Road to Grandma’s Marathon: Navigating a Setback

Podcast Summary – Navigating Setbacks in Marathon Training

In this episode of the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, Katie shares a real and raw update on her road to Grandma’s Marathon—one that didn’t go as planned.

After coming off a strong stretch of training, including a standout 16-mile tempo run, Katie was hit with a major setback: Influenza B. What started as mild fatigue quickly turned into a full week of illness, forcing her to step away from training and rethink her approach moving forward. 

Instead of focusing on recovery strategies as planned, this episode pivots into a deeper conversation about setbacks—how they happen, how they feel, and how to handle them.

Key Takeaways:

• Setbacks are part of the process
  Whether it’s illness, injury, or life stress, disruptions are inevitable in any training cycle. 
• Stress adds up (even beyond training)
  Katie highlights how life stress—work demands, family responsibilities, and even exam pressure—can compound physical stress and impact the immune system. 
• Rest early, not later
  One of the biggest lessons: trying to “push through” early symptoms can prolong recovery and worsen the setback. 
• Fitness doesn’t disappear overnight
  Missing a week of training isn’t ideal, but it doesn’t erase months of consistent work. 
• Flexibility is key
  Training plans should be written “in pencil,” allowing room to adjust based on real-life circumstances. 
• Mindset matters
  Katie explores reframing setbacks—not as failures, but as part of the journey, and sometimes even a form of protection from something worse. 

Looking Ahead:

With about seven weeks until race day, Katie shares the uncertainty of returning to training while balancing recovery. The path forward may involve adjusting goals—but not giving up.

Bottom line:
Progress isn’t about perfection—it’s about adapting, listening to your body, and staying in the game even when things don’t go according to plan.

