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I started this blog a year ago, on the day of the Boston Marathon, having just watched the race from the wrong side of the cutoff for the second year in a row. Yesterday, I made it three.

Next year, well—I posted a 3:34:27 in Jersey City on Sunday. At least I won’t be getting any hate mail from the Boston Athletic Association this September.

Sunday was a disaster. After feeling ready to take on the world just one month earlier, I completely derailed my taper (and ultimately, my marathon) thanks to one little supplement it turns out I shouldn’t have been taking. Hindsight is 20/20, but that’s hard to stomach.

I don’t want to write this post. I’ll do my best.

After nailing down the logistics at bib pickup the day before, race morning went as smoothly as it could. I got to the start line—and, more importantly, the porta potties—in plenty of time. Conditions were excellent: 50 degrees and low wind. The rain that threatened the forecast all week had held off. I met up with Wis in the corral, nearly left one of my gels with my wife, found her in the crowd and retrieved it, bumped into a couple of my long run buddies right before the gun, and before I knew it we were off.

Something was off.

I just didn’t feel excited. In fact, I had a deep, nagging feeling that I would not succeed today. I felt this way before Philly, where I ended up logging the DNF that would give this blog its name. I tried to shake it off and just run.

Running felt good. I was clicking 6:20s with Wis and while that was a little ahead of the pace I planned, I couldn’t seem to slow down. My body wanted to run 6:20s at my dress rehearsal in Newark, and here it was again on autopilot. Maybe my fitness was still there after all?

It was, and it wasn’t. The first warning sign was at 4 miles, when I noticed my quads hurt a bit. I’d felt heavy in the first half of Rehoboth as well, and was able to fight that out, but this was very early. I got my first gel down, drank some water, and tried to relax.

This was my final, maybe fatal mistake—nothing new on race day. After training with just water, I added electrolytes to my bottle for the race. I wanted to give myself every chance at running well. I gave myself a tummy ache.

After trying to make it work a little longer, I decided to dump the bottle and refill with plain water at the mile 8 aid station. It was chaos, but I found a volunteer to help me fill up and after a few seconds I was back on my way.

My quads hurt worse for stopping, and Wis was gone. I could see his Garden State Track Club singlet up ahead, so I dug in for a long battle to reel him back in. At the very least, the water went down a lot better than the crap I was drinking before. Scratching the problem-solving part of my brain got me refocused. Nothing was going to plan, but maybe I still had a shot.

The miles were still rolling by, and for a while nothing got any worse. Maybe I really did have a shot.

I hit the half in about 84:20. It was fast, but my pace had been dead steady from the gun. My legs hurt but I was still moving. I knew I was coming up on the hard part of the course, but I also knew I was catching up to Wis and would be able to hop back in his pocket before long. I caught him around 15 and tried to ride along.

Something still didn’t feel right, like I knew it wasn’t going to work, but I kept fighting. I was already adjusting expectations. Sub-2:50, surely, would be an insane feat in this condition. Could I hang on for a PR? For a BQ, at least?

I’d been here before, on this course, in 2024, after an ill-advised surge in the middle miles, hurting like hell. I’d salvaged nearly enough to BQ back then. I knew I had to try.

I made it to 18 miles before the bargaining began. By 20 the bargaining had stopped. By 23 the running had stopped. My legs just stopped working.

I tried several times to start running again, and each time the pounding was just too much. My quads refused each step, painfully. Soon they protested walking, but I had to do that. People tried to cheer me on and I waved them off. The wind picked up and I was getting cold.

My split from 35K to 40K was 53 minutes. It was a surreal, out-of-context experience. I was moving slowly enough that for the first time in three races in Jersey City, I actually noticed the Statue of Liberty. I caught myself wishing I had my phone. My watch was still running.

Plenty of other people were still running, too. I tried to stay out of the way. Some of them tried to encourage me, which I appreciated more than the platitudes coming from spectators, but what was I supposed to do? Spiritually, this was a DNF. Finishing was just the fastest way back to my car.

Eventually, someone called out to me who I recognized. It was the winner of the March Madness Half from a month ago! This started to feel like a very weird dream. He had a few nice things to say as he went by, and I was so stunned that we recognized each other that I forgot most of them, but just before he disappeared, he called out, “Keep your chin up!”

I bawled like a baby. I’ll never forget how kind that was.

I was still walking, but this was a turning point that I didn’t yet recognize. From that point on, I wasn’t getting home alone.

My brother surprised me at mile 24. I honestly thought he had started walking back from the finish when I hadn’t shown up on time (Wis finished in 2:51), but he’d been waiting there a while. When he saw me, he knew I was hurting and started walking along with me. I forget exactly what we said, except that I told him to text my wife at the finish, but him being there meant a lot. We were on the cross country team together in high school, but the sport didn’t grab him the way it grabbed me, so I know my marathon hobby is a foreign country to him. Being best friends since birth is more important than getting it.

