Working Class Runner

So I have made it to Vancouver, fully trained and ready to run this year’s Marathon. And I have decided not to run it this year.

‘… wait, what?’

I’m not hurt. I’m in shape to run the race. I did make the decision during the week before I arrived. I’m still here on vacation, of course. I still went to the Expo to get my bib etc for posterity, hence the picture you see here.

So, I have a recurring skin rash condition on my left arm between the elbow and wrist that has come and gone each of the last several summers since I’ve returned to Vegas.

At times it gets infected and I have to get antibiotics to get it to pass. This time, it came earlier than usual (it usually hits after mid-May) and it’s not so bad at all. A litany of remedies and tricks have slowed it down before it got worse.

I have made all sorts of dietary and lifestyle adjustments to prevent or reduce its recurrence, but it always seems to come back each year. Since it disappears and recurs rather than refusing to go away, and there’s no telltale marks on my arm, I ruled out skin cancer. I also ruled out any of the illnesses that can include a skin rash, like lupus, as I have none of the other symptoms. I have ruled out exogenous causes like scabies or ringworm, as I don’t have other key symptoms for those either. Bedbugs or mosquitoes would have bitten me elsewhere, and my bedding’s clean.

I have deduced that the extended sun exposure in the high UV summer Vegas environment is a factor in why it recurs. I have finally learned that even going outside for walks during work breaks in med-high UV is too much exposure (sunblock has no effect on the outcome), so I mostly have to stop doing that. Even driving home can be a problem because that arm is right next to my window which tinted or not gives it a lot of UV. (I’ve recently began wearing compression sleeves to reduce this).

But in any case, even though the Vancouver sun isn’t as bad for a bunch of reasons, spending 5-6 uninterrupted hours in it may not be a good idea right now. An hour or two is fine. Six hours is not, even wearing sleeves. And go figure, the forecast this year has settled on mostly clear and sunny skies on marathon day for the first time in a while (it’s almost always cloudy/overcast).

I obviously was still looking forward to visiting Vancouver, and wasn’t going to cancel the trip. So I decided I would just enjoy the vacation, do a bunch of more casual running as training while here (I can still go out in the sun for a couple hours at a time, even more in the AM), and keep building endurance once I return home through the summer… maybe for a fall marathon. I’ve got a couple fall marathons in mind (and no, the Vegas Marathon is not one of them). Nothing is in stone. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, if anyone reading this is planning on running this year’s mostly-sunny Vancouver Marathon (which of course I’ve written on before), I decided to offer some extra tips on known traps people tend to fall into running the race. I was completely scouted and ready to handle all of the above this year before the weather and my skin convinced me not to.

This will be a brief and less formal list than the ten things I wrote about before. You are welcome to give all of this a grain of salt or less. (After all… I haven’t successfully run this race in a while, and that will have to wait at least another year.)

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I basically took a year off (almost) from updating this site. I wanted to just focus on learning more about myself and training, make some needed adjustments to my lifestyle (let alone training), and reset whatever habits in my life I needed to reset. Over this current year, a lot happened for me… not necessarily great.

I ran a couple more 10Ks that went okay about a month after my last post in 2023. Starting 2024 I stretched out my mileage and training volume ahead of a planned 5th round with the Vancouver Marathon that May.

And then in February I got really sick, definitely the sickest I’ve been in several years. I had planned to run the First Half in Vancouver that month but actually had to cancel the trip the day I was scheduled to fly out (which cost me a good chunk of already-spent money). I visited the doctor thinking I maybe had Covid, the flu or RSV, but he found I actually had none of the above: A similar flu-like bacterial infection was going around in Vegas, and I had gotten that. My immunity was built around being anti-viral, but it was not ready to combat a novel bacterial illness like this.

The illness took a little over a week to fully heal up (one advantage of a bacterial illness rather than a virus is that antibiotics are much more effective against bacteria). But I had to shut training completely down for that week, at the worst time for marathon training, and I realized once I restarted that at best I couldn’t get close to suitably ready for the Vancouver Marathon.

