Author: theDNF

No marathon omniblog this week; I’m tired. As you might guess from the title, the main story of this week is the 5K on Saturday. Let’s catch up on everything else first.

Sunday: 14 miles. Was trying to run 13 and got a little lost. Branch Brook Park was worth it, but I really felt that extra mile after a successfully salvaged workout and a playground double the day before. My right hip hurt in particular; thankfully it was just for the day.

Monday: Off. It’s a down week, after all.

Tuesday: 4, extremely easy. The down week was not working yet!

Wednesday: Off. Unplanned this time. Woke up so exhausted that I called in sick to work. I drove the ten minutes to the office to pick up some papers, just in case I got a second wind, but the second wind never came. Honestly, the first one didn’t show either. I took a nap, which is like a negative run, which for this week was a positive turn.

Thursday: 4, once again extremely easy. The down week was still not working yet! At this point I was starting to worry about the weekend. I threw away my expectations.

Friday: Another 4, a little better. A glimmer of hope.

Saturday: Today was my son’s first time in the jogging stroller, and his first 5K. He was pretty unimpressed during my warmup, which was a good sign. It wasn’t entirely enjoyment, but it certainly wasn’t fear. We cleared our pre-flight check with Mom.

The Historic Allentown 5K is in its sixth edition, and I have won it four times. This is not a brag; I’m at just the right level of 5K ability where I can win a small local race as long as nobody faster shows up, and they often don’t. I knew that I would probably not be able to defend my title with my son in tow, but I was curious. I lined up towards the front and off to the side so we wouldn’t be caught in the panic off the line.

Looking at the photos now, there was definitely some surprise off the line for my son, but thankfully not panic. I didn’t hear a peep, but his face tells me he was not expecting to suddenly be going ten miles an hour.

(I’m not posting the picture because I don’t have my son’s permission for that, but imagine an adorable baby with his eyes just a little wide and make it funny. That’s the picture.)

We settled down after that and hit the first mile in 6:30, which felt smooth and controlled. After that, the course went off-road and we had to slow down for safety.

Even going slower, I was a little worried on the trail. I will likely stick to pavement, and easy pace, for future stroller excursions, for my own sake. My son was perfectly fine. My wife and her family got a huge kick out of watching us. I’m not sure my son had the thrill I had been hoping for, but neutrality is a good place to start. Sharing your interests with your kids is a long, patient game.

This Week: 32 miles. This is deceptive because I ran 14 on Sunday; it was a very light, very depleted week. I hope I’ve done enough to rest before making my next mileage push.

Baby: He finished third! After the race, we took him to Holland Ridge Farms to see the sunflowers with Grandma. It was a nice weekend and he seemed to really enjoy it. He showed my wife’s family his latest trick, which is sitting unassisted. He’s growing up so fast, even when I’m not pushing him.

With the World Athletics Championships concluded, I once again have both feet planted in the Eastern time zone. After not checking my feeds for nine days for fear of spoilers, I can finally share my thoughts—and more besides. It was a busy week, so this will be a busy blog, perhaps even like several blogs in one: an omniblog, if you will. And you will, because I just wrote it and you just read it. Buckle up.

Worlds 2025: An Incomplete and Completely Personal Review

Let’s start with the events nearest and dearest to my heart: 800 meters to the marathon. There is a ton to unpack across all events, distance or otherwise, but I’m not a news outlet obligated to provide equal or at all thorough coverage, so let’s keep this personal and let’s keep it quick:

• Cole Hocker is golden again! I had this outcome spoiled for me, despite my best efforts, but even watching the replay I wasn’t sure how he was going to do it. Things looked good when he went to the front early, like he did at USAs, but by the last lap he was piled high and deep in 12th place. It didn’t matter! What a thrilling finish. I can only wonder what might have been without his DQ in the 1500 meters. It was a completely fair call, and a tactical mistake on Hocker’s part to end up in a tricky situation like that in the first place, but could we be talking about a double gold medalist? The fact that the answer to that question is even close to “maybe” bodes well for the future of US distance running.
• Cole’s teammates in the 5000 missed the podium. For Grant Fisher, this was a regression to the mean after his double-bronze in Paris, and disappointing. For Nico Young, this was an improvement after his first global championships experience last year, and not all that different from where Grant was in 2022 (6th in the 5000 meters, 4th in the 10000 meters; Nico was 6th and 5th, respectively, in Tokyo). Buy the rumors, and next year you can sell the news.
• While we’re still talking long distance, Team USA really missed Alicia Monson this year. Still, I was happy to see my fellow New Jerseyan Josette Andrews finish sixth over 5000 meters! She is a recent convert to the longer distances, so it will be interesting to see if she can improve on that placing. Meanwhile, I was not at all happy to see busted doper Shelby Houlihan finish fourth. Bans for positive tests should be bans for life.
• Sage Hurta-Klecker ran the race of her life in the 800 meters! It wasn’t enough to make the podium, but nice to see as an American. Watching Keely Hodgkinson fade to silver (and nearly bronze) after looking invincible in the rounds was another big surprise.
• In an even bigger surprise, the USA men’s 800-meter team was absent from the final altogether. The global field is extremely deep, and a few tactical mistakes (and one teen phenom tiring out after a hyperextended spring season) were all it took to send three 1:42 guys home early. In the big picture, that’s a big disappointment. Looking closer, it’s a borderline miracle to have Donovan Brazier healthy again, and to have 16-year-old Cooper Lutkenhaus running 1:42 at all, so here’s hoping these guys are headed into the off-season with momentum and motivation instead of their tails between their legs.
• Cole Hocker was missed in the 1500 meters, but so too was his Paris teammate Yared Nuguse. With Jakob in poor form, we needed somebody to make this an honest race. Chaos is exciting, but it’s not meaningful.
• Speaking of Jakob: kudos to him for showing up at a fraction of his full power and competing anyway. He was leading the 5000 meters with a lap and a half to go! If anyone deserves a participation trophy, it’s him. Hopefully he has a restorative off-season and we see him back on form in 2026.
• It bears repeating just how crazy the men’s marathon finish was. It was one of the few events I watched live, and I picked Simbu to win the second he nearly missed the turn into the stadium. If it were me, I could never let something like that be the reason I lost such a close race. Better to dig as deep as possible to win it than face that existential nightmare. Now he won’t have to!

I said I would keep this quick, but it looks like the distance section of this recap ended up more tactical. Maybe I can power through the sprints:

• Vernon Norwood and Dalilah Muhammad as team captains were great choices!
• There’s a generational talent, and then there’s whatever you call Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. 47.78 is another unreal performance from her! Excited to see what she does next.
• Melissa Jefferson-Wooden followed through on her dominant season and goes home with three no-doubt global golds. Finally, my wife’s most pressing question since the demise of Grand Slam Track can be answered—I’m sure the bonuses in her Nike contract will pay for her honeymoon.
• On the men’s side, Noah Lyles hung on to the 100-meter podium, dominated the 200 meters, and anchored another 4 x 100 relay gold. I think this is the most accurate reflection of his ability at a global championship so far. He’s a great 100-meter man, but outstanding over 200 meters. I understand that the 100 meters is a far more prestigious event, but if any of Bolt’s world records is vulnerable right now, it’s his 19.19. I think if Lyles focused on breaking that—he’s already at 19.31—he would fear no man over 100 meters simply as a byproduct of being so historically fast.
• One last thought on Lyles: he seems to have found the right balance between confidence and arrogance in his public persona after his spat with Kenny Bednarek. He was gracious finishing third in the 100 meters in a way I don’t think he would have been last year. At the same time, he’s still just as much the showman and drawing attention to the sport. Good for him.
• Botswana’s 4 x 400 relay team was dangerous and extremely fun to watch. The finish there was really interesting—I couldn’t help but wonder if Collen Kebinatshipi would still have found that final push to get past Rai Benjamin if Zakithi Nene, the South African anchor leg, hadn’t put pressure on him first. As the individual gold medalist, he probably would have! But I’m biased and I can dream.

So much action and that’s just on the track! As a non-field athlete, here’s what stood out to me on the inside of the oval:

• Mondo Duplantis still hasn’t found his ceiling, becoming the first man over 6.30 meters. His vaults are appointment television, and will be until gravity finally catches up with him.
• An injured Ryan Crouser is still the best thrower on the planet. Crouser is probably my favorite athlete on the field side of the sport for his invention of the Crouser Slide, and it’s so much fun to watch him be incredibly good at what he does.
• Both high jumps were some of the highest drama of the entire championships! There’s something about the vertical jumps that makes them instantly compelling, from a storytelling perspective, and each field had the dramatis personae to write a thrilling script. The winners were excellent, of course, but I also enjoyed the performances by silver medalists Woo Sang-hyeok and Maria Zodzik. Woo’s showmanship and dominance through the early heights elevated the competition, and Zodzik jumping a personal best on her last attempt with a global medal on the line is what a championship is all about!
• Those giant sponge rollers are an amazing invention! I couldn’t stop geeking out about them.