Shortly after my brother showed up, another runner tried to urge me on, but unlike the others he wouldn’t quit. He stopped to walk with me. He was having a bad day too.

I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Daniel.”

Folks, life is weird. Daniel was struggling home after going out in 85 minutes for the first half. Daniel went to school in Boston.

Obviously, we were nothing alike, because I went out in 84.

Daniel decided we were going to finish together, but we were going to run. It took a lot of encouragement, but I started to jog a few extremely awkward steps at a time. He went right along with me, going ahead sometimes to urge me on. My brother cheered as we started to get some distance on him. We had a mile to go.

Every dogleg turn, dodged pothole, and tiny incline felt like an incredible challenge. With no help coming from my crumpled quads, my hip flexors were screaming. My feet and ankles hurt. But Daniel’s goodwill was infectious. I couldn’t let him down, so we soldiered home. He pumped up the crowd along the way.

We made a final push in the last fifty yards or so, and it was the fastest I had moved in almost an hour. I didn’t think I could do it, and I kept thinking it was probably stupid to do it, that I should’ve dropped out to spare my legs and fight another day. I didn’t care if I finished.

Daniel cared if I finished. Runners are something else.

I crossed the finish line, got a photo with Daniel, and found my wife. I was so relieved to see her. Then, the hard work of living with this result began. For the rest of that Sunday, it was ugly work.

As affirming as those last two miles were, I had utterly failed at the goal I set for myself and wrecked my body in the process. I felt stupid and ashamed. I was miserable. I am so grateful to my wife for sticking with me through those dark hours. Nothing was going to cheer me up, but I needed so badly not to feel alone.

I’ve come a little way since then, but I’ve still got a ways to go. This was my best shot yet at a BQ. I was fitter than ever, and older now too—my standard was only 3 hours. Even tying my personal best ought to have been enough. I was over forty minutes behind that.

I’m going to need a lot of time to recover from this, physically and emotionally. From here, with some small remove, I know I’m going to get there. I am already making plans for future training and racing, but right now it makes me feel sad and tired. I need to wait until it feels right again to lace up my shoes.

And with my running going on a hiatus, I think it’s also a good time to press pause on this blog. I won’t have a lot to report for a while, anyway, and I could use the extra time on Monday evenings for myself and my family. Still, I’m glad I put myself out there and stuck to this project for a year. In 53 weeks, I wrote 52 blogs. Only 5 of those blogs were late (most of them within the last few weeks), and no blog was later than Tuesday. My writing here hasn’t been groundbreaking, but it’s been good to write, and some of it I’m actually fond of. There’s also a small record here of my son’s first fifteen months on Earth.

Speaking of which, he took his first steps yesterday. No matter what happens between me and Boston, I’m sure I’ll be running again soon enough.

It’s one week to the Jersey City Marathon, and I haven’t run pain-free since March 28. Last week, I had no idea what was happening. This week, I think I know. It doesn’t really change how all of this has felt, which is wildly frustrating and at times pretty depressing. I’ve been trying to maintain a neutral attitude, but the best I have been able to do most of the time is aloof. My normal pre-race worries about weather forecasts and sleep quality feel so far away right now.

I think I was right about compartment syndrome. At first, I had to doubt it because I’ve run so many miles over so many years for this to suddenly show up now, fifteen years after my surgeries. It didn’t make sense. What changed?

The change is that I started taking creatine about two months ago. After hearing a lot about it online, it seemed like a no-brainer, no-risk supplement that might have some small benefit to my training. For many people, it is! Keeping your muscles chock full of extra phosphates to power the ATP cycle is like keeping a battery fully charged. The creatine sales pitch is you can train harder and recover better with full batteries, and maybe even think clearer—brain cells use ATP too. You might carry a little more water weight, but even that might have benefits for keeping your body hydrated during prolonged activity—I saw some discussion about this but couldn’t find a paper on it in my limited research. Ask your doctor if creatine is right for you!

I should have. At least, I should have tested it outside of a critical training block first.

With my history of compartment syndrome, that extra water weight is adding volume where I can’t bear it. My fully charged batteries look more like an overcharged battery: bloated and threatening to explode. I have a feeling this is why I haven’t been able to run the past two weeks. After weeks of supplementing, my muscles must have finally hit their limit. I’m running on a pair of Samsung Galaxy Note 7s.

Once I made the connection, I went online and confirmed that yes, creatine supplementation increases intracompartmental pressure in the lower legs, yes, it can do so enough to show signs of compartment syndrome, and yes, other people have anecdotally experienced this same issue. Shit.

The good news is I shouldn’t need surgery to fix this—I caused it by taking creatine, and I can stop it by stopping creatine. I actually had a sneaky suspicion the creatine could be causing problems at least a week ago, so I already stopped taking it.