So, for the first time, I dropped down to the Vancouver Half Marathon. While not capable of getting ready for the marathon, I wasn’t far at all from half marathon condition and could comfortably handle that even if I wasn’t sure I could get into prime half racing shape. Not planning on an A effort, and being close to stretched out volume-wise, I decided to tinker with my training during the run-up and try different mixes of running and cross training.

While I finished that Vancouver half in just under 2:20, far from my best half, I had a good time this May in Vancouver and enjoyed running the rather popular half for the first time. Vancouver is planning significant construction in Stanley Park over the next few years to replace an old water main, and the course may end up changing to accommodate this (the course passes all the key construction sites), but (10/12/24 edit) for now I did create a write-up on running the half marathon. I think they can keep the same course for at least 2025, so we’ll see.

Another significant change is that my go-to Vancouver hotel, The Listel in the West End, is closing this November for at least four years so they can demolish and rebuild the property. So I also have to find a new hotel for 2025’s Marathon (yes, of course I’m going back, and I plan to run the full marathon again this time). This is my chance to try a hotel with a kitchenette, buy local groceries and cook some meals during my trip, something I’ve wanted to do on these trips. While I enjoy dining out in Vancouver, I’d like to have the option to go out rather than need to do it every meal. I do have such a hotel booked that appears to work, but it’s early and if better options materialize while I can switch I may do so.

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One significant problem I had this summer is my already troubled sleep got markedly worse. I’ve had intermittent problems with what is called terminal insomnia: You can get to sleep on-time just fine, but you wake up in the middle of the night for no clear reason and can’t get back to sleep. I’ve always gotten to bed and woken up early and my schedule stayed consistent, but I kept waking up around 1-3am in the morning which left me tired during the day.

It didn’t help that Las Vegas had one of its hotter summers. While the average temperature will always climb due to climate change, the bigger problem is that the low temperature didn’t get below 80°F for weeks at a time. While my air conditioning is generally capable, I definitely noticed a negative overall affect on my sleep. My body generally doesn’t like the heat (I have family in Vegas which is why I’m living here now; I wouldn’t live in a place like otherwise).

I had been planning to run the Toronto Waterfront Marathon this fall, but given this and other struggles, I quickly decided to cancel that trip and just plan to stay home.

Good thing I did, because I then unexpectedly added to an unusual series of health issues.

• In June, a recurring issue with bad rashes on my left arm reared its ugly head and I needed a couple of weeks of antibiotics to heal that. This led to a significant pare-down in my diet: No more chicken, which for me has triggered skin reactions over the years (at least in Vegas: I notice this doesn’t happen when I’m living elsewhere). I’ve only eaten beef and fish for protein (like much of my family I have problems digesting pork), which appears to have helped.
• I’ve also had problems lately with beef here not spoiling after I freeze it, which led me back to my old Chicago practice of buying it off the shelf daily while it’s in good condition.
• A mistake by a pesticide contractor in late July led to some of that getting in my HVAC which also affected my sleep and recovery.
• I randomly hurt my neck during a workout that week too, and while thankfully that healed in a few days it certainly didn’t help me bounce back as the HVAC gradually cleared out the pesticide air.
• In mid August despite not running too much and having scaled back training, I started getting weird pains in both calves. I hadn’t injured anything (plus it would be very unusual and notable to strain both calves or Achilles), and the aches would come and go. I got worried after doing some research and discovered that this is a common symptom in the condition spinal stenosis, which occurs when something in the spinal column (an errant disk or vertebrae, a bone spur) begins pinching the pathway of some of your central nerves. While worried, given for many a condition like that never gets better, I also did additional work on spinal decompression and static/moving posture to see if that would address the issue. It might just be a minor correctible issue (I’ve hurt my back lifting before and recovered within a week: It could be an issue with that spinal disc). Sure enough, within a week the calf pain subsided and everything was fine.

I think I’m out of the woods with all of the above, and have not had any such issues since.

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I got an eye exam and new glasses for the first time in a few years. Like my last eye exam, my vision hadn’t deteriorated at all and in fact the vision in my right eye improved. I actually needed glasses that weren’t as strong for that eye.