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Endurance Athlete Journey podcast. This is Katie, and I am recording my Road to Grandma's Marathon episode. So I wanted to provide a quick update as I get started because you might hear a little bit of it in my voice. It's a little nasally. But the reason we had to kind of switch days and release our original or usual podcast on Tuesday, and then I'm releasing this today is because I've been very sick with uh I ended up getting influenza B. So I'll share a little bit of the update there, but I was uh pretty, pretty sick on Monday and still pretty uh sick Tuesday. And so we just weren't able to, I just wasn't able to record. There was no way I was just not feeling good at all. So decided to wait a few days to see if I could record today instead. And luckily I I I feel better, but um still not a hundred percent. Um so unfortunately, as you can imagine, that has taken a little bit of a toll on my training or kind of sidelined my training a bit. So I know in my last episode, I sort of said I was gonna focus this time on kind of like my recovery strategies and how what I kind of do or think about when it comes to recovering between sessions. And um, I still want to do that, but I actually kind of want to pivot today and talk about what we do or or just in general, kind of how I think about setbacks, um, because this really has been a big setback for me. And I'm a little bit nervous about what this illness means for my marathon training and kind of how I'm going to move forward. So I think today I wanted to provide the update on training, just kind of over the last few weeks. And obviously, as you can imagine, I haven't been doing much training more recently, but I also wanted to just talk about setbacks in general. So I think this is going to be a relevant episode for almost everybody listening, because I'm sure most anybody listening has had some form of a setback, whether it's from an injury or from illness during a marathon build. This has been my most significant setback of all the other marathon builds I've had. This is the first time I've been taken out for more than a few days uh with an illness. And so, you know, I don't know what's gonna happen moving forward. And trying to get back into training has been r rough the past few days because I still don't feel 100%. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm gonna focus on today. So hopefully by the next time I chat with you, I'll be feeling better and you know we have more of that recovery discussion. But uh today will be the setback episode. So let's see. I want to start, I kind of feel like the last time I chatted with you all was around Tuesday, so it was maybe around April 14th, uh, when I last did my road to grandma's episode. And it was things were going pretty well at this point. I had uh that following Wednesday, I had a really hard workout um where I tried to do four by two kilometers at like 108 to 110% marathon pace, which is kind of a faster pace, and that involved four minute recoveries. It was a real hard workout because it was faster, and at two kilometers is one and a quarter miles. So it was just a fast, faster pace for about one and a quarter miles. My legs were already sort of tired from doing the 20 mile or the weekend before, and just you know, kind of getting right back into training. But that went well. I had a recovery run that Thursday, their um 16th. Uh, a couple actually I did two recovery runs and then another easy run. I took a day off on Friday, the uh 17th. So I did actually take a day off that day, which was nice because I had a bunch of stuff going on. And then Saturday, the 18th, was more of a progression run, um, a strength training, and then Sunday was a a really great day for me, the 16th or the um 19th. That day I was supposed to do like a 16-mile run, kind of tempo run. So the goal was to do that at um start out easy and then do at least 10 miles at or maybe at least half of that 16 miles at uh like a tempo pace of 90% marathon pace, which would have been I think a 720 pace. Uh but around miles, so around mile six, six and a half, I started the tempo. So I ended up doing a little more than half of that run, and I felt really good actually. So I actually ran that 16 miles. I think I did around nine and a half out of it at maybe around seven, seven oh five pace, and it felt really good. Like that was a really positive day for me. I just felt good. Um I did it didn't feel hard. It was one of those things where I'm just plugging along at that pace and it felt overall, I don't know, I wouldn't say easy, but it was like a nice, like tempo, like not exactly as hard as marathon pace, but I just felt like I could have done that pace for a long time, um, for even longer. And it was just one of those days where you finish and you're just feeling good about life. So unfortunately, I think this is kind of what played a role into my getting sick. Like it's hard to know what causes an, you know, every single aspect of like how what causes you to get sick. I mean, sometimes, unfortunately, even when we're well rested and feel good or nothing's really, you know, going wrong, we still sometimes get sick. I mean, that's just the there's no way to kind of always 100% prevent it. But the downside to marathon training is that we're all re you know, no matter how much you sleep and try to recover and do all of the things right, it's still a lot of stress on the body, you know, especially some of these longer runs, especially