The bad news is that creatine stores can take a long time to return to baseline, on the order of 4 to 6 weeks. My only hope is that I don’t need a full return to baseline to run without pain—I’ll only be about two and a half weeks removed by race day—and that I haven’t done additional damage by trying to run on it in the meantime.

So how do I get myself running again? I’ve been working with a few physical therapists on this, and we’re tackling it from a variety of angles:

• First, we want to encourage my muscles to let go of their creatine stores. I’m staying active on the exercise bike to maintain my fitness until the race, but any activity has the added benefit of draining my bloated batteries just a little bit. We’re also using compression to encourage fluid exchange in my legs, and I’m staying hydrated so I can readily pass anything my muscles leak out.
• Second, we want to improve the function of my soleus so it’s not so quickly overwhelmed by the demands of running. I’m doing seated calf raises most days, with weight, to strengthen the muscle. I’m also stretching and foam rolling to stay loose.
• Finally, we want to support my soleus with other muscles as best we can. This week I’m starting new exercises to activate my glutes and hamstrings.

I’ll be going for another test run on Wednesday to see how much all of this has been helping.

So far, I’ve noticed a slight improvement in symptoms from run to run, but progress has been slow. It doesn’t feel like I’m going to be ready by race day. At the same time, this is a problem that is likely going to get better suddenly, all at once—as soon as the pressure drops enough in my lower leg, I won’t feel any pain at all. That could happen at any moment. I have to hold out hope, keep my fears at bay—compartmentalize, if you will—and keep preparing like I’m going to race on Sunday. I have to try.

After my disastrous long run last Sunday, I had to throw out my original plans for the taper and take things day by day. I took Monday and Tuesday off, and tried running again Wednesday morning.

I ended up walking home. The rest didn’t seem to have any effect, but it was also my only option. I took Thursday and Friday off and tried again Saturday. I brought my son along in the jogging stroller, thinking it would at least be a nice outing together if the run went bad.

I couldn’t jog for more than 5 minutes at a time.

At this point, I started to completely spiral. I went straight past worrying about overtraining and started worrying about compartment syndrome. I thought about how if I needed surgery, there’d be no point in getting it just to be stuck on crutches for weeks while my wife shoulders even more responsibility. Anything that serious would likely be the end of my running career.

It was a really bad day. I did one good thing, though, and scheduled with a physical therapist for this morning. This helped me put my problems out of mind for Easter so I could enjoy some family time. I woke up today feeling refreshed for the first time in a long time.

The physical therapist poked and prodded and massaged and cupped and couldn’t find anything wrong aside from some soreness. After that and some time in a pair of compression boots, I left feeling energized and maybe a little better. Tomorrow will tell whether any of it helped.

It’s so hard to rest. After training so hard for months to get ready for this race, it feels insane to suddenly stop. I worry I’ll lose fitness (I probably won’t lose more than a fraction of a percent off my VO2max). I worry that rest won’t help (If rest won’t help, neither will running!). I have to keep having these arguments with myself or I’ll spiral all over again.

Feeling a little energetic this morning is a really good sign. The physical therapist not finding anything serious is at worst a neutral sign. If I focus on the evidence in front of me, I have to be cautiously optimistic. But if I want to be sure, I have to gather more evidence.

We’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

This Week: 4 miles, one ice bath, one foam roll, some stretching, and several nights of pretty good sleep. Too many negative thoughts.

Baby: My son did his first Easter egg hunt yesterday with help from his mom and dad. He was hesitant to put the eggs in his bag at first, but by the end he got the hang of the game. And he really liked the toys that came out of the eggs later! He was a huge hit with my wife’s extended family, and was honestly extremely well-behaved when you consider how long he spent in a car seat that day. Even my wife and I were pretty cranky after two three-hour drives!

Every holiday with him is more fun than the last. By the next one he’ll probably be walking, and we’ll all be in trouble!

I wrote last week that I didn’t want to have to write a similar blog this week. This week’s blog isn’t exactly the same as last week’s—I did start to feel better at some point—but they certainly rhyme.

I’ll let my training log tell the story of this week and begin this blog at the end. It is Monday, the start of my three-week taper and my first day off from running since March 2. My Garmin tells me I had excellent sleep last night: 8 hours and 27 minutes of “optimal sleep stages.” The pain in my legs from Sunday’s futile long run has subsided a little, but the heaviness remains. I am desperately tired.

I have wished more than once over the last two weeks that the Jersey City Marathon had been on March 15, the day of my dress rehearsal half. I firmly believe I had 2:50 in my legs that day. Now I have to find it again, and it’s an open question whether I can. I will certainly try.

I have been getting good sleep this week, which is a start. I have been trying to eat more, but that is something I struggle with, especially when I’m so tired that I’m borderline depressed. Sometimes these days I’m not even borderline.