It was a lot of work keeping up with the World Championships this year, but worth it to witness such a glittering finale to the season. I owe a huge thank-you to my wife for being genuinely interested in the sport and watching a lot of the events with me. I promise we’ll be back to Bob’s Burgers and Dropout for the foreseeable future.

Zoom and Enhance: Fred Kerley Joins the Cynics

Fred Kerley was a notable and noticeable absence from the World Championships, but he made his presence felt by announcing he would participate in the Enhanced Games in 2026. This is really sad news, and not something I want to give too much oxygen to, but I have some thoughts—less so about Kerley, who has enough problems, and more about the existence of Enhanced.

It goes without saying that the biggest problem with the Enhanced Games is the risk to the athletes. The substances on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s ban list are banned for a reason. Specifically, they are banned for three reasons:

• they enhance or have the potential to enhance sports performance,
• they represent actual or potential health risks to the athlete, and
• they violate the spirit of sport.

Any substance that meets two of those three criteria is banned. Of course, it’s possible a substance skips the “risk to the athlete” part, but consider that caffeine, which does enhance performance (and is safe enough that most of us use it daily), isn’t banned. The list is not for the sort of risk-free low-hanging fruit that Brady Holmer would write about. These are the dark arts of the sporting world. Power comes with a price, and it’s a price the athletes pay—not the wealthy investors running this circus.

Aside from the obvious medical risk and the conflicts of interest that arise from it—for the athletes, doctors, and investors involved—the next biggest problem here is the worldview these people are promoting by promoting the Enhanced Games. It’s also the problem I feel more qualified to write about, given that I’m not a doctor but I’m still a human being who believes in fair play.

The existence of the Enhanced Games pushes the idea that it’s perfectly fine to bend the rules, take shortcuts, and even cheat, as long as you’re “smart” about it; you can dope, and should dope, as long as a doctor watches you do it. It’s a similar devil on your shoulder to the one that first appeared when ChatGPT and other Large Language Models broke big. It’s not cheating, they say, it’s the future. It’s about doing everything you can to get ahead. It’s about winning.

Never mind that LLMs (I will not call them AI) have already been shown to make you dumber as you offload all your thinking and creativity to a computer. You use it to write an email and you’re glad to be rid of the drudgery of office communication. Then you use it to write a birthday note for your spouse, or your kid uses it to write a history paper, and we’re getting rid of a whole lot more. Fred might do some drugs and run a PR. What’s the point? And what’s next? Nothing good!

If Fred Kerley breaks the world record, he’s done it for a big check and nothing else. In the eyes of all but the most cynical people, the result will be illegitimate. What happens in Vegas, for once, stays in Vegas.

If he doesn’t break the world record, then he’s done a lot of dangerous things to his body for nothing. Furthermore, he’s given regrettable plausibility to the argument that all of professional track, and maybe all of professional sports, is doped in some way. This is an exhausting and spiritually bankrupt take.

If you hang around the online spaces where track fans congregate, you know the cynics well. These individuals will Kool-Aid-Man their way into any thread on Twitter, or LetsRun.com, about any successful athlete to let everyone know that Sorry, actually, none of this is worth talking about because this person is doping.

These posters (and that’s all they are) are not privy to any information the rest of us don’t have—some leaked failed test or even training camp gossip—to back up their accusations. At best, there will be some flimsy “eye test” excuse; if you were a real ball knower like these people, if you were smart enough, you’d see it too.

These kinds of anonymous accusations are bad for the sport, in principle but also in practice; Josh Hoey was the unfortunate recipient of a lot of these smears while he put together a breakout season this year, and I have to admit I soured on him despite knowing it was all bullshit. It’s the same way political mudslinging works. You see a name covered in muck enough times, the next time you see it you’ll wipe your shoes. Josh Hoey doesn’t deserve a bad name until the day he fails a test, and no sooner. That’s innocent until proven guilty.