the amount of training, you know, it puts everyone who's, you know, anyone who's training for a marathon is kind of a little more susceptible to becoming ill. That's why it's so important to kind of take care of ourselves. Well, unfortunately, what happened kind of the rest of that day is I had some some stress related to my dog. I don't want to go into a ton of detail about it, but it just kind of created some acute stress. And um, so what should have been a relaxing day, what would have been a relaxing day, ended up stressful. So this is just life, right? Like none of us, even when we're training, we always try to anticipate those things that are going to come up. Try to anticipate the stress, try to try to make our schedules maybe so that we don't super stress. We do all those things, right? To plan ahead a little bit. At least I think that's what we should be doing because the marathon training is inherently a little bit stressful on our body. We need to be thinking about not adding more stress. But life is life, and sometimes stuff happens and we can't control that. And so this is just an example of something stressful that happens. Then that Monday, I do I so I do some work at a hospital, I'm a PRN dietitian, and sometimes they call me, so I haven't heard from them, you know, I haven't had to work there in weeks, and then Monday I get like an a text, like, Can you come into work? Well, I'm very like helpful. I don't like you know, I know that when they when someone needs help, I I tend to kind of bend over backwards sometimes, and I didn't want to leave them in a lurch. So I ended up rearranging my schedule a bit so that I could help. I did I was able to get my recovery six miles in, but I think, you know, having to kind of pivot, get this, you know, text message when I'm trying to get ready for my son ready for the day, like I'm trying to get myself ready for the day, and now I have to kind of pivot, and that causes some additional stress there. So there's two days that I'm kind of now stressed on top of already being stressed from Sunday. And I really think that this is where I became now susceptible to getting sick. And at the time, you know, I didn't really think of it. I didn't particularly sleep poorly Sunday night. You know, you sometimes we perceive over like handling it better than we are. Um but there was just a success like that particular day on Monday, it was just like really busy trying to fit everything in, trying to help out. You know, I had other things like obligations. I had to go pick up my son at three by three, you know, so I was trying to get all of this done and then go pick up him and make it in time. And it just was a very sort of stressful, busy day. And so I think that's maybe when or around this time is probably when I was maybe exposed to an illness or to this illness. And I um, you know, my immune system was already not, you know, dealing well because of the stress and the training. And so then like actually slept really well Monday night, and then I did like a eight miles easy. I I kind of felt like a little tired, but I was like, oh, I don't feel bad. I actually the second half of the run felt good. Um, you know, did a little strength training, and then that night I just slept terrible, tossing and turning. It retrospect kind of looking back. I think that's kind of when I started getting a little bit sick. And then I was supposed to do this really big like alternation run, um kind of over-under run on the set 22nd Wednesday, and it just I tried to start and I'm like this I had like a little bit of a cough starting. Like I'm like, like, again, in retrospect, I probably should have just been like, something's not right. I'm gonna just take the day off and try to nip this in the bud. But it's hard when you don't feel like extremely ill and you're not sure exactly what's going on. Is this like a cold? Is this what is this? You know, to to completely have taken the day off, you know, it's it's just hard. This is these are the hard things about being training is not knowing. Is this more serious? Is this gonna lead to something a little bit worse, or is this just a little cold that I'm dealing with? So I decided I'm not doing this big workout, I'm just gonna run instead. I'm gonna do kind of like a medium run, a little bit of some speed play in there, but nothing really tough, and just pivot. You know, maybe I should have taken the day off, but I was like, I know I'm not gonna be able to do this workout. Something's going on, I'm gonna pivot. So that was the last day I actually got a significant amount of any any training in really, except for I did attempt an easy run on Sunday, and I'll talk about that, but um, I did try to do some strength that day, but that was the last day. Um, I woke, I again had a fitful night of sleep, woke up Thursday absolutely uh sick. I mean, I I was sick. Um also here's another element. So I have been tr I have been working very hard to try to get this board certified board certification and sports dietetics or sports nutrition, sports dietetics certification. Uh submitted my hours, you know, around before Christmas, um, got approved to take the exam. It you have to have like 2,000 hours over five years or something like that that you have to submit, which is a little harder when you're in private practice because you have to figure out how to submit these hours when you don't have anyone like signing off. Um I was able to do that. They're like, you can take the exam. I sign up