Why a Reset Can Be the Best Thing For Your Running
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
First and foremost: welcome back, readers! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, and happy new year to all of you! I hope 2026 is good to you and brings strong, healthy, fun miles.
I wanted to kick off the new year of blogs addressing something that many runners feel after training for multiple races or juggling miles with work, school, life, etc: the need to reset.
The majority of my running clients are repeat offenders, many of whom have trained with me for either a shorter distance race (5k, 10k, half marathon) and who want to train for a full marathon, or want to train for a marathon again but are shooting for a faster time or overcoming injury, and some are even looking to up their distances from full marathons to ultramarathons. Whatever the end goal is, the process is the same: lots of strength training, mileage tracking, speed workouts, hill workouts, and long runs on the weekends. While having a goal and a plan to achieve said goal is great, training for races consecutively without a break (i.e, jumping from spring or summer races to fall or winter races) can lead to burnout—feeling tired, lethargic and just a general sense of being “over it.” So what is the best way to overcome? Take it from me: take a break.
For the first time in almost 18 years of running, I took a much-needed break from fall racing this past season. Most of you are probably thinking, so what? You skipped a fall marathon? The short answer is yes. The long answer is yes, but with a lot of guilt, a lot of soul-searching, and a lot of mental and physical relief.
Ever since I ran my first full marathon 18 years ago, I haven’t taken a break since. I have run one, sometimes two (and a couple times—three) marathons each season. That is an average of typically three to four marathons a year for the past almost two decades. And while I have made it out of these mileage-heavy years relatively unscathed, it started to take a toll on me the past couple years for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, I was running out of time and energy. The older I get, the harder it is for me to go from teaching fifteen classes a week, run commuting to and from work, waking up before 4am most days a week, to have the energy needed to then dedicate hours to running on either my day off or before or after work. Secondly, I simply did not want to leave my family for hours on end after already being away from them for hours six days a week. I tried to train long runs on Sundays, my one day off a week—but found myself cutting runs short so I can spend time walking the dogs or grabbing coffee and heading to the beach at a decent hour. I didn’t feel the same drive as I did before to nail long runs that would take me out of the house for sometimes three hours at a time.
Thirdly, I had other priorities. For the first time, I had become really into heavy lifting, and found more joy in strength training than I did doing long runs. Don’t get me wrong, I was still running every day (usually a run commute plus extra miles), but wasn’t into following a set plan or guideline. I wanted to run as far and as fast as I felt, and I wanted to give myself permission to cut mileage short or take a day to just log a couple easy miles with the dogs. I simply didn’t want to risk overtraining or overexertion by simultaneously trying to PR heavy lifts in addition to pounding the pavement for extended periods of time.
Even more importantly, my wife and I were in the height of family planning, and I wanted to be present for the entire process. I didn’t want to leave my wife when she was going through procedures or early in pregnancy, and didn’t want to potentially travel for races and leave her at home to care for the boys alone.
In short—I had a lot going on this past season. Way more than I ever had before, not to mention at almost 39 years old (yikes). And the point of this blog is not to make a laundry list of excuses or reasons as to why I deferred both my fall marathons and my scheduled powerlifting competition—it’s to highlight the importance of doing gut checks to make sure you’re not overbooked and really doing something because it brings you joy, not because you have to.
In addition to all the personal things going on in my life, I also found that some of the joy of marathon training was being sucked out of the sport by the devilish social media. Every time I check social media, I am flooded by ridiculous posts and training advice from “running influencers”, some of whom have literally laced up their expensive, unnecessary race shoes and flashy running outfits for the first time. I see many social media characters preaching unhealthy training habits, like attempting to run every World Major in a couple years’ time; running multiple marathons in a season without following any true race plan or incorporating proper strength training and recovery; posting ridiculously fast splits every long run instead of preaching easy long runs, or charging clients for coaching programs without the experience or certifications to back up what they’re selling. Everyone was running marathons, and many of them were also posting extremely negative narratives around their training, captioning pictures like “ugh I can’t believe I have to run 20 miles today,” or “who’s idea was it to sign up for this”.
News flash: it was your idea, and your negative connotations around running are on display for people who look up to you.
My strong opinions aside, this became very triggering to me, and the magic of marathon running was just not there for me this past fall. I wanted to take time to lift heavy, run when and as far as I felt, give my mind and body a break from long runs, and simply didn’t want to spend the money to fly to Chicago to run another major. All of these feelings came with a ton of self-doubt and guilt, though. For the first time in almost two decades, I wasn’t running a race. I was worried that my running clients would see me as a fraud, someone who “wasn’t in the trenches” with training alongside them for the first time, when in reality, this gave me more time to focus on their training plans. I worried about the fomo I’d feel when race day approached, but for the first time in my life, I felt no fomo at all. I spent the weekend doing a fun trail run locally and getting bagels and coffee with my family.
And after race day and the fall season passed? My desire to train again came back strong. I secured a bib for Boston this spring and have my deferred Chicago marathon bib for the fall. I am feeling excited about long runs and having goals to hit this spring. I don’t dread the long runs, and I feel re-energized about balancing my strength goals and my running goals.
All this to say: a reset was needed, and it was long overdue. I kept pushing through season after season of running and training, and was ignoring the little voice in my head that was questioning whether I needed a break. And the answer to that question was yes.
So if you’re feeling tired, slightly injured, run down, or just need to get your head back in the game, take a break. Remember - running is supposed to be fun. And if it’s not, something needs to change. It’s a new year, so remember to set goals for yourself that work for you—and sometimes that may be to pull the mileage back to find the joy.
Xo