I also decided as an experiment to cut out all supplements in mid-September, and miraculously my sleep improved dramatically. Perhaps as my diet evolved and improved, the supplements had gradually become unnecessary? I had cut back substantially during summer as it was, down to basically a multi-vitamin, calcium and magnesium, copper and taurine. I’ve gradually phased out all my Hammer supplements and fish oil.

The copper (3-6g per day) incidentally helped a lot with energy and recovery when I started regularly dosing it in May after some research, and the taurine had improved my sleep quality somewhat. I had always taken the other mentioned items.

But Cronometer showed me that, without all of them, I still had my RDA of the vast majority of nutrients. Hence I tried going without the supplements for a week, and suddenly I not only slept through every night for about a week but the sleep quality was strong. The only issue I noticed was that my teeth felt a bit structurally vulnerable, which along with precaution is the only reason I re-introduced the multi-vitamin and calcium/magnesium after a week. I still dose them but now I’m more comfortable leaving some out on a day over day basis. I have had a couple of occasional bad sleep nights but have slept soundly and consistently otherwise.

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So, I’ve been dealing with a variety of health issues this summer. I had to pare down my aerobic training more than I had since the Covid lockdowns, nearly all of which was cross training.

One key change this summer was doing all my cross training on the Matrix ascent ellipticals at the gym, with the incline maxed out. While still not totally sure of the exact incline on these machines, I know the minimum it can be is about 10° or 10% (it could be as much as 20-25 but I don’t know that for sure). Used at zone 1-2, roughly 4.0mph, this per Runalyze EVO2max calcs gets me pretty close to the quality of a very easy run. I’ve been able to maintain solid aerobic and muscular fitness, plus my arms are doing more aerobic work. Despite only strength training 1-3 times per week, my arms have gotten noticeably bigger, not with muscular definition but with fullness… indicating they are carrying more glycogen than before.

As the weather has cooled in Vegas this past month, I started running regularly again and sure enough… that has actually gone quite well. Despite barely running at all, maybe once a week for 1-2 miles, I had no trouble bouncing back from easy 30-60 minute runs on gently inclined terrain. The ascent elliptical is more demanding on your quads and other deadlifting muscles than a run even if the impact is far lower, so the adjustment to running was just to the impact and the extra aerobic demand rather than the neuromuscular demand. My training volume within only 3 weeks is back to where it’s typically been before this summer and I don’t feel worn out.

After years of following different training plans (including my own), Garmin recently released its own adaptive heart-rate based Garmin Coach algorithmic training program for my watch. So for a change I’m going to let it steer the ship for a while. I have no trouble bailing if it’s making things too difficult or unworkable.

The biggest challenge with the Garmin Coach is with base training easy runs, getting my typically-low easy run heart rate to where Garmin wants it to be sooner so it doesn’t score those workouts as sub-par. Indoors on a treadmill, it’s easier since the warmer indoor air gets my heart rate up more quickly. Outdoors, with the weather cooling down, my heart rate starts around 60% of max and takes some time to get to the 65-75% the Coach wants.

I figured out when outdoors that if I (do what is typically a cardinal aerobic training sin, and) start the run at a brisk pace (the labored breathing is a challenge, the actual running is not), I can get the HR in range within 3-4 minutes. I slow back down to a regular easy pace, and everything’s fine the rest of the way.

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That is where I’m at right now. Since I’m not traveling this fall, I signed up for a slew of Vegas 10K’s to work on this fall before ramping into marathon training next year. Like this year, the marathon will be the only 2025 trip I plan to take. I’ll plan on being more aggressive with traveling in 2026, circumstances permitting.

It’s been a little while. I’ve kept my work close to the vest, just auto-regulating my training and lifestyle while working on different approaches.

• Many tired mornings, I’ve opted for long morning walks near work instead of going for coffee. As I’ve mentioned previously, I have a long cross town commute that I’d rather not take during rush hour. So I make the commute early and either train or have coffee closer to work until it’s time for work. Lately I’ve just driven to work, parked, and then walked easy around the quiet office complex until around time for me to walk into the office. This not only has a modest training effect but also better prepared my body for all the walking I do on Vancouver trips than before.
• Speaking of Vancouver, I took a couple trips this month to run a couple 10Ks I had interest in. I ran Granville Island on Canadian Thanksgiving (10/9) and the Great Trek at the UBC campus (10/28). I wasn’t at all specifically trained to race 10K so these were fun runs. I basically just jogged out Granville Island and the Great Trek was a long fitness test.