for the exam, uh, and I sign up to take it on April 24th. So I'm sure also that's playing into this, right? The stress piece of like, okay, now I'm trying to study and study for this exam. It's coming up, it's finally the week of. Um, and boom, I get sick. Well, now it's too late. It's Thursday to make you reschedule at 48. They say 48 hours in advance, you can reschedule. And um, I'm like, well, I if I try to reschedule now, am I gonna have to pay the$350 again? Like, I'm gonna have to sho like prove that I'm sick. There's all these logistics to it. I'm been studying for this test. Like, I'm pretty much ready to take it. I'm like, okay, well, I'm gonna just take it easy today. It's Thursday, the 23rd. No running. I'm gonna just hang out and going to study. And I'm just gonna chill. And maybe I'll feel better by tomorrow. I mean, I'm still not sure exactly what I'm dealing with. I mean, I do have some chills, I have some potential um fever, but um, maybe a little bit of like sore throat stuff, a little laryngitis stuff, but I don't know, you know, exactly what I have. Besides, I'm like, I gotta get through this exam tomorrow. So try to sleep. Still like not a great night of sleep. I just when I'm sick, I don't sleep well. Even when I take like ibuprofen and cough syrup and NyQuil, um, you know, I think unfortunately, usually like when when people are sick, they get sick, the the fevers come at night. And so is like um and the aches and all that, and this sore throat. Um, it just was not a good conducive to great sleep. So again, I don't sleep very good, so I have to take this exam on Friday. I know what people are probably thinking, like, oh my gosh, you're going in, you're gonna expose people to maybe getting sick. I just don't feel like I had a choice because what am I gonna do? Try to cancel this. I mean, it's an exam that's through this company, but I have to go take it at this local community college. Like, they don't know. I mean, again, to have to spend another$350 to take it or reschedule it wasn't, you know, they didn't make it clear that, oh, if you're if you're absolutely sick on uh and you're gonna expose everyone, like they should make it a little bit easier. Um, and I'm like, I'm not r I'm not risking, I'm just gonna go take it and hope for the best, you know. So um I try to eat in the morning. I'm taking, I took like 800 milligrams of ibuprofen and I got to the exam. I take a ketone IQ shot because my brain is all foggy, you don't feel I'm not feeling great. I've got like laryngitis. I'm trying to talk to the people at the exam and I'm like, I can't even like really talk. And I'm like, hopefully that I don't of course at this point I don't have any um coughing or sneezing or anything. I just didn't feel very well. Um, but I did it. I I took that exam. It's a three-hour exam. Not optimal. I'm just gonna say, like, that is not what I was expecting. I was kind of expecting to go into that exam, having done a little run, having had a good night's sleep, being like kind of optimized. It was definitely not optimized for this exam. And I was worried about it. And it took every bit of pretty much those three hours to take it. I was nervous, but I'm really happy to tell you I passed and I did a lot better than I thought I did. So I just kind of wonder like maybe I would have done a little bit better had I even better than that out. I felt good, but it's okay. I'm gonna put that, you know, I'm just like relieved. You know, I take this exam. I'm actually at this point feeling like, okay, maybe I'm actually kind of feeling better. I don't feel great, but like I get home, you know, I eat a snack, I kind of hang out, I'm like, okay, I'm not feeling absolutely terrible. I'm sure 800 milligrams of ibuprofen probably helps, you know, and I, you know, kind of tired. Again, I, you know, that night, I I think I started to kind of get a fever a little bit again. But then, you know, I tossed and turned a little again. It's not the best night's sleep. Saturday, uh, I had a bunch of stuff scheduled, which in retrospect, yes, I maybe should have just like taken that day and rescheduled the things I have. But sometimes when I have new clients schedule with me, or um, I had two new clients schedule uh calls with me, and then we had to record the podcast. I think I just was kind of like, okay, I'm gonna power through. I don't feel terrible. I'm losing my voice a little bit, but that's it. You know, I'm sure I'm gonna be fine. I actually did pretty well that day. Um, and then it kind of like hit me that night after everything was done and we'd eaten dinner. I was like, I gotta, I gotta lie down. And so, you know, try to sleep through that night. I didn't sleep well. I had to take NyQuil, I toss and turn, I was up a little bit at night, kind of like uncomfortable. And then I made the mistake Sunday of like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm kind of tired. I think I'm just gonna like try to run a little bit this morning, and then maybe I'll get tired enough that I'll sleep better Sunday night. So I did an extremely easy four-mile run on the treadmill, and I probably shouldn't have done that because the rest of that day I felt awful. In fact, the worst that I felt this entire time started to develop fever. I was in bed the rest of the day. I like in the afternoon, I had to go lie in bed. I just like couldn't function. I didn't feel like eating. My appetite has been kind of low this whole time. It got worse, kind of much worse. And then same with