When Life Gets in the Way: Sick, Sleepless & Behind on Training

Can one bad week of missed runs ruin your marathon training? I got sick partway through a training block — a chest cold, three nights of awful sleep, and a week where everything that could go wrong did — and in this solo episode I think out loud about what it actually costs.

I'm building toward an October marathon with a goal of breaking 4:30, and right when my training was finally clicking, it all came apart. So I get honest about training through sickness, the fear of losing fitness, and the all-or-nothing mindset that makes me skip a run completely instead of just doing a shorter one. No tidy answers here — just a runner working through a rough stretch in real time. If you've ever felt behind or gotten sick at the worst possible moment, you'll relate to this one.

In this episode:

•  Why I traded base-building for a strength block

•  Whether to run with a cold — and when to rest

•  Do you really lose fitness after a week off?

•  The all-or-nothing trap and the small fix I'm trying

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Find everything here: https://linktr.ee/evanblakeney

Until Next Time: Just Keep Running

Transcript

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What do you do when you've got a detailed training plan that you're trying to stick to to accomplish a really big goal and you get sick part way through and everything starts to fall apart? I don't know yet, but that's what I'm going through right now. My big goal for this year is to run a marathon, and I've got my site set on the main marathon, which is October 5th. I really want to break four hours and 30 minutes. I ran a half marathon this spring in two hours and twenty one minutes, so I knew I had a lot of work to do to accomplish my goal. After that half marathon, I started a base building phase because I realized that I never really built an aerobic base. This was that nine weeks of mostly zone two training that I talked about in my last episode, where I was doing one long run a week, one fast run per week, and then every other day I was running easy zone two miles for basically as much time as I could fit into my schedule. By sticking to that template and running seven days almost every week, for instance, I ran um like 29 out of 30 days, and I got up to 30 miles per week. But then I started noticing some knee pain. It felt like the miles were piling up and my body just didn't have the foundation to handle all of them. I could feel my old knee injury getting louder and louder, and I also started to feel like I was developing some Achilles tendon issues. So I decided to stop that training block and shift gears. I think that the underlying issue was that my muscular and tendon foundation just wasn't strong enough to handle all the load that I was putting on it. So I made a five-week strength-focused training block to address both of those issues and also to give my body some time to recover while still being productive. I decided to take some of my very limited training time to do this because I felt like I really needed that foundation to hold up to all of the stuff that I was going to throw at it during marathon training. So I did my best amateur job with a lot of help from AI, trying to come up with my strength plan. The two things that I really wanted to build up here were my Achilles and my knees. So my protocol for my Achilles tendon is isometric calf raises. I stand on one foot on my tippy toes for 45 seconds, and then I switch feet. I take a two-minute break in between each of those two leg reps, and I repeat that five times. Since it's just a static hold, I can do these while I'm doing some other things around the house, which is really good because the protocol that I'm doing calls for uh doing this exercise twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. Apparently, there are several studies showing that this static loading can build tendon size and strength. So hopefully it helps my Achilles out. For my knees, I've been doing a good bit of eccentric work, which means that I'm loading the muscles and then lowering that weight really slowly. I take three to four seconds to lower the weight. Your muscles absorb a lot of impact on every stride when you're running. So this kind of slow controlled loading helps them handle that. So I'm doing step ups and seated calf raises with pretty heavy weight, and I'm really focusing on lowering the weight slowly. Uh, then I decided to throw in two upper body days each week so I could give my legs a break from the seven days a week that I had been putting them through while I was doing uh that other training block, but this way I'm still getting some training in while giving my legs a break. So let me talk about how the last two weeks have gone for me. It's not like one thing just came in and just blew me out of the water. It's actually more like a whole bunch of little things just kept getting piled on top of me until I was just buried by them. Last week started off pretty normal, but soon I got my first curveball. Sunday night, I woke up at about 1.15 in the morning and I was stressed out about work, couldn't get back to sleep, uh, so I only got a couple hours of sleep that night. So even though I was beat, I still did the workout that I had planned for Monday. Then Monday night, my two-year-old was up almost all night because she's going through some growing pains and she