Last night I gave my legs a hot soak before bed, which felt nice. I will likely need to become reacquainted with a foam roller. I will need to swallow my pride and run slow or take days off—maybe more than I’d originally planned.

The start of the taper always sucks, and I’m always desperate. Each time I worry that this time it’s hopeless, that I can’t possibly be ready in time for my race. So far my worries have been misplaced—2:57, 2:53, 2:52—but that just makes me worry more that I’m due for a screwup sooner or later.

I was brimming with confidence on Saturday. More than anything, to make this taper work I will need to recapture that feeling. The body and mind are more than connected; the mind is part of the body. Belief is everything. If I can visualize feeling rested and energized in three weeks, maybe I can achieve it. My BQ might depend on it.

Monday: 9 miles easy. I was still pretty sore from last week. Went as slow as I could to avoid adding to the damage.

Tuesday: 9 miles with the treadmill, to keep things even slower than Monday. No core today. I’m just trying to survive the week.

Wednesday: 11 miles, with 5 miles at tempo pace (6:04 average). I was nervous about this one for days because of how sore I’ve been, and it was certainly a battle, but I survived.  I ran this with Wis and another friend of ours, and dug deep to lead miles 3 and 4. I was glad to get this done. No strength for survival reasons.

Thursday: 12 miles at MLR effort. This went surprisingly well; Wis and I hovered close to 7′ pace for the last 8 or 9 miles, and I felt alright doing it. It was a huge relief to still have this in my legs after I fought so hard the day before.

Friday: 9 miles easy. My left Achilles hurt to start out, and took a while to feel better, but after that I was OK.

Saturday: 9 miles easy. This felt pretty good.

Sunday: 16 miles of a planned 20. This was a disaster. I was shot by about 10 miles, tried one last gel to right the ship, pulled the plug, and had way too far to run to get back to my car. Afterward, my legs felt like I had raced a marathon. I was hobbling around the rest of the day.

I have no idea what happened here; I felt good on Saturday and slept well. I am terrified I won’t be able to recover from this.

This Week: 75 miles. I thought, after Wednesday and Thursday, and especially Saturday, that I was going to be able to write about turning a corner and hitting my taper in stride. Instead, I fought for my life through a long run that likely did more harm than good, and whose effects I will be trying to undo every day for the next three weeks.

I told Wis at the start of our run on Sunday that I thought we were perfectly positioned for the taper—that we were going to be sharpening instead of recovering. I was dead wrong. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this bad in a training block before.

At times like this, it sometimes helps to reread old logs, or old blogs, to reassure myself that in fact I have felt this bad in a training block before, and I was OK then, so I can expect I’ll be OK now. Looking back at last week, I was certainly in a lot of pain, especially on Sunday. I think I’m in appreciably more pain now, but I was able to run a solid tempo and MLR this week in spite of last week’s pain. If I was able to do that, maybe there’s still hope for me now.

It’s possible my Wednesday and Thursday workouts hit me hardest on Sunday, and if I’m past a certain level of fatigue I can’t expect to recover in time; maybe I should have skipped the track right after my half to make sure I got back to baseline. But even if I’m right, it’s hard to say what good this insight does me right now. I can’t go back and skip a workout. I can only focus on recovery, and wait, and see.

Baby: My son is much the same as last week: closer to walking, closer to talking, but not quite there on either yet. He’s also dealing with some teething pain, we think, that is making him a little more moody and unpredictable, but overall all is well.

I am still struggling to be as present and productive around the house as I would like because of all the pain and fatigue I’ve been dealing with, but this weekend I got some work done in the attic to open up some storage for baby stuff and my wife and I filed our taxes, so I’m hanging in there. It just feels like I’m hanging by a thread. I need this taper to start working, and fast.

I’ve been lagging a little bit this week on the roads, and on the blog as well. I feel like crap.

Despite how good I felt at my race last weekend, recovering from that effort has been an absolute mess. My legs feel heavy and lifeless. My entire body is sore and tense. Work stress is adding to the pile. I’m worried I left my next marathon PB in Weequahic Park.

I still have almost four weeks until the race, and only a few truly hard days before the taper starts. On the one hand, fatigue like this is the entire point of a marathon block and I have plenty of time. Looking back at my old training logs, I have certainly felt like this before.

On the other hand, if I don’t start recovering soon I might dig myself a hole I can’t climb out of by race day. I haven’t done such a big effort so far out from race day before; I usually do 3 x 4 miles three weeks out. I can’t say if the two extra weeks around 70 miles are giving me more time for a rebound, or catastrophically delaying it.

I have been running as slow as I can to avoid adding to the damage, but that raises a good question: what kind of damage is it? Are my muscles weakened by a hard half? Is it an energy availability problem? Can I solve this by cutting intensity, or do I need to swallow my pride and cut volume too? Can I sleep it off? What if I just eat more?

