, and hope it feels better soon.

I can also remind myself of all of that, and try not to despair. Jersey City is still almost six months away. I’ve come a really long way in the last six months, and the last several years, and I know I can keep going once I’m through this rough patch.

I tried a “long” run on Sunday, about 8 miles. It was uncomfortable, but doable, though my ribs are sore today. I honestly felt better while running than I did before or after. Is that The Secret? Just don’t stop running? I’ll survive on Advil and endorphins?

In the interest of not taking too much time off, that might just be my plan. Easy miles and supportive care until I can breathe pain-free. As always, we’ll see what happens.

I skipped last week’s blog for another bout of baby-induced illness, and I thought about skipping this one because my illness kept me from running for a full week. Still, I was doing some good running before I got sick, and it might help to remind myself of that as I get back into it:

Sunday (October 5): 14 miles, with an attempted fast finish that fizzled out after a mile and a half. Better than the week before.

Monday: 7 miles, slow.

Tuesday: 8 easy, but with stomach problems. Did some strides.

Wednesday: 8 miles with 5 x Raymond (1′ hill sprints) on about 3 minutes rest. It was raining, which made it slower, but I felt pretty good. Did some split squats and calf raises.

Thursday: 8 miles and feeling fit. This week I definitely noticed that my easy runs were taking less out of my legs. That resilience is the biggest missing piece in my fitness puzzle since my son was born, so to see it coming back into place is great for confidence. A lot more miles between now and April will seal the deal.

Friday: 4 x 1 mile at tempo pace (6:02 average) with 1 minute rest. I ran this on Friday instead of Saturday to make things easier with friends flying in for the weekend, and I was glad to see this performance with one fewer day since my last workout. I started a little slow, but finished quicker than I expected. Another example of resilience on the rise.

Saturday: 8 easy, but a little hot for a recovery day (~7:45 pace). Felt a little tired.

Sunday (October 12): 14, with the last 9 or 10 uptempo (~6:55 pace). This felt great.

Unfortunately, this is my last run to date! I woke up last Monday with a fever, chills, aches, and a deep hacking cough. I drifted the halls of my home for days like a shade with a bad case of phlegm. My wife also got sick, and together we drank enough tea to go through over a pound of honey in less than a week. My son had a very low fever for two days, which he barely noticed, and is now perfectly fine.

Looking back at this week, I am trying to remind myself that this kind of fitness doesn’t go away in a week, and I’ll probably benefit from a little time to rest. At the same time, my brother-in-law talked me into a half marathon over Thanksgiving which I’d like to feel ready for. So I’m a little tense.

This Week (October 5-11): 62 miles! This is real shit! We are getting there. I’ve set a goal to hit 70 by the end of the year. Even with this latest setback, I think I can get there by December and start my block for Jersey City with a big base to build on.

Baby: My son is working on his mobility after discovering crawling a few weeks ago and is progressing quickly. He seems to be paying less attention to his words and sounds right now, but I think that’s still cooking on the back burner: we get less da-da-da these days, but a smattering of other gibberish in its place. Just don’t ask him to repeat any of it.

Last weekend, right before we all got sick, he got a very special visit from our friends. My wife’s childhood friend and maid of honor flew her family, including her two-year-old daughter, out from Chicago to meet our favorite little guy. Time with old friends is always wonderful, but to watch our children playing together was a treat. Our “niece” is a huge fan of our son thanks to the photos and videos we’ve been sending, so they became very fast friends.

After that, there was a sudden surge in visits from the grandmas, which was a bank error very much in my son’s favor. At least one of us had a good week!

Here’s hoping next week there are more than that.

All one of my readers were likely devastated that I was feeling sick last night and had to go to bed without a blog—or maybe she was more upset to be left without a partner for our nightly TV and chores. As head writer, editor-in-chief, and CEO of the DNF, I would like to publicly apologize to my wife for going to bed at 8:30 PM. In industry jargon, I believe we’d say we regret the error.

I wouldn’t have apologized last week, because it was Sleep Week™️! Brought to you by Netflix.

This is only partly a joke. Netflix did indeed sponsor a week of better sleep for me, but not on purpose; they rented out the parking lot at my office complex for a film shoot. Meanwhile, management gave us the option to work from home, and I took it, which meant I could sleep in and run at lunch.

This could not have come at a better time. After a down week that didn’t feel all that restorative, a chance to catch up on recovery felt like a godsend. Furthermore, my son has been fighting a series of daycare colds for the past month, and trying so very hard to share them with me, and I could feel my immune system starting to strain under the load.

It’s Tuesday, and I just wrote that I was sick last night, so you can see how well that worked. Like the Infrastructure Week that inspired its name, Sleep Week™️ was trying to fix a lot of long-standing issues in a short amount of time. In a perfect world, every week would be Sleep Week™️, but here we are.