As if the cynics and their casual slander weren’t already a moral failure and an active harm to polite discourse, they’re also completely illogical. Let’s take the men’s 1500 meters as an example. Isaac Nader of Portugal won in an upset on the strength of a blistering kick—as all championship 1500-meter races are won, especially tactical ones. I didn’t have to look very hard to find anonymous trolls accusing him of doping. I even found, in the same thread, accusations against Hocker, who wasn’t even in the final, and Nuguse, who wasn’t even in Tokyo!

So, the men’s 1500-meter champion came out of nowhere with a ferocious kick to win the title; ergo, he must be doping. Now, rewind and run the race again. This time, someone else wins, coming out of nowhere with a ferocious kick. This is pretty likely, as there’s been a different champion in the men’s 1500 meters every year since 2019. Is the winner of the rerun doping? Or just Isaac Nader?

Now run it again. Someone else wins. Put Hocker back in the final (pretty please). The deck reshuffles again. We can only conclude that they’re all doping—which, of course, is exactly the point, except for the pesky technicality that no one in the field has failed a test. We have jumped, headlong and gleefully, over the edge of sanity and into a bottomless pit of conspiracy.

This kind of thinking is maddening, and it is bleak, and it is everywhere.

These are the only people who stand to benefit from the Enhanced Games. They are intellectually and morally lazy—fitting, as the kind of worldview that produces a kind of spectacle like Enhanced is lazy at its core.

Work has no value to these people. Outcomes, whether world records or quarterly earnings, are all that matter. This is a road to ruin, or at least personal misery.

I don’t know how to fix the kind of broken you have to be to think the Enhanced Games is a good idea. What I do know is that all work has inherent value in a way that all results do not.

To bring the personal back to this personal blog: If I BQ someday, that result has value to me, and the people who believe in me, and nobody else. The work I’ve done is far more valuable. The challenge of organizing my time, maintaining my motivation, and pushing my limits is remodeling me in real time. It makes me a better father and husband, a better friend and colleague, and a happier and healthier person. Sure, I’m a lot more tired at the end of the day, but I’m also a lot more satisfied and sure of myself. None of that is tied to a result. I could never BQ and still be better off.

Taking shortcuts, whether a small one like ChatGPT or a big, risky one like doping, robs you of the real reward. The Enhanced Games want that for their athletes, and for you, and for our culture. It’s a bleak, cynical future. Don’t let them do it.

This whole sad situation reminds me of a favorite quote of a friend of mine:

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

It’s a great reminder of the value in doing the right thing, in doing the hard work. It makes you who you are.

I think it’s especially interesting to consider this quote in our current degraded (and degrading) age of social media—what do you do when everyone is looking at everyone, all the time? How does your character hold up? It’s easy to see how that kind of constant exposure, of yourself and to others, will make you cynical. Not only are people not perfect, not only are you not perfect, but everybody is very, very far from it. It’s ugly out there.

Do you shrug your shoulders and roll in the muck? Do you maybe invest millions of dollars into a crass, dangerous sporting event to convince others that it’s OK to get dirty like you?

Or do you do the work?

Your Regularly Scheduled Programming: This Week’s Training

Sunday: 13 miles, progressing from 7:15 down to 6:20. I didn’t intend to make this a workout, but my local Fleet Feet store was putting on a “Speed Shoe Rodeo” where I could demo the new Asics Metaspeed Sky Tokyo. I tagged along with someone training for a fall marathon who, it turned out, was faster than me. He did 18 miles and got down to 5:55 for the last 5 miles. I was happy to sip on the free Skratch and make chitchat with the shoe reps while he did that.

Monday: 4 miles extremely easy. I was very tired from back-to-back workouts on Saturday and Sunday.

Tuesday: 8 miles easy.

Wednesday: Hills with long rest like last week. Focusing on quality on these while I adapt to higher mileage.

Thursday: 7 miles easy. Slept well, but felt bad.

Friday: 7 miles easy. Slept terribly after staying up late for a Vampire Weekend concert, but felt surprisingly decent.

Saturday: 4 x 1 mile at tempo pace (6:10 average) with 1 minute rest. I wanted this to be another 4 miles continuous like last week, but I knew pretty quickly I didn’t have my best and adjusted the workout to suit. I honestly didn’t think I’d get to 4 reps, so this was a victory.

This Week: 55 miles. It was a very busy week with the concert on Thursday and the extra hard effort on Sunday, but I made it through in one piece. That’s a nice confidence boost, but I am still planning to take a down week this week to properly recover and soak up the last three weeks at 50+ miles. I’m looking forward to the next push.