was really fussy and just didn't want to get any sleep, apparently. Tuesday night, same thing, bad night of sleep. But I still kept up with my workouts. I was sticking to my plan for the most part, but the sleep was just absolutely terrible. By Wednesday, I was definitely running on fumes. I did get a decent night's sleep that night. It felt a little bit better, but then Thursday, I was back to waking up around 2.30 again. So in four days, I had three terrible nights of sleep. Through all of that, I only missed one of my strength sessions. Uh, I did get all my runs in, and at the time, I felt like that was the right call. I've pushed through some pretty bad weeks before, and it's always worked out for me. Lack of sleep is pretty common for me, actually. But looking back, I have to admit that the week was a bit rougher than a normal week, and I think that that cumulative fatigue from training on no sleep definitely contributed to some of the knee pain I felt on my next long run on Saturday. And almost certainly it left my immune system pretty compromised and more vulnerable than it would have been normally. By the time I got to Thursday, I was pretty well drained. And sure enough, Thursday went terrible too. I drove down to Connecticut uh because I had to help my dad finish up with a job, and then we were both hauling some machines back. Uh, on the way home, unfortunately, his truck broke down. Uh, so when we left the job site, I was assuming that I'd get home somewhere around 7:30 or 8 o'clock. But between his truck breaking down and we had to shuffle trailers and leave a trailer in a parking lot, and then I had to go back down the highway a little ways to pick him up. Um, so long story short, I didn't end up getting home till about 10.30, 11, somewhere in that range. I'm not exactly sure. My dad at this point had been dealing with uh a little bit of a cold, and unfortunately, since I had to go pick him up, I got to spend about two hours in the truck with him. At the time I didn't think too much of it. He was just sniffling a little bit. He wasn't coughing too much, but he did say that he had a headache and he was feeling pretty miserable about it. So coming into this week, I was already pre-depleted and probably under attack, so to speak. And sure enough, by Sunday, I was starting to feel it. As usual, I pushed through it anyway and tried to get my workouts in. But Tuesday, I couldn't run. I was definitely sick, and I just felt like my head was going to explode. Wednesday, I forced myself out the door and got a 5k in. It felt like it was a lot harder than it should have been. I was going pretty slow and my heart rate was pretty low, but even though that was the case, I was breathing way heavier than I should have been. I felt drained that whole day at work on Wednesday. And then at night, all I wanted to do was just get to bed early and try to rest up. But I ended up reviewing plans for the job site so that we could plan our workout for Thursday, and I found that two of the drawings that we had been given conflicted with each other. So I ended up staying up till about 10 o'clock at night trying to figure out what all of our options were and how to solve this problem. Had to send emails off to the project manager to get approval, uh, double check my math, make sure the proposals I was sending him were correct. Um, and yeah, there went my early bedtime. Thursday, I didn't even bother setting my alarm early enough to go running. I had no doubt that it was just not going to happen. Friday, I didn't even have the option to try to go running because I had to get up early and go to work to pour concrete. And I had about seven hours of driving to do Friday, so I didn't even want to run, anyways. So it ended up being a pretty pathetic week as far as training went. So now that you know how bad these last two weeks have been, let me tell you why this is so frustrating for me. I know that this whole program from the half marathon onwards, the zone two training, the strength block, it's all been important progress, but it feels like I should have done this a lot earlier. I should have done more zone two training, I should have built an aerobic base, and I definitely should have done more strength training last year when I got back into running. That way I could be working on speed work and really trying to build my mileage up right now instead of playing catch up. Going back to the zone two training to build my aerobic base felt like a necessary pause, but it still felt like a pause, and what I really wanted to be doing was pushing myself harder. And then I had to take an even bigger pause and shift my program to build strength work and build that foundation we talked about earlier. So I really feel like I'm in a bit of a time crunch here. I know there's a lot of work that I need to do, speed work, building mileage, getting my long runs up to the 18s and 20 miles-ish before the marathon. And that's already a pretty tight timeline. And now I've got to devote this five-week block to strength work. And on top of all of that, I lose a week to terrible sleep and getting sick. Throwing away one week of my extremely precious training time when the timeline is already this tight feels potentially really detrimental to my goal of getting under four and a half hours. On top of that time crunch, the other thing that's really frustrating about this whole situation is that before it all started, I had probably