I’m trying to listen to my body and figure this out, but I’m also so close to the taper that I’m not sure I’ll end up doing anything differently. My tempo tomorrow is going to tell me a lot. We’ll see if I listen.

Monday: 4 miles. I felt pretty good considering my race on Sunday, just really low on energy. Took it slow.

Tuesday: 8 miles. More sore today and took it slow. Made a lot of bad excuses to not do core at lunch.

Wednesday: 6 x 600 @ 5K pace with 90 seconds rest. It took me and Wis a couple reps to find the pace here, but we ran the last 4 in 2:04 or better. Felt good to turn the legs over a bit after a lot of plodding the last few days. Strength at lunch.

Thursday: 12 miles at MLR effort. This hurt; 7:30 pace felt like pulling teeth, and the route I picked was hilly. It might have been the downhills on the way home that finally killed my legs.

Friday: 8 miles. Got out for a late lunch run amid a busy day at work. Really sore.

Saturday: 9 miles. Even more sore. Even taking it slow, this was tough.

Sunday: 16 miles. The most sore. If I weren’t running this with my friends, I might’ve stayed in bed. I had a chance to cut it short on the way home, too, and I probably should have, but I soldiered through. Spent a lot of time on the couch this afternoon. I can’t remember the last time my legs hurt this much.

This Week: 66 miles. 66 very painful miles. I really hope I don’t have to write another blog like this next week.

Baby: My son has been in a great mood lately and is getting really close to taking his first steps. He is a lot of fun right now, but it’s been hard to enjoy it because I’ve been so exhausted. One of the hardest parts of marathon training is that your family still needs you no matter how tired and stupid you are. I want to be there for them. They have been there for me in so many ways during this buildup. At the very least, I want to sharpen up and run a phenomenal race in April. They deserve it.

For a few weeks now I’ve been feeling like I’m building towards a big leap in fitness. After this week, I feel like I made it—not like I landed on the other side, and I’m some new crystalized being, but like I pushed off into open air.

I’m definitely not the runner I was in my last marathon build anymore. There’s too much evidence now. An unexpected course best at Sunset in June was one thing. A bad race, an illness, and an injury later, I made a smart pivot to the bike, which earned me another good race and a chance to start stacking bricks again. Still, there was no guarantee.

Another injury, another pivot, two blizzards, so many tempos on the treadmill, and here we are. I ran 83 minutes for a half marathon this Sunday, after a 7-mile warmup, and it felt like a workout. We have liftoff.

Five weeks left to land the plane, but right now it’s hard not to appreciate the view.

Monday: 7 miles at lunch, and my first set of strides in ages. It’s been even longer since I did them on grass. Got a freaky hamstring cramp while walking off the last stride, but thankfully it turned out to be nothing.

Tuesday: 8 easy in the morning, core at lunch.

Wednesday: 5 miles at tempo pace on the track with Wis. This went really well; we ran just under 6′ pace for the first 4 miles and closed a little harder. I felt fantastic and probably would’ve closed even harder without Wis talking sense from the next lane. 11 miles on the day. Missed strength in the afternoon for a work meeting.

Thursday: 12 miles at MLR effort in a dense, dense fog. A few times I had to turn around and run a different way because I just couldn’t see where I was going. It was like running in the Lost Woods from Legend of Zelda, if the Lost Woods also had cars. This wouldn’t have been so bad in Standard Time! But alas. On the bright side, 7′ pace felt really smooth.

Friday: 8 miles easy. Felt pretty sore after two hard days.

Saturday: 8 miles easy with Wis before our dress rehearsals: his at the United Airlines NYC Half, and mine at the March Madness Half Marathon in Newark. I was still feeling sore when I started, but loosened up nicely and felt pretty good by the end.

Sunday: 20 miles, with the last 13.1 coming at the March Madness Half Marathon. I finished a 7-mile “warmup” about an hour before the gun and took a gel to keep me energized. I took another one shortly before the race went off, then two more during the race itself at 4 and 8 miles.

The race went really well. Whether I’m getting fitter or my new racing shoes are just that good, 6:30 felt like a jog! I actually struggled to go slow enough to stick to my plan of maintaining goal marathon pace. Still, I did my best not to dig too deep for what was essentially a big workout. I ended up averaging 6:20 pace for an 83:07 second-place finish. More importantly, I finished feeling like I had more in the tank.

This was absolutely huge for my confidence going into Jersey City. I know I can make it halfway in 6:30s feeling really, really good. All that remains is to make sure I have the miles under me to finish strong. Speaking of which…

This Week: 74 miles. This week had a strong workout, a smooth MLR, and a great race, all at high mileage. It feels like everything is clicking right when it needs to be. Two more weeks of this, and then the taper starts.

Baby: My son has come down with another case of the sniffles, which this time includes a sore throat and hoarse voice. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to mind it for most of the day, though by bedtime he is pretty out of gas.