Baby: My son seems to be winning his battle against the sniffles and is getting his energy back. He was well-behaved for Grandma while Mom and Dad went to the Vampire Weekend concert. I call this Grandma Mode, and my wife and I are simultaneously grateful and a little jealous. He also had a great visit with friends on Saturday, which I spent on the playground with my friend’s two kids, 6 and 3. Needless to say I was very sore on Sunday morning. You can read about that next week.

Last week, I applied for the third time to run the Boston Marathon. This week, the Boston Athletic Association announced 33,266 other runners did the same. This was a little lower than number-crunchers like Brian Rock predicted, but only slightly, so updated estimates of the cutoff time are still comfortably in the ballpark of 5 minutes. Sitting here with a buffer just slightly over 2 minutes, I think my fate is all but sealed.

Of course, I expected this, which is why I signed up for Jersey City a couple weeks ago. I am already building a base for that training block in the hopes that I can bring home a big PR in 2026. The way BQ times are trending, I will need one.

Time for this week’s training update!

Sunday: 13 rainy miles along the Passaic River. In college, I did many of my long runs on the Charles in Boston, which left me with a soft spot for out-and-backs and bridge crossings. This run did not quite scratch that itch; the Passaic isn’t a pedestrian paradise like the Charles is, and along much of the route the river wasn’t even visible! Still, one of the best reasons to be in marathon shape, in my opinion, is because more miles means more exploring. No new route is ever wasted.

Monday: 7 easy. This was a midday run and felt way better than my morning runs usually so. There could be several reasons for this, but my money is on food, water, and caffeine.

Tuesday: 7 easy. Mondays are busy, so Tuesdays are hard. I was very tired here.

Wednesday: 6 miles with a few hill sprints. Last week this felt impossible, but this week I had a few reps in me. I took longer rests to make sure of it. After that, I wandered around town until my stomach told me it was time to go home.

Thursday: 7 easy, with an extra hour of sleep compared to the rest of this week. I felt every minute of it. Amazing what going to bed on time will get you! I need to keep doing this.

Friday: 7 easy, again with more sleep, again felt good.

Saturday: 4 miles at tempo pace (6:01 average). This was my best workout since I was crushing hills in the lead-up to the Mercer County Half. Pacing was extremely even through the first three miles; the fourth felt harder, and I was on pace for about 6:04, but I opened up on the last lap and finished sub-6. Nailing your workout and knowing there was more in the tank always feels good.

This Week: 56 miles. Another high water mark since my son was born, and probably where I will stay until this past month of fifties starts to sink in. I know I will need to keep sleeping better to keep progressing, so that’s the challenge for now. I have found far less internal resistance to a 9:30 bedtime compared to 9:00, so I think I will have to improve my habits a little bit at a time.

Baby: My son has been fighting some sniffles this week, but otherwise he’s doing great. We had a great visit with my brother and a few of my cousins over the weekend, and he had so much fun he refused to nap! This was not his best decision, but I understand it. No new milestones to report. Like his dad, he’s working on things in very small steps.

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In other running news, the World Championships are currently happening in Tokyo. Thanks to the brutal time difference, I am catching most of the action on a significant delay. I managed to watch the men’s marathon last night, which turned out to be a great event to have seen live! I may have more thoughts once everything wraps up this weekend, but until then, no spoilers please!

This week was my second at fifty miles since my son was born. I came by it slowly.

I spent a lot of this week taking it easy and recovering from my self-immolation at the Mercer County Half last week. Hills were not an option. A Saturday afternoon nap, meanwhile, was very much on the menu.

I needed that nap because, despite all the writing I have done about how important sleep is to balancing my life as a runner and dad, I am not going to bed on time! This is stupid and entirely my fault, but I have had help from the low-dose dopamine machine that is my phone. I’ve probably been scrolling more miles than I’ve been running lately.

I finally deleted Instagram this week because Reels are designed to waste my time with adorable babies and animals, jokes that only occasionally rise above LQTM, and the constant churn of parental anxiety and political angst. I did not ask for any of this. I followed maybe a dozen accounts, all of them running-related, but the Algorithm does not care. I thought I could be stronger than the Algorithm this time, after deleting apps a couple times before, but it turns out I can’t.