one of the best runs I've ever had. Um, I went out for an eight and a half mile run on a pretty hilly route, and my pace came in at 1009 per mile with an average heart rate of 147 beats per minute. Now, just to put that into context, when I did the half marathon in March, my average pace was 1047 per mile, and my average heart rate was 162. So I was really starting to see some gains from the program, and I really felt like everything I was doing made sense and that I had made the right calls throughout this whole training journey because I was starting to see that progress and the results that I wanted. But then after that first week with no sleep and everything, I went out for another long run at nine miles. I was definitely dehydrated, I was tired, it was hot out, like felt like everything was stacked against me. And sure enough, it ended up being a pretty lousy run. My knee started hurting around mile five or six, uh, which didn't happen at all the week before on the eight and a half mile run. My heart rate was higher, my pace was lower, uh, I didn't have much energy. Just everything felt really off on that nine-mile run. And that was really frustrating to see after tasting that progress the week before. And then all of these setbacks this week, I've only done 3.2 miles, and I don't even know if I'm going to be able to try to do a long run this weekend with this stupid cold that I'm dealing with. I'm hoping that I feel good enough to try, but I'm really not sure. Even though that I'm hoping I can feel better and that I can do a long run this weekend, there's this nervous anxiety in the back of my mind. Um, so for instance, my dad is two weeks into this cold already and he's still dealing with it. He doesn't feel terrible and he's still going about his life. Uh, he's still going to work and everything, but he does still have it and it's still annoying. And he's also not trying to run 20 plus miles a week like I am. So I'm not really sure how that's going to affect me. So it's kind of freaking me out right now, to be honest with you. Uh, if this lasts for another week or two, it's gonna completely destroy my training plan. One week is a setback that I can deal with, but two or three weeks could really destroy everything that I'm trying to do this year. And maybe I'm being a little overly dramatic here, but that's just that's the honest fear that I've got in the back of my mind right now. This whole situation has me wondering, like, with my life being so chaotic, like I'm I'm trying to run two companies basically. Uh, sleep is a really rare commodity for me. I'm always pushing myself like fairly close to 100%. Now, obviously, I don't mean that every time I go out and run, I'm pushing 100%. Um, I'm actually doing pretty much all zone two runs through this whole strength training block block. But I'm talking about my overall life load, the work, kids, lack of sleep, this podcast, training, all of that stuff combined, um, seems to push me pretty close to that 100% limit all the time. And continually training that way and living that way basically leaves me with no bandwidth or margin to handle some unexpected thing coming up, like this stupid cold that I'm dealing with right now. Um, and I might have been able to fight it off if I was a bit more rested and well recovered and not pushing myself so hard on basically no sleep. So, one of the questions that I've been dealing with throughout this whole miserable process is how to be more aware of when too much is stacking up at once and knowing when to back off. I keep thinking that if I had prioritized sleep a bit more than miles last week, maybe I could have fought off the cold and not ruined this week. Maybe I just need to quit pushing my life to that red line like all the time. Here's the thing though. I'm just kind of wired to fill whatever space I have available with more stuff. Like this podcast, for instance. I didn't really need it in my life, but I thought it would be fun. I do enjoy doing it, and so I figured I could just kind of squeeze it in with everything else and make it work. That's just the way I am. Um, I'm pretty comfortable using up all of my available energy and time, and I don't really mind being maxed out. In fact, I kind of feel like if I'm not, I'm being lazy. I'm one of those people that if I'm not at max capacity, I feel like I need to do more or push harder. So knowing that about myself, I kind of know that I'm probably not going to listen to my own advice about leaving more margin for error. I know myself pretty well, and I have a really hard time letting my foot off the gas. Especially when I have a big goal in my sights like this, and it's a hard goal, but I know that I can do it. And I already feel like I don't have enough time to get all the work in that I need to get in before this marathon. So it's gonna be really hard for me to actually back off and give myself more bandwidth or margin forever. Even though intellectually I know that's probably the right move, I'm still probably gonna convince myself that I should just keep pushing and that things aren't really as bad as I think. So even though I realize I should probably leave myself more margin, I also know I'm probably not gonna have the awareness or maturity or whatever you want to call it to actually do that. I've been thinking a lot about this whole 24 hours in the day problem and trying to think of ways to fit the necessary work in even when things