He had a fun weekend with a visit from some good friends and their kids on Saturday, plus an always-appreciated visit from Grandma on Sunday. He is acting more and more like a toddler. We think he will be walking and finding his first words soon. He is also finding his feelings and learning to throw a proper tantrum when his favorite toy (a tube of diaper cream) is confiscated! This is less welcome but just as natural for his development, and we’re learning to work with it. Once he adds walking and talking to the mix, we’re going to have a lot more to learn!

It finally happened. For the first time since mid-January, every run this week was outside. Sunday I ran in shorts! This felt impossible just a week or two ago, but sure enough, spring is on its way.

Unfortunately, that means Daylight Saving Time is back, so my morning runs are now an hour darker and my commutes are once again directly into the sun. I have a very strong opinion that we should be in Standard Time all the time. People need sunlight in the morning because they need to get to work, get to school, and get things done before they go to either of those places, and they need to do all that safely. Being able to play yard games at 8:30 at night for a few weeks in July isn’t worth that trade.

Aside from our obvious mismanagement of the clock at a societal level, this week was pretty good. Higher temperatures and lower mileage will really lift the spirit!

Monday: Off.

Tuesday: 4 miles easy, but not as slow as I’d like. It’s way harder to run 8:30s outside than on the treadmill. I want to keep in touch with those blessedly easy recovery miles as I head into peak mileage. Core at lunch.

Wednesday: 4 miles easy. Wis and I were both feeling banged up from 22 on Sunday, and the track wasn’t clear, so we decided to bide our time and push this week’s workout to Saturday. Strength at lunch.

Thursday: 8 miles at MLR effort. This didn’t feel great; my left knee has been bugging me this week. Still, I hit my paces and got it done. I’m counting on the steep drop in volume this week to eventually give me a boost.

Friday: 5 miles. Jogged out to the track to confirm that yes, for the first time since December, the track was clear. We were clear for takeoff.

Saturday: 6 x 600 @ 5K pace (2:04 average) with 90 seconds rest. Ran this one with Wis and we traded reps. It was great to have the company. This felt pretty good aerobically, but my legs were rusty at this pace. Still, we had plenty in the tank and it was nice to turn it over a bit after a long winter on the treadmill.

Sunday: 16 miles. Joined up with some friends for the middle miles, then dropped down to MLR effort for a couple miles before hitting the last mile around marathon pace. This felt good but I was tired after.

This Week: 45 miles. This took a while to set in, and I’ve still got some aches and pains to sort out, but I feel energized and ready for another push. Three big weeks coming up, and then we sharpen up with the taper.

Baby: My son is getting closer to walking and talking all the time. Just the other day he started babbling in a whole new way, with new sounds and inflection. It seems like there are now some patterns and associations to it, like he is closing in on his first few words. The leaders in this race seem to be “dis” (this), “dat” (that), “nana” (banana), “Dada”, “Mama”, and “moo” (moo). We will see which one he can reliably use first! He is also getting pretty good at the signs for “more” and “all done”, and also waving—though he is shy.

Just when you think you are hitting a plateau, and you get comfortable with what your child can do, another explosion of new skills seems to start right on schedule. The only thing you can count on is that everything is changing all the time.

It’s Tuesday here at The DNF because I wanted to finally spend a little time on a post and introduce my training partner, Wismith. You’ll meet him on Sunday. Let’s start from the beginning.

Monday: I did about five hours of shoveling, off and on throughout the day. By the time I was finished, there was no time or energy left for running.

Tuesday: Back on the treadmill. 9 miles easy. Very sore from shoveling.

Wednesday: 11 miles, with 30 minutes at tempo pace, mostly on the treadmill. I’m still approaching my treadmill tempos with skepticism, but I used a different treadmill at the gym today and 10 mph still felt very smooth. By the end of my 30 minutes I had progressed to 10.4 (5:46 pace). I was starting to get tired by then, but otherwise I felt good.

Thursday: MLR mostly on the treadmill. Started around 7:30 pace, worked my way to 7:05 and stayed there for a while, and then closed a little harder. Felt good!

Doubled back for 3 easy miles on the treadmill at lunch. This was surprisingly tough and threw me off for the rest of the day. I was just trying to make up some of the mileage I missed on Monday. Maybe that was a mistake. My left hip hurt.

Friday: Back to 9 miles easy with the treadmill. A little soreness left over from Thursday’s double.

Spent the rest of the day caring for a sick baby who had to stay home from daycare, and then started to feel a lot sicker myself. After getting nap-trapped in the nursery for two and a half hours (I should have started drafting this post!), my whole body ached.

Saturday: 9 miles easy again. I almost didn’t run at all because I was feeling so bad from my son’s germs, but with a down week coming up I kept telling myself that I was going to rest soon and only needed to push a little bit more. The rest of the day did not feel great.