In addition to recapping my training this week, I will submit to the mortifying ordeal of sharing my sleep stats. I’ll also compare my sleep to the same week last year, when I was training for the Rehoboth Beach Marathon. How does my perfect sleep scenario as a new dad compare to an average week of marathon training as a childless yuppie? We’re going to find out together!

Sunday: Fell asleep at 11:27 PM. 7 hours and 3 minutes of sleep, 1 hour and 10 minutes awake. Not a good start!

Ran 14 miles, including a nice stretch on the Union Transportation Trail. The few times I’ve run this trail, I’ve run it too fast because it’s such a pleasant place to run. The last couple miles coming home were tough.

Monday: Fell asleep at 9:40 PM. 8 hours and 20 minutes asleep, 14 minutes awake. That’s more like it!

Ran 7 miles and felt bad.

Tuesday: Fell asleep at 10:35 PM. 8 hours and 2 minutes asleep, 5 minutes awake. I get to bed later when blogging is on my to-do list, but this isn’t so bad! Garmin even logged it as Excellent, with “optimal sleep stages,” so maybe blogging is good for sleep!

I initially wrote that last bit as a joke, but if you think about blogging as journaling, then maybe it’s at least possible? These are exactly the results we’re looking for from Sleep Week™️!

Ran 7 miles and felt much better, but hungry. An unforeseen trade-off to running before lunch.

Wednesday: Fell asleep at 10:20 PM. 6 hours and 17 minutes asleep, 28 minutes awake. I had to wake up early just this once and go to the office to meet some colleagues who were visiting from out of town. I could have done better getting to bed, but the AL Wild Card Series started Tuesday night. The Yankees lost, so I lost twice.

Ran 6 miles with some hill sprints. Threw up on the warmup and felt bad enough on the cooldown that I didn’t log as many miles as I wanted. Maybe I lost three times?

Thursday: Fell asleep at 9:58 PM. 8 hours and 11 minutes asleep, 28 minutes awake. Back on track!

Ran 7 miles in between a work function, which included a big lunch, and daycare pickup. This did not feel great.

Friday: Fell asleep at 10:58 PM. 8 hours and 9 minutes asleep, 4 minutes awake.

Ran 8 miles, felt pretty good, and did some strides!

Saturday: Fell asleep at 9:52 PM. 7 hours and 57 minutes asleep, 1 hour and 48 minutes awake. Ouch. The wee hours were rough on me here. I forget why.

Ran 9 miles with 4 straight at tempo pace (6:02 average). This was huge considering my son was very hands-on on Saturday and I barely got the time away from him to run this workout. I even did some split squats and calf raises after the run. Like my strides on Friday, this was the first time I did these in a while. I wonder if getting a little extra sleep most nights this week gave me the strength I needed. I haven’t done the averages yet so I can’t be sure!

This Week: Average sleep onset was at 10:24 PM. I averaged 7 hours and 43 minutes asleep and 37 minutes awake. If I remove either outlier (Wednesday or Saturday), the averages move a bit, but it seems like I should plan to spend about 8 hours and 20 minutes trying to sleep to get about 8 hours of actual sleep. Add in the time it takes me to fall asleep and I’m looking at almost 9 hours in bed, which means if I want to get up at 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning I should be in bed by 8:00 or 8:30 the night before.

That doesn’t leave much time for baseball—or blogging!—but these insights are what Sleep Week™️ is all about!

When I wasn’t sleeping, I ran 58 miles, which is a new high since my son was born. I also got in a decent long run, a great tempo, some hills, and some extras that I had been neglecting for a while.

This Week (Last Year): This time last year, according to the data, my average sleep onset was 10:52 PM, I slept for an average of 8 hours and 18 minutes, and I spent just 6 minutes awake.

Saturday was an outlier; according to the data, my run that day started just 5 minutes after I woke up. I had a different watch last year, and it was worse than any other smartwatch I’ve owned at detecting wakefulness, so these stats may be skewed. Removing Saturday only skews them further, moving my bedtime to 10:26 PM and my average sleep to a whopping 8 hours and 30 minutes. If only!

Incredibly, I ran 58 miles this same week last year as I began my buildup to Rehoboth. I felt a lot better, though, and forgive me for throwing out all my analysis above, but I think it was because I hadn’t had a major break in training since 2021. My son broke that streak pretty hard.

Baby: My son may have momentarily toppled the bricks I was stacking, but he’s been stacking plenty of his own. He has just figured out crawling, which is leading to an explosion of new skills. He can move from sitting to crawling pretty easily, and prop himself up on objects, and he clearly has aspirations for climbing. Thankfully, that might take a while.

He is trying more new foods all the time, thanks to his mom, and her hard work is being rewarded by a voracious eater!

After cruising through a few months of slow and steady growth, our son has put the pedal to the floor again and dared us to come along for the ride. I’m in.

Just let me get some sleep first.