Don't Chase the Fitness, Let the Fitness Come to You: Reflections and Looking Forward to 2026
After some thought, I came to the conclusion that I was so hyper-focused breaking 4 hours goal that I ended up skipping steps. I got a little drunk off the allure of the marathon distance. It's an admirable distance for sure, but running a marathon does not make you "more" of a runner than someone who hasn't run a marathon. I spent months chasing after goal marathon pace and completely ignored all my other paces.
I've been preaching "go slow to run fast," which is absolutely true. Turns out if I go slow enough, I can go pretty dang far. But I forgot the other half of the mantra: "go fast to run fast." Let me explain.
The Cost of Chasing
The cost of chasing isn't always physical. It's also psychological. I felt disappointed in my Columbia River Gorge performance when I should have been celebrating. I always take the time to encourage others yet I would be the first to nitpick my own splits. I'm my harshest critic. And that's the trap. Rigid expectations can absolutely box in your joy and even drag you down.
The secondary cost of chasing fitness is in the overlooking of the role of resilience. Training mostly at marathon pace and slower, I only really used one subset of muscles. But the body does not race that way. During the final stretch of a hard race, the first-string muscle fibers are toast - the body starts recruiting the bench guys. If the bench guys don't get any reps in practice, they won't ready for prime time and then you hit the wall hard. To build that resilience, you need to get comfortable with discomfort. You have to know what "all out" feels like. Because in a long race -- the last 10k of a marathon, the last 5k of a half marathon, or the last mile of a 5k, it's not a matter of if it will hurt, it's a matter of when. Even if you're just trying to maintain your race pace, that last stretch is going to feel like an all-out effort.
The key to avoiding this trap is to zooming out and seeing the bigger picture. The fact that I can reliably hit 20 miles in 3 hours means my fitness is there and I'm absolutely within striking distance of hitting my goal. I'm just one or two puzzle pieces away from busting through this plateau. I just need perspective and patience, not pity or punishment.
Letting the Fitness Come to You
Letting the fitness come to me means eating my vegetables, as it were. The workouts I dread - thresholds, cruise intervals, and yes, weight training - I need to find time to do them. Fartleks and strides are always going to be fun, but they're designed to end the second things get uncomfortable. And weights? It's not that I don't like lifting heavy things; it's more that I let the garage gym go a bit and I need to clean out the garage for it to be useful again. 'Tis the story of every middle aged man's garage gym.
It's like eating from all the food groups - every aspect of training has a purpose. You only progress with a balanced diet.
I still believe in "mostly easy" running - that's the foundation of my training. Upon this foundation I shall build my house!
Easy running builds the aerobic base; its the fuel for your recovery engine. But a base without structure is just going to be pile of bricks. You can stack a pile of bricks pretty high, yes, but eventually it stops going up. The harder workouts are the walls, the roof, and the ceiling that eventually turn into a house. When you hammer down a hard session, that's like putting up a wall. The easy miles are what allow the body to absorb that stimulus and keep that wall in place. The more hard sessions you hammer out, the number of easy days you're going to need afterward. For a long Jack Daniels-style "Q" run, you might need to take the next day off.
My Off-Season Blueprint
Here are things I'll be looking to do for the next 3-4 months:
- More rowing and weight training, especially when its dark and rainy
- Long runs capped at 13-14 miles
- One run during the week where I do strides and fartleks
- One run once every other week where I do cruise intervals at threshold pace
- One run once every other week where I do a tempo run near threshold pace. The goal is to alternate weeks of intervals vs long tempos.
- Maybe once a month try a 5k time trial to see where my fitness is at
Unlike longer distances like half marathons or marathons, 5ks are incredibly intense, yet forgiving. It usually takes only about a day to recover from a 5k effort vs weeks for an extremely hard marathon effort. That gives me more information - I can see how my body responds to the training and it gives me space to experiment and to tweak my workouts. I can continue training without needing to take weeks off to recover.
What's in Store for 2026?
Instead of chomping at the bit to try the marathon distance again (I really do want to take another crack at it), I think I'll try a few timed 5k Parkruns in January or February. If I'm feeling spicy, I might test my half marathon fitness at the end of February. Into the spring, I'll stretch out my long runs again in order to tackle the Forest Park 25k on Memorial Day, building up to the Mt. Hood 50 miler in July again. I want to revisit that distance knowing what I know now about nutrition and electrolytes.
In August, of course, I'll have Hood to Coast again. HTC will be a fun dose of speedwork and sharpening for marathon season. Depending on how my calendar goes, that takes me back to October where I might do PDX Marathon or Columbia River Gorge Marathon again.
There's freedom in zooming out. Looking at the big picture, I'm learning to not sweat the small stuff. Yet, making time to keep doing the small stuff matters. In the long run, the big stuff is the small stuff -- done over and over again.
By giving myself a year to train and round out my fitness, I'm trusting my process and will not worry too hard about the results. They will come in their due time.