The only app I can be trusted with, it seems, is Twitter, which for all its faults really does respect your feed by only including accounts you follow. I used to wish Threads could replace it, but it has the same Meta-scented, algorithmic stench as Instagram and a terrible community to boot. This makes sense, as most of its users found their way in through Facebook and Instagram, and neither of those places is exactly known for the written word. Anyone worth following on Threads is doing better work on Twitter; I think Brian Rock is the only exception to this. Alison Wade, of the Fast Women newsletter, was another, but she seems to have moved fully to Substack. It’s a hard time to want to read about running!

Elsewhere on the broken social media scene, Bluesky is doing a better job of recapturing the feeling of prelapsarian Twitter, but that’s cold comfort without much of a running or track presence. If Alex Predhome isn’t doing numbers there, it’s too quiet. I might delete this app too.

This has all been a long way of saying that social media is a blight on our collective intelligence and will, especially and specifically mine, and also I’m firing up The DNF on Twitter. Finally, we can answer the question of how everybody broke 2 on the 4×8 if the total time was 8:04—I was a 2:04 guy in high school.

Let’s recap this week’s training so I can call this a proper blog!

Sunday: I ran the Mercer County Half Marathon in 86:31, and I already wrote about it.

Monday: Off. I wanted to run, but felt like crap and the day got away from me. Running in the morning is essential because most of the day after my son wakes up is work and chores.

Tuesday: 7 easy.

Wednesday: 7 easy.

Thursday: 8 miles easy with a random 4 x 200 thrown in at the track: 36, 35, 34, 33. I had to pivot after my planned hill workout felt impossible; somehow running very fast on a flat surface was much easier than running somewhat fast on an incline. I’ll take what I can get!

Friday: 7 easy. Choked on a bug and threw up, but was otherwise fine.

Saturday: 3 miles at tempo pace (6:00 average). Had gas left in the tank and opened up the last 200 meters. This felt surprisingly good given Thursday, and the week as a whole.

This Week: 51 miles. I had originally planned for less, but after my half marathon blowup I tried to get more volume at every opportunity. I know I have a lot of work to do before I’m ready to build towards another BQ attempt. Still, I feel good about hitting 50 again and I know I can do even more once I get my habits sorted out.

Baby: My son is doing great! He got over his cold from the beach and is busy babbling, attempting to crawl (he’s accomplished “scooching” so far), trying new foods, and being adorable. Teething is still a wildcard from day to day, and we might be seeing the early signs of separation anxiety that ought to hit between 8 and 12 months, but we continue to figure things out as we go.

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I didn’t end up writing about it this week, but it’s worth noting that registration for the 2026 Boston Marathon is now open. Thanks to the diligent work of internet prognosticator Brian Rock, I’m not as jazzed this year knowing my 2:52 from Rehoboth is practically limping into the portal. Still, I will throw my hat in the ring before registration closes on Friday. What would this blog be if I didn’t?

Don’t answer that.

My beach vacation got better in the second half, but my half marathon on Sunday did not. In a race where I thought 85 minutes was my floor, I ran 86:31 for sixth place. I’m confused by my official place because I counted myself in fourth when I passed my wife at mile 8, and got passed by five people after that. It doesn’t really matter.

The only goal I met for this race was the implied imperative to compete for position. The field went out hot, and I went with them, splitting 6:15 through mile 1 and sitting in sixth place. I felt decent, the weather was excellent, and I had my super shoes on, so I wasn’t too concerned to be a bit quick; I expected to settle in a bit and cruise from there.

I never settled. I latched on to fifth place and hunted him through mile 2, then moved ahead and chased down fourth over the next mile. It felt good. I wasn’t sure I could hold it, but it felt like the right pace to be running. I set my sights on third place and tried to pull him in.

By mile 6 I knew I wasn’t moving up to third, and that’s when I started to consider how much farther I had to run. It was too far, but I wasn’t sure by how much. If the race were ten miles, could I hold it?

That’s a terrible thought to be having at mile 7 of a half marathon. It was also optimistic! I imploded crossing over the Turnpike as I was approaching mile 8. I knew my wife was going to be there and I thought very seriously about a DNF. I thought about how appropriate it would be, given the name of this blog.

When I got there, I couldn’t do it. I want to say that I saw my family and couldn’t quit in front of them, that I needed to fight it out for my son, and maybe that was part of it, but my foremost and most negative thought was that my mother-in-law was taking pictures, and I’d look like an idiot if my surrender was caught on camera. We fight a lot of stupid demons out on the race course.

