If I was on thin ice last week, this week we are seeing cracks start to form. Freezing water is choking through, a quick splash before the cold plunge. Potential energy is creeping toward kinetic energy; potential danger is becoming actual danger. I finally started skipping runs this week, and I ended up skipping a lot. This is probably because of the one run I chose not to skip—Wednesday morning's 14-mile medium long run.

Last week, I had some ominous right leg pain that started on Wednesday and hampered the last few miles of my marathon pace workout on Sunday. The pain continued this week, which puts me on thin ice: I want to follow my plan as-written as much as possible, but I can't do that if I'm injured. Starting on Monday, I traded my usual supplementary training for rehab exercises.

The holidays are always a crazy time, but they're even more so when it's your baby's First Christmas. Even with the week off from work, my wife and I were very busy wrapping gifts and packing our bags for a few days with family. If you're my wife, you were also busy making some delicious treats for the festivities. If you're me, you were also busy being a sicko and running 12 miles the morning of Christmas Eve.

I've just wrapped up the first week of my 18/70 build towards Jersey City 2026, and I'm feeling good! That's a relief. Having never followed a Pfitz plan before, I could see that it makes sense on paper but was worried it would be too difficult for me in practice. Getting a solid first week under my belt—with strong and important efforts on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday—is a needed confidence boost.

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

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

The week of Thanksgiving is a busy and important time for all of us, but it is especially so for runners. Thanks to the popularity of turkey trots, Thanksgiving is the only holiday where you can wake up early to go for a run, and people treat you like you're only a little crazy. Thanksgiving is also one of the rare times when nearly every runner in town will be at the same race, and that race is also likely one of a small handful you might run every single year.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

This week was my second at fifty miles since my son was born. I came by it slowly. I spent a lot of this week taking it easy and recovering from my self-immolation at the Mercer County Half last week. Hills were not an option. A Saturday afternoon nap, meanwhile, was very much on the menu. I needed that nap because, despite…

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

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

This week was the first solid seven days of running I've put together since June, probably. This was partly because I've been getting the hang of my son's current routines, and partly because I've simplified my week into three essential workouts: long run (Sunday), hills (Wednesday), and tempo (Saturday). I'm betting this will be all I need to build fitness for a little while.

I signed up today for the Mercer County Half Marathon on August 31 because I've realized I'm not going to train properly if my actions don't have consequences. I've been pretty good the last few years about training regardless of whether there's a race on the calendar, but all it took was one week of awful sleep to show me that "Maybe I'll run a half in November and then target a BQ in 2026!" wasn't getting me out of bed in Q3 2025.

I'm not sure why I thought I could undo eight awful nights of sleep with just a few nights of slightly good sleep. I don't think it's right to call it optimistic; maybe aspirational, or desperate, would be better. I really wanted to get back out there. I ran eleven miles last week and most of it felt pretty bad. I haven't quite rebalanced the scales yet.

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

Last week was my son's first week at daycare, and my wife's first week back at work, which meant new routines for all of us. For me, that meant an earlier wakeup to run and be ready in time for daycare drop-off. Even when my wife took on drop-off duties, I still got up early. It felt good to start my day ahead of schedule, and to be available to help with the morning send-off, and to beat the summer heat.