I really liked the Granville Island race, which goes around scenic False Creek (a misnomer as it’s basically a small bay). Though I probably won’t do it next year, I’ll certainly do it again.

I had been intrigued at the idea of eventually doing the full Great Trek: They hold a half marathon at 8:30, the 10K at 10:30, and a 5K at noon. They not only allow you to do all three but give out separate medals to people who do. (Of course, I only did the 10K this year)

However, while UBC is a nice campus, most of the Great Trek route isn’t that interesting. Most of it was just roadway through a lot of bland forest and open space. And their half marathon course is basically just the 10K course twice, so if one go-around feels like a boring grind, doing three would get pretty bad. And then to do the whole Trek you’d have to do a 5K after (which granted is a separate course). While running 37K is an accomplishment, doing it in a bunch of loops isn’t worth the effort to me as much as just doing a scenic marathon somewhere else. So, maybe not this one again.

For finishing the Run Van Grand Slam (I ran the First Half in February, the marathon in May, and these two races)… they gave you a plastic water bottle. They had mentioned giving Grand Slammers a medal, but I guess they changed their minds! Maybe too many people were eligible? I don’t know.

• My Garmin Forerunner 945’s hinges broke in early October while removing it from my wrist. I was using an aftermarket fabric wristband, which means you have to pull the watch off like a wristband and the band width can only be adjusted while off your wrist. Unfortunately one day, pulling it off created too much torque on the hinges and they gave out.

So, I quickly replaced it with a new FR955 Solar (the 945 was starting to crap out in various ways and wasn’t a great watch for Garmin anyway).

The 955 tracks a bunch of extra metrics the 945 did not, like heart rate variability and training readiness. This 1-100 score every morning is based on your training load, your sleep, your aforementioned HRV, and Garmin’s stress score. Though certainly more useful for planning than the old Garmin Body Battery, the latter is still tracked for some reason.

Also, HRV itself is a superior metric to (still useful) resting heart rate, since RHR can be good and low when you need rest, whereas your HRV being low (higher is better) tells the actual story.

I expected the Solar recapture to be more useful than it’s actually been. Though Garmin claims it actively recharges the watch, I haven’t noticed an actual battery increase from extended inactive sun exposure. I’ve found its capability closer to the power recapture on a hybrid car, supplemental power that is then used in lieu of the battery and thus extending the latter.

• I’ve let the Readiness score effectively dictate how much or how little training I’ve done each day. When the score’s lower, I’ve taken it easier than planned. After two back to back workouts last weekend, my score was so low over the next three days that I went ahead and took those days easy (just walking and yoga). I’ve found following its lead has helped a lot with keeping my overall training monotony low, a good sign. Workouts have also been consistently improving when I’ve done them thanks to the advised rest.
• I mentioned yoga. I decided to seriously experiment with the Garmin Yoga routines, mostly the easier-to-intermediate ones I can do in the 20-30 minute range. I tried some of the longer intermediate ones, but once you introduce poses like the one-legged Warrior Three it’s a bit too much 20 minutes into a demanding yoga routine. I can do most of the poses with reasonable difficulty. The hardest ones I can manage right now are a sequence with the Boat, and the Wheel.

I had actually done yoga almost every weekday afternoon I’ve been home for the last three weeks (weekends off, and none during the Vancouver trips). I noticed in the last week my plantar fascia in the right foot started bothering me here and there, and just this weekend my left shoulder started squawking. So that’s my signal to dial the yoga back for a bit.

• Now within the 26 week window Runalyze Marathon Shape window for Vancouver 2024, I started comparing different marathon plans with my own ideas. I created a low-frills Excel workbook template to show the marathon shape for a plan by inputting the daily mileage and my estimated VO2max to get a score. With this, I reviewed about two dozen plans.

For the weeks prior to the plan (since Shape calculates 26 weeks of training), I put in a reasonable amount of base mileage loosely matching the plan format (30-35 mpw).