So I gave my wife a thumbs down to signal that all was not going to plan and settled in for a long, painful cooldown—physically and psychologically. I already mentioned I got passed by five people.

There’s not much else to be said about this race. I’ll let my heart rate graph from Strava finish the story:

Last week, I wrote that I’ll know my endurance has faded if I can’t measure up to my Sunset Classic performance. I couldn’t and it has. Maybe I could have run faster with better pacing, but there’s no telling by how much. Perhaps I could’ve run 85 minutes. Would it have mattered?

The feedback this race has given me is that I’m not ready for a marathon block this fall. While my fitness over shorter distances has been remarkably stable—and perhaps even improved—since my son was born, I need a lot more miles in my diet to get back to marathon shape. So that’s the assignment.

Registration opened today for the Jersey City Marathon, and I’ve already signed up. Boston hopefuls keep raising the BQ bar; I’ll have my work cut out for me.

It’s time to stack up some serious fall mileage and hit 2026 in full stride. We’ll see what my son has to say about that. At least now he knows I won’t quit easily.

My son continues to misunderstand the point of a vacation, having brought daycare germs with him to our family trip on Long Beach Island. After dropping everything for a visit with a local pediatrician, it seems he’s dealing with a virus and we can only wait it out until he feels better. This is not very inspiring because he slept pretty poorly last night, and sounded like a pug even while asleep. Also, ominously, my throat hurts.

This is all particularly frustrating as I just wrapped up a particularly strong week of training, and my first fifty-mile week since before my son was born. This, until last night, was inspiring because my wife and I have been ironing out our daily routines to keep our household running smoothly. Being a parent means constantly making adjustments, and it seemed our adjustments were starting to work. They may yet be working, but our son is determined to confound the data for the time being. Being a parent also means being patient.

Speaking of patience, a few times this week I was tempted to do more in my training, but stopped short of any extra miles. I don’t need to rush things with a race next week; better to show up feeling good and ready to get an honest test of my fitness. Better also to kick whatever illness has befallen my noble house.

The highlight of this past week’s training was another personal-best session in my weekly hill workout. I’ve been a runner more than long enough to know that There Is No Secret, but this feels about as close to The Secret as I’ve ever seen.

Also, I was blessed with a great week of birds: multiple heron and egret sightings, as well as a white-breasted nuthatch. Another benefit of birding while running is that when you get home and your spouse politely asks how your run was, you can respond with something actually interesting instead of droning on about pace and effort and how thirsty you are—which has everything to do with the humidity and nothing at all with the fact that you don’t drink water before going outside in August. Birding can save you from confronting your bad habits! Sadly, blogging will not. Maybe you can succeed where I have failed.

Anyway, I’m racing the Mercer County Half Marathon on Sunday. This should be a low-stakes race, but I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t have any goals. To be honest, I’m not sure it makes sense to race without a goal. A race is a test. The goal is the rubric. A race without a goal is just a run.

So here are my goals for Sunday:

🟧 85:00 (2:50 marathon pace)
🟨 83:00 (VDOT equivalent to my Sunset Classic result)
🟩 81:30 (VDOT equivalent to a 2:50 marathon)
🏆 Top-5 Finish

My plan is to settle in at 85-minute pace early, unless there are people around me running a little faster. I’m hoping to run a negative split off that pace, so if I end up close to 85 minutes I’ll know my endurance has faded since my son was born. I ran 85:30 through halfway at Rehoboth.

Running 83 minutes would be a nice confirmation that my fitness from sunset is translating upwards, which would be a good sign for a future marathon. Running closer to 82 or even 81 minutes would mean I’m doing way better than I thought. The fastest I think I could run a half marathon, with a dedicated training block and peak fitness, is about 80 minutes—and I’m biased. I don’t think this will happen.

My goal of a top-5 finish for a tiny local race like this is extrinsically meaningless, but serves as a reminder that this isn’t just a time trial. I run my best when I remember to compete. I think we all do. And even though the stakes are low, I want to get my best on Sunday.

Depending on how I measure up to my goals, I may or may not add a late fall marathon to my calendar. My thinking is similar to last year when I hopped into Rehoboth: if I can get myself another crack at a BQ, I should take it. Even if it’s not my day, I’ll have Jersey City 2026 to try again.

Right now, I’m taking a slight dip in mileage and intensity to freshen up for the race, ward off illness, and rally to enjoy my last vacation for the year. Being a parent means figuring out how to get it done.

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.