Sunday: 22 miles, mostly in the 7:15-7:30 range, with a slight pickup over the last couple miles. Thank goodness I woke up feeling less sick than Friday and Saturday, and thank goodness I had a friend with me the entire way.

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I have been meaning to write for a while about my friend Wismith, who is running Jersey City with me as his first marathon.

Wismith seems to know absolutely everybody in the Montclair running scene, so it’s not a surprise that we eventually came to meet. I was starting 600-meter repeats at the track as he and some other local runners were wrapping up their workout. I’m pretty sure Wis followed me on Strava later that day, even though everyone had left by the time my workout wrapped and we were never properly introduced. He knows everybody in town because he makes the effort like that. This was three summers ago.

Once you know somebody even a little bit, you start to recognize them around town. We crossed paths on morning runs and would say Hey. Eventually we started running together on purpose, sometimes workouts, sometimes easy, sometimes for coffee. I joked to my wife about how rare and weird it was to be making a new friend as a man in his thirties. But it was also really nice.

When you run together, there’s not much to do but talk, so you talk a lot. By the time Wis and I were hanging out more regularly, my wife and I were looking for a place to settle down and have our baby. I had a lot on my mind. Wis heard all my takes on the housing market and impending fatherhood, endless rumination on the Boston Marathon and its qualifying procedure, stupid gripes about work, and plenty of high school track war stories. I heard a lot of the same from him: the night classes he was taking to get an advanced degree in nursing, new opportunities at work, race reports—Wis races way more often than I do—and high school track war stories. The pace always quickens when the glory days come up.

In August, I got a text from Wis that he “had an idea” and “we need to talk”. I said it felt like I was in Ocean’s Eleven and he said it was more like The Town.

Well, OK then. Whose car are we gonna take?

Wis met me right after I ran 2:57. That fall he heard about how I was rejected from Boston. The next year he watched it happen again, and then he watched me rush a buildup to Rehoboth for one last shot before my son was born. He even talked about signing up for Rehoboth to give me a boost, but I understood when he didn’t. Besides a college teammate or a pro on a contract, who does that?

Wis does, apparently. He wanted in on Jersey City 2026 to see what the marathon was all about, and to try to pace me to a 2:50.

It should be stated plainly that Wis is a better runner than me. He regularly runs half marathons south of 80 minutes, and 5Ks under 17. We are close enough in ability that running workouts together makes sense, but far enough apart that if I can run 2:50, he can destroy it—as long as he’s ready for the distance. That’s my job in this whole operation.

It has been a lot of fun to train together for this race. We haven’t shared nearly as many miles as we’d have liked because of all our days on the treadmill this dreadful winter, but we’ve been checking in on each other and showing up for the big days, like Sunday. The real fun will be in April when it’s time to rip.

Wis saw me grinding out solo 600s a couple years ago, and on Sunday he ran 22 miles because he’s training for his first marathon to help me finally secure my BQ. Most people would tell you they don’t make friends like that anymore. They haven’t met Wis.

But if they went running enough in Montclair, New Jersey, they would.

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This Week: 75 miles. Another nice big number on the board before pulling back next week. This was hard-fought and I’m really glad we got it done.

The way my treadmill tempos have been going, and the way I felt after 22 miles on Sunday, I think we could be building toward something big. I’m really good at putting limits on myself. I have trouble seeing higher up the mountain. But I want to believe I can see a little higher right now. Only a little, and only a glimmer, but maybe it’s there.

A week to rest, another push, and we’ll find out.

Baby: My son spent the week bouncing back from an illness and had a bit of a backslide on Friday. Despite some rough nights over the weekend, he seems to have finally kicked it and is happy and healthy and chatty and hungry again. He also stood without support for the first time! It was only for a few seconds, but it shows how much stronger he’s getting. We’re on our way to walking! You know what they say about walking—you gotta do it before you run.

This week was going pretty well and then ended up like something out of an Anton Chekhov story. I’m lucky I wrote most of this before the latest snowstorm hit on Sunday, or I may not have written it at all.

Monday: Forgot I was supposed to run! Took the day off like an idiot!

Tuesday: 9-mile treadmill day. It’s getting warmer, but the roads are still a mess. With the problems I’ve been having with my knees, I’m playing it as safe as possible. Core in the afternoon.

Wednesday: 24′ at tempo pace. I’m saying minutes this week instead of miles because I’m not sure my treadmill was well-calibrated. Either I’m getting stronger, and 6′ pace was easy enough that I progressed to 5:45 in the last mile, or something was off. I hesitate to take full credit until I can repeat this workout on solid ground. With all the snow we’ve had this winter, I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance. Strength in the afternoon.

Thursday: 12 miles at MLR effort. This felt awful at first, but  I eventually got into it and averaged sub-7′ pace for the last 9 miles. Really solid.

Friday: Back to the treadmill. 9 miles. Felt lousy; it could have been the hot pace of Thursday’s MLR, or it could have been baby germs.