I also put in a composite mileage total for any aerobic cross training (usually around 4-5 mph) to account for its role in marathon fitness.

I also capped any midweek speed/tempo workouts at 10 miles in a day regardless of what’s scheduled, as that’s the most I could reasonably do before I have to finish and go to work.

I found that most conventional plans, as well as the plans I’ve read and written about, would only get someone in my fitness range (36-38 EVO2max) about 80% marathon ready. At that shape, you can certainly complete the race. But forget about hitting a calculated goal time, and the last few miles will probably be a miserable experience. Many writers will just say that misery is just part of the marathon. As with many of their outdated ideas, I would beg to differ.

Some of the plans were dismissed due to having clear deficiencies (e.g. Coates’ Running On Air, whose long runs were capped at 3 hours and too short… even shorter than the Hansons plans, which I did leave on my list), or being unreasonably demanding for someone at my fitness level (e.g. Pfitzinger, which would certainly get you over 100% Shape but the midweek workouts are simply too long to get done). I did leave plans in even if their training monotony would clearly be too high (e.g. Hansons), which would lead me to personally disqualify it if I were personally picking a plan from this list.

There will be a longer write-up later, but: Most plans scored at least 80%. A small handful scored above 90%, with a couple actually making it above 100%. Among the few that didn’t make 80% and scored in the 70’s were: Hal Higdon’s Marathon 3 (his newer long novice-intermediate plan that integrates cross training… FWIW his intermediate 1 plan got to 82%), IronFit (whose workouts are time based, and thus limit the amount of needed mileage I could complete… plus the 3 week taper is rather aggressive, reducing it further), and all of the Hansons plans (obviously the 16 mile max long run reduces the Shape score quite a bit, as at 36-38 EVO2 the expected average weekly long run is 17 miles).

Galloway’s run walk plans with their long 26-28 mile long runs got to 92%. The midweek runs being rather short killed it from getting 100%, but then again when you’re going 26-28 miles every 3 weeks, the midweeks probably have to be short!

The two 100% unicorns: One is a reasonable adaption of Tom Osler’s Conditioning For Distance Runners template, which starts low mileage and just builds easy mileage over the duration, and peaking the long run at 22-25 miles (I stopped at 22), with no stepback weeks other than reducing the long run 25% during final sharpening. I even broke template and made the final two weeks lower volume. It still finished a bit over 100%.

The other… I will keep a surprise for now, in large part because I’ve never reviewed this author’s plan, and he’s not well known nor is his book and training method known much at all. The book’s not hard to find on Amazon; in fact, I think (here’s a clue) the book is currently available on Kindle Unlimited, so with Unlimited you could read it for free right now. I’ll write about it in a bit, before the end of the year.

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That’s all for now. I’ll have more in a bit.

Forty-five trips around the sun are complete. Trip #46 is now in progress. A few things:

• I have decided that my approach to getting older is to make consistently healthy life decisions, continue training sustainably and consistently, and keep moving until my body gives me a compelling reason to do things differently.
• The good news is, aside from training less overall than I did before, I don’t notice too much of a difference energy or fitness wise between 45 and 40, or even 45 and 35, aside from now living in a moderate altitude desert valley with dry dusty air and plenty of hills having an accordant effect on my aerobic performance.
• I finally got comfortable with doing nothing on my days off, actually resting. This has made a profound difference in my overall well-being, my training, etc. Whether I’m totally resting or I trained that morning, I eat and spend the rest of the day sitting or sleeping. If I stay up I’ll read or do some research, or mess with Out of the Park Baseball or something. But if I’m tired, I lay down, and often I’ll nap.
• My off-season is basically May (after the Vancouver Marathon) until around September when I begin ramping towards shorter fall races in Vegas (the desert’s racing season). Unlike past summers, I avoided hammering to rebuild volume after Vancouver as well as outright taking it easy. I found a middle ground of training regularly, but not too much.
• The work of Alan Couzens has shaped how I train now (even though he specializes in training Ironman triathletes, much of it cross applies to simple running). Day to day training with principles like his has gotten a lot easier, yet more productive. I see continuous fitness improvements with consistent work. Longer or tougher workouts done consistently get easier with time.
• If you don’t already take 3+ days off per week, make a point to take more easy/off days per week. Chicago made it hard for me to do this because all the walking living in that city required. Nowadays I take anywhere from 1 to 3 days off per week depending on biofeedback.
• Really pump a lot of time and volume on the busier days, not just the long run/workout day. Hours, plural, on a couple weekdays. Work out twice a day if you can. Go for a walk whenever you can outside of that.
• Split those busy weekdays up, get a lot done in the morning (starting early enough I can get a good 90-105 minutes), get some more in later in the day. Once I realized I didn’t have to cram all 2-3 hours or 10+ miles into one day, days like this became easily do-able.
• Two or three big days per week, a couple easier hour-ish days per week, take it super easy or even rest entirely a couple days per week. Once I started doing this I bounced back so well between workouts while still building fitness that there was no real going back.
• Figure out what your training monotony is and get it below 1.50. If you can get it closer to 1.00 or less, that’s terrific. Hitting the latter number made a noticeable difference for me. Get the hell away from any coach or runner who says it doesn’t matter (even last year I ignored it, and now see that’s the wrong move). Coaches who ignore training monotony are behind the times or defiant of where endurance training is heading, and ignoring this will only hurt your health and fitness in the long run.
• I’ve since discovered that most marathon training plans get you no more than 75-85% ready for the race, and that’s if you diligently trained regularly on your own with no setbacks in the 2-3 months before you started the training plan. Whatever goal time a calculator says you can run, you need to add at least half an hour if you’re following one of these plans. And their training monotony is rather high on top of it.
• I moved back to Vegas largely to pay down debt that just wouldn’t go away over my years in Seattle and Chicago. Four years later, even while saving and being able to travel, my revolving credit card debt is basically gone (anything I add and don’t pay off within the month is paid off in a couple months). The only debt I’ll have left after this year are my student loans, and if I lay low another year I’ll have those paid off by the end of next year. I’ll be debt free. This was a pipe dream 10 years ago. I never ever fell behind on my debt, but the payments were always an albatross on my budget.
• While I made sure to travel a lot to Vancouver this past year… next year I’m gonna take it easier on travel after the next Vancouver Marathon. I might go again in the fall but otherwise probably will stay home.
• The optimal run-walk workout: Run until your heart rate hits 75% of max, then slow to a brisk walk. Once your heart rate drops to 65% or less of max, start running again. Repeat ad nauseum until done. It matches your current fitness level perfectly. P.S. If you can run easy and stay the entire time under 75%, that’s even better! But most can’t. Until recently, I couldn’t.
• TRIMP (training stress) is a vastly underrated metric. It’s like WAR in baseball (wins above replacement), a catch-all stat for how much work you did in a workout that cross-applies all types of walking, running and workouts. I focus on TRIMP more than mileage, and you probably should too.
• If nothing else, paying for premium access to Runalyze may be worth it just to have a full-view dashboard of all your training (about $110ish USD, paid in Euro). It’s probably the most effective big-picture way to look at your TRIMP, plus your training monotony, and gauge how much work you’ve done or ought to do. However, the estimated VO2max and marathon shape metrics still have some fundamental issues and should be taken with a grain of salt. (I still use them but with quite a few modifications a bit too complex to share for now)
• During the summer I actually considered weaning off and giving up coffee, but I just can’t. I can ebb and flow how much caffeine I take in by watering it down so it’s no addiction to that, but I simply enjoy drinking black coffee too much. I can’t imagine not getting to do that. And decaf BTW is literally toxic; don’t drink it. Also, tea isn’t close to the same experience or flavor.
• I really cleaned up my diet this summer, though I still have phases where I make a point to consume more processed food to keep my gut microbiome honest. I find if I’m not sleeping well going back to it helps me get back to normal sleep. Just this past couple week I had frozen pizza for dinner most of the week, and errant sleep got back to normal.
• Mostly, I’ve settled on dinners with steak or chicken, a bit of roasted potatoes that bake with the meat, and white or brown rice, all lightly seasoned with garlic salt. At work, I eat twice, having tuna or sardines with peas and occasionally an avocado. I usually don’t eat breakfast. I’ll mix in collagen peptides with coffee or hot water in the morning, plus some coconut oil. Some of the above I’ve been doing for a while, but this past year it’s settled consistently into the above.
• After a couple of fitful years with sleep, my sleep has gotten markedly better this past few months. I still have rough patches where I wake up during the night for a few days, but I’ve slept solidly through the night a lot more consistently than the last few years. The above diet certainly helped, but so did supplementing more aggressively with magnesium glycinate, which helps more with sleep than other forms.
• I finally weaned off any supplements containing stearates, which as I’ve mentioned could possibly cause some secondary health issues (though we don’t yet have any formal data to confirm). Basically, you want to avoid hard pills and look for supplements in capsules, which are just simple collagen shells. Stearates are used to form and hold pills together. Has this had an effect on my health? Possibly, possibly not, but I’ve noticed an improvement since switching off them.
• As I hit the mid-forties, athletically I’m still sharp, not having really slowed down. If I can’t run a race as fast as I did before, either I’m not peaked to run that distance, or the Vegas air/altitude is a factor as most of my best efforts were in Chicago with an easier climate at lower altitude.