aren't going great in a given day or in a given week. So, for instance, some of the things I've thought of is I could skip the warm-up on tight mornings and take the first mile easy and let that be my warm-up. I could condense my stretching, try to do that more efficiently, quickly, and I could just cut my rundown to 30 or 45 minutes instead of an hour-long run. Those are all legitimate options. But here's what happens in my head when I think about that. I look at that list and I think to myself, that is not the full program. That's not what I've already decided that I need to do. So what's the point? And then I just don't run at all, which is obviously way worse than a compromised version of the plan. But I know I can't keep this all or nothing mentality. So I think moving forward, this is what I'm gonna try to make myself do. I'm still gonna set my alarm for 4.15 to give myself the option to do the full program if I wake up feeling decent. But when that alarm goes off, I need to actually check in with myself. Did I sleep well or am I completely wrecked? And if I'm wrecked, maybe I could reset my alarm for like 4.45 and commit to a condensed version, like 30-minute run instead of 60 minutes. Shorter stretch, maybe skip the warm-up, like we talked about. This way I'm not choosing between everything I had planned or nothing at all. I'm choosing which version of the program fits the day. It's not perfect, and I'm probably still gonna screw it up. And it still sucks mentally to do less than I had planned to do, but it's definitely better than just defaulting to zero. Now, look, I know that I am probably being a little paranoid about this cold lasting too long. I think, I genuinely think that next week I'll be able to get back to normal. And honestly, I've actually learned a few things this week that give me some hope. Um, I've been experimenting with some sleep habits. Like, for instance, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I've been reading a book instead of just laying there in bed awake. I get up, read for a little while, and then that actually seems to help me get back to sleep faster when I just lay in bed. It it never works. So that's something I can use going forward. The other thing is I need to realize that one week isn't going to completely destroy everything that I've built. I shouldn't be losing the fitness that I had before this started. I should at least be able to maintain it for a week. So even if I have to pause for a week and not improve like I would like to, at least I'm not going backwards. And that's a huge difference. And I think that I just have to accept something bigger here. I can't plan out my entire year and expect to stick to it perfectly for six, seven, eight months at a time without anything coming up. So going forward, when I try to build my plans and set goals, I think I need to give myself a bit more leeway. I need to make sure that my goals aren't so out of reach that I have to use every available minute to hit them. And I have to be able to accept it when things like this happen. And I'm not able to get everything done that I want to get done. I need to realize that it's not the end of the world. And I think that if I can really work that into my psyche and try to really listen to my own advice here and actually take it seriously, I think I'll be a lot better off moving forward. Um as much as I hate these last two weeks and I have been miserable, and my head is just starting to get back to normal a little bit right now. Um it's a little bit more in my throat and chest right now, but uh my head's at least feeling better, so that's good. Um I think that I actually did learn some important lessons this from this whole experience this last two weeks. And I think that again, as much as I hate it and I would not have chosen to do this, I do think that in the long run it's gonna be a bit better for me. And hopefully you can learn a little bit from my mistakes and not design your life and training plan and goals with no margin for error like I did. To be honest with you guys, I really didn't want to make this episode. Uh to be honest, it feels kind of lousy to admit that this stupid little head cold kind of ruined my whole week. But besides the fact that feeling like crap kept me from researching and preparing any other episodes, I did also realize that we all go through some bad weeks. Uh we get sick, we get hurt, have a fight with a spouse, we have to travel for work, and the list just goes on and on and on. So I know I'm not the only one going through this sort of thing. And I thought that if I share how annoying my week has been, maybe it'll help somebody else out there make it through a rough week of their own. Yours is probably way worse than mine. I'm probably just a big baby here. Maybe you had a legit injury, a death in the family, or something serious like that. Um, but I think it's important to remember that we run because we love it. And it's okay if it's not perfect. We can still get out there and run whenever we can. If you can relate to this episode or if you just enjoyed hearing about someone else's terrible week to make you feel a little bit better, could you do me a huge favor and either follow or subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening andor watching? Um, I put out an episode every other Friday, and I don't want you to miss any of them. Thank you guys for joining me, and until next time, just keep running.