Saturday: The nicest weather we have had in ages, right ahead of another big snowstorm. I took the opportunity to wear shorts. 9 miles. Tried to do strides but couldn’t drive my left knee. These aches and pains have been really frustrating.

Sunday: 16 miles, mostly with friends, with a fast finish once I was solo. Another run that started out awful and got much better. Stomach problems late; there was no emergency, but I think I need to take more water with the new gels I’m using. Still experimenting and trying to train my gut.

90 minutes of shoveling in the evening. The snow was heavy and falling hard enough that by the time I was done, it was piled nearly as high as when I started.

I’m struggling to imagine a future when it isn’t winter. I’m convinced I’ll be shoveling snow the night before Jersey City. I’ll be shoveling snow for my birthday in July. I’ll be shoveling snow for my son’s high school graduation. It’s never going to stop. Editor’s note: It stopped.

This Week: 65 miles, and another foot and a half.

Sitting here on the other side of the blizzard and the resulting cleanup, I feel good. A harsh winter can make you feel so helpless. My shoveling sessions on Sunday night and this morning left me feeling really low about it all. But I kept going back out there, and slowly but surely I dug us out of this mess. My hard work is a mountain in the backyard that stands about five feet high. I’m really proud of that.

I’ve said before that marathon training is about finding a way to keep going. Add “two blizzards in a month” to the list of things that will try to get in the way, and then cross it off.

Baby: My son was sick for most of this week. He has gone to daycare exactly once since February 13, on Tuesday. We have been calling in a lot of favors from his grandparents.

His daycare was closed today, because of the weather. We couldn’t call in any grandparents, because of the weather. I still had to shovel, because of the weather. I was still expected to work, because I have a laptop. I spent five hours shoveling, so good luck with that.

On the bright side of this blizzard, my son seems to finally be feeling better and got a kick out of watching his dad shovel today. He’s going back to daycare in the morning.

Maybe it will be spring, eventually.

I’ve been meaning to write more substantial posts but haven’t found the time lately. I’m happy to report that training is going well. My runs on the treadmill seem to be working wonders; I made 66 miles feel like a down week just by running 8:30s most of the way. I’m ready for more.

Monday: 55 minutes on the bike at lunch. I dialed in my heart rate by changing the bike’s resistance, rather than by pedaling faster, so this started to feel like a strength session by the end. I was aiming for an hour but was jelly-legged by 55 minutes.

Tuesday: 9-mile treadmill day. My feet and knees were still sore from my 20-miler on Sunday, but I made it through. I finally brought headphones to the gym, so I was able to pass the time with the Citius Mag Podcast. Core at lunch.

Wednesday: 9-mile treadmill day. Better than Tuesday. Strength at lunch.

Thursday: 12 miles at MLR effort. I was able to hit my usual paces, but felt more tired than usual. This is my third straight week over 60 miles, so that classic marathon training fatigue is setting in.

Friday: 9-mile treadmill day. My left knee has been a little shaky since Sunday, and it was worse today. I eventually loosened up.

Saturday: 9-mile treadmill day. Felt really easy except for my knee, but that got better.

Sunday: 18 miles, with the last 8 at marathon pace (6:23 average). Like Thursday, the faster running felt hard from the beginning, but it didn’t get worse over time. Luckily I had company today so I didn’t have to spend almost an hour thinking about how heavy my legs felt.

My right knee pain came back with about a mile to go, but I was able to run through it and close well. Felt pretty good afterward, but very hungry by dinnertime and very tired by bedtime.

This Week: 66 miles. I was amazed how fresh I felt by the end of the week just by keeping most of my mileage extremely easy (7 mph on the treadmill, or 8:34 pace). That said, marathon training stresses multiple bodily systems, so even though my heart and lungs and brain were raring to go, my muscles and joints were not always so eager. That will come.

Baby: My baby boy had blood drawn today as a follow-up to his one-year checkup, which was hard for all of us. I had to hold him while he cried and struggled as the phlebotomists worked on him. Thankfully, they got what they needed and my son quickly recovered from the stress. I wish I could say the same about myself.

Something I weirdly enjoy about being a parent is taking care of my son when he gets sick. Making sure he gets his medicine, or enough fluids, or an afternoon nap makes me feel like a good dad, and also like I’m in control. I’m sure those two feelings are related.

Having his blood drawn is sort of the opposite situation. There’s nothing I can do to make it feel better, or help him understand what is happening. I’m not in control. My baby is crying and I can’t make him stop.

Being a parent makes you helpless in ways you don’t always appreciate. I saw it in stark relief today. My saving grace was that my boy is brave.

He stopped crying while the needle was still in his arm. He took a deep breath and gritted what few teeth he has and steadied himself. He was babbling at the woman who’d drawn his blood by the time we left. It was such a relief to hear him happy again.

I was so proud.