I have decided to withdraw from the Chicago Marathon, and do not plan on running a marathon this fall. This is despite having paid a pricey entry fee that I obviously will forfeit. Rather than go into a long screed on what became an increasingly simple, straight-forward decision, I’ll write in brief bullet points. I can always add detail later if requested. Reasons:

Too many signs pointed to this Chicago trip being a bad idea.

– Early Canadian wildfires have already covered the city in consistent smoke, and they should continue throughout the rest of summer into fall. There’s a good chance it will persist into October for the marathon. That’s not good air to run in.

– The crime situation in Chicago has gotten worse. While it’s better than the Covid riots, it’s still by accounts of people I know there markedly more dangerous than it was while I lived there. CPD’s understaffed and not really addressing problems. And it goes hand in hand with the next problem, but there’s a lot more vagrants on the trains and at the stations than there used to be.

– The transit situation is unreliable now. CTA while I lived in Chicago was for the most part reliable. But after Covid CTA also lost workers and the train/bus service got more sporadic and unreliable. It still hasn’t improved much, and I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I need to rely on an unreliable system to get around at all.

I wasn’t really excited about running this marathon anyway.

– Frank Shorter famously said you should not plan your next marathon until you’ve forgotten about your last one. Though I’ve long since recovered from Vancouver, I’m admittedly not quite invested in the idea of building towards another marathon.

– It is notoriously difficult to train for marathons in Las Vegas during summer due to the heat. Even indoors, gyms minimize the use of their A/C, and indoor temperatures (which I regularly measure during workouts) are closer to 80°F, uncomfortably warm for endurance workouts, especially long ones. And it doesn’t cool off until mid-October… after this marathon would have completed. It’s not a given I’d successfully get ready for a fall marathon in those conditions.

– Marathon training is very demanding, and there’s so much else I wanted to work on this summer instead:

– I want to dedicate a block of time to serious strength training. When marathon training, I only have enough bandwidth to do some lighter whole body strength training a couple times a week, if that. If not for marathon training, I could strength train more often and work on building strength if not muscle.

– Marathon training doesn’t realistically allow for speedwork and 5k/10K/Half-specific training. Sure, you can do speedwork, threshold tempo work and such while marathon training, but its benefit on your marathon fitness is ancillary at best and you should carefully avoid overdoing it, especially when you’ve got to build around longer easy workouts. If not for marathon training, I could build to some of the 10K workouts that worked very well for me in 2018-2019. I haven’t had much chance to work on them since moving back to Vegas.

– I want to work more on running in this extreme heat, without having to worry about running suitable marathon volume. When marathon training I pretty much have to do all my work indoors, as the 100°F+ temperatures take a lot out of you at short distances, let alone the longer duration workouts you need for marathon training. Many in town go ahead and do it, and most of them burn out on training after a few years. I would like to avoid that and take the pressure off outdoor sessions by not needing to run long for more than a couple hours if that.

That’s all I’ll say on that for now. I’m working this month on a project involving some different training, and will go into more detail on this once the month is completed.