I’m running the TCS NYC Marathon in six days. This will be my 10th marathon. I have no idea how many races I’ve participated in in these past 11 years, but I feel like I’m the most prepared and confident for NYC.

I’m tapering right now. My training plan bakes in 2 weeks of lower volume and intensity. And the taper is usually when most athletes start having the “taper tantrums.” Symptoms vary, but usually the taper entails fatigue, soreness, crankiness, anxiety, and second guessing yourself.

One of my most common symptoms is second guessing myself. I always wonder, “did I do enough?” “Could I have pushed harder on the track?” “Should I have focused more on pacing?” “Did I do enough strides?” “Was my volume where it should’ve been?”

And that’s when I like to go to my Strava Training Log and reflect. I’ll go back and look at all of my runs and workouts for the previous 18 weeks and remind myself that I put in the work. I built a periodized training plan that was very specific to a goal that I set for myself. And short of a few missed runs (life happens), I stuck to the plan and executed.

But what I really like to do is remember each of those runs. I give all of my runs a name on Strava, and sometimes I’ll add comments. While Strava can be considered social media, I think it of more as a journal for myself. It’s a letter to future Josh. And it’s in times like this that I’m thankful that I write these things.

I started this training block on July 1, 2024. It’s blazing hot here in Texas in July. It’s funny to go back and see how difficult it was to do hill repeats early in training.

I was coaching Jenny for her debut at the Foot Traffic Flat, and I’d think about her frequently on my runs.

We drove back from Oklahoma to attend my wife’s uncle’s funeral. I had my first long run slated for that day. I stuck to the plan, and I used that time on that first long run to think about and mourn Ben.

I ran into some local wildlife.

I was able to catch up with Iram who offered to go on some of the early long runs with me.

The family and I traveled to Charleston for our daughter’s college orientation and lacrosse camp. I found the local run club and they invited me to join their weekly group run. And I was also able to do my own solo tour of the city.

It was around late July that I’d read Coogan’s book and adjusted my own training programming and coaching philosophies and approach. I started grading workouts, and started giving athletes distance and intensity options in workouts, runs, and long runs.

I had some really bad pain in my shoulder that I thought would require medical intervention. Thankfully it turned out to be nothing. I think it was just a minor injury from white water rafting.

I started adding warm-ups and cool-downs to tempo and pace runs, which allowed me to safely and conservatively introduce more volume to a microcycle. I also started prescribing workouts using RPE instead of strict pacing or splits.

I continued to coach the Striders, and used our 60 second run, 30 second walk plan and methodology to supplement my training by safely and conservatively increasing weekly mileage volume.

The run club I started celebrated its 10th birthday.

I took looped routes for longer runs. One morning there was bird that had been trapped in our garage. I freed it and was inspired to listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd for 13 miles.

Life happened. And sometimes it’s best to let life happen, control what you can, and still get out there for a run. Very often a run will solve most of life’s problems. Or at least change your perspective and how you react to the hand that life deals you.

I adhered to specificity in my long runs. I made sure there were a good mix of hills so I’d be prepared for the bridges of the NYC Marathon course. And I made a detour to see Austin’s troll, Malin.

I had a tough week in mid-August when it was time to move our daughter to college. I ran by her old elementary school where I’d drop her off in the mornings and we’d have many conversations about anything and nothing. I kept to the plan and did hill repeats the morning that we were leaving to take her 1,300 miles away.

That same week I thought about my dad on his 88th birthday while we were in Charleston. I had solemn and bittersweet run in the morning in South Hills as kids were outside of their houses, waiting for the bus on the first week of school. I thought about how blazingly fast a childhood goes by for a parent. I had a pace run where I stopped and looked at the college campus where our daughter would now live. This was the morning after she’d decided she’d try spending the night in her new dorm room.

And then there was arguably my most difficult long run, even only at 15 miles. We had to catch a plane to come back home without our oldest. I was dead tired, it was 103ยบ outside, I was listening to the playlist that Elise had created for our child, I’m sure I cried during that run, and I completely bonked at mile 10. I had to run/walk it most of the way home, and I was thankful that had that year+ of coaching the Striders and adapting to the run/walk methodology.

I was admittedly a wreck for the next couple weeks. I missed our daughter. I went on little sentimental runs. I found a spot on my usual route where I’d stop, have a moment, and say a little prayer for my daughter. It was a rough few weeks. But, again, running and training gave me some semblance of normalcy. I stuck to the plan, and it helped to have friends to talk to and remind me that life goes on.

I signed on to be a pacer for the Austin Marathon. So I decided to run the half marathon course for one of my Sunday long runs. Austin is known to be hilly, and I maintained my goal to get stronger on the hills.

I threw in the Zilker Relays after getting recruited to run the anchor leg the day before.

I had one of those runs were I only very vaguely remember it, if at all.

I made a political statement after one of the presidential candidates claimed that illegal immigrants were eating domesticated pets in Ohio.

I made my first 20-miler intentionally very hilly and hard.

Two thirds of my total rattlesnake sightings while on a run happened on one run.

I made my down week long runs hilly and hard. I pushed my allocated time and effort on tempo runs. And I admittedly had a hard to committing to and focusing on maintaining pace on my prescribed MGP runs.

Our daughter came home for a long weekend for the first time since moving to college. I went for my long run after taking her to the airport at 4:00 a.m. True to form, I chose a hilly route in west Austin. It was somewhere out there in Tarrytown that I did something to my left hip.

I deliberately let my hip rest for a few days, and then tested it on a(nother) poorly stubbornly executed run at pace. We were out of town at my mom’s house the weekend of my last peak week, so I ran my last long run in two mile loops with a fast 5 mile pickup at mile 12.

And since my last long run (20+ miles) was flat, I returned to the Barton hills and ran my last pre-taper double-digit long run.

Eighteen weeks doesn’t seem very long, but it can also feel like a lifetime. I can’t capture all the thoughts, emotions, tears, prayers, elation, scares, frustrations, and contemplations in a single post or even a conversation. But I can go back and read and remember and relive. It’s not the same as it was in the moment, but much of life is that way. To go back and look at my training log is like to look at a photo album. It’s just a snapshot of a very short and finite moment in time. There was motion and emotion.

I’ll never remember all of the little details of every run, but it’s the sum of the little moments in running and in life that add up and make it all worth the while.