Category: Uncategorized

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday: 7 again, tired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe that’s just the beginning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday: See Thursday.

Saturday: See Friday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday: 7 miles, slow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ran 7 miles and felt bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just let me get some sleep first.

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!