Monday. I mean, that's the worst I've ever I've ever felt. I mean, not ever felt, but it's the worst I've felt in a really long time. Like, pretty bad. I dropped my son off at school, come home, and I lie in bed for three hours, just like in misery, you know, trying to take ibuprofen, trying to take a hot shower, trying to just like prep myself, trip try to get up and do something or just go downstairs. It was bad. It was so bad, in fact, that like I did have to go pick my son up from school, which shook every ounce of my energy. And then I got home and I had made an appointment with the urgent care to go see. Like, is there because I'm like thinking, okay, I get sick and I'm starting to feel better, and now it's like way worse at day five. You know, usually you start to feel better by day five, but I'm thinking, well, maybe there's like a secondary infection. I just want to go check this out because I feel awful. You know, my husband had to drive me to the urgent care because I was just miserable, and they do all the testing, and turns out I have influenza B. So they're like, well, you don't have anything else. So luckily, no, I, you know, I my throat was really sore. I thought maybe it's trap throat, which I get unfortunately fairly often. You know, maybe there's pneumonia. I mean, my lungs didn't feel weird, but I was like, I don't know, like something's kind of off. Like, why is it that I feel so awful now? And uh, you know, so they don't much much, there isn't really much they can do for that. They did give me like a really potent cough syrup, um, and a little higher dose of ibuprofen. Because I've been, aside from that 800 milligrams I took that one day, I try not to take a ton of ibuprofen because it's not great for our gut. But um, I was like, can you just give me something? And that kind of cut through some of the fever, and then that cough syrup just like knocked me out that night, and I finally got a good night of sleep. And then by Tuesday I was feeling a little bit better. And um, but now it's ther now it's Thursday, and I feel better, but I am so exhausted, so tired. I still have crap um snot and you know, gross stuff, coughing coming out of my nose. It's just gross. So it's it's not like I'm a hundred percent yet, and now it's been one entire week, um, just about since I've really been able to do any significant training. Um, I do plan to do like a again, a really easy jog today. Um, if I at all feel like it's hard to breathe or I just feel like it's not going well, I'm gonna get off the treadmill. So I'm actually gonna do that on the treadmill. So uh because it's actually kind of cold outside and cloudy and maybe kind of rainy looking, I I think I'll just do it on my treadmill just to be safe. Um, but yeah, that's not the update I was hoping to share with everyone. But and I don't know when I'm gonna start feeling to the point where I can actually do a significant amount of training. I just kind of plan to do a little bit of running today and a little bit of running tomorrow. I'm supposed to do a workout this weekend. I I don't know, you know, it could turn around a little bit, but again, after having that experience of running on Sunday and then having this kind of like come back to bite me, you know, obviously in an ideal world, I wouldn't have had that exam on Friday, I would have rescheduled things on Saturday, and I would have just like totally taken it easy and relaxed, and which is very hard for me anyways. Um, but I did I didn't do that, so I'm sure that's probably all part of the problem. But, you know, what do you do? You know, especially when you're not used to being this sick. Like I feel like over Christmas break my son got, I think it was probably like the other influence and Fluenza A, which I'm pretty sure I might have got too, but it wasn't it didn't like take me out. I just felt kind of bad for a few days. I had to take a few days off of running, but I was able to kind of get back into it. So I had to take it a little easier, but it was like a two days off kind of situation. For um my last marathon um last May, uh the Vermont City marathon. I think there was like a few instances where I kind of like maybe in February I got a little bit sick with the respiratory illness, but again, it wasn't it didn't take me out. It was like, I think I had to take a few days off, and that was back in February, so early enough where it wasn't gonna have a huge significant impact. And there was like several days where I had to kind of pivot my run, you know, training a little bit, but I wasn't like not training. Um, and then I think I might have also got like a little GI bug that took me out a few days in April or f you know, maybe March or April. Um, but again, nothing significant. So I guess I just wasn't I was thinking in my past experience, you know, I've had where it's like I take a few days off and it's better. And so I felt like, okay, well, I could probably take a few days off and just kind of get back to running if I'm not a hundred percent and I'll just kind of get better. But this one just just took me out. This influenza B just took me out. And I also have a flu had a flu shot, so I don't know. It just didn't seem to help. I um I yeah, it just really got me. And that's that's okay. Um, but you know, moving forward, it's really going to depend. Like, I think, okay, one week off, you know, I'm trying to think of the positive side of this of like, what's maybe there's something worse that would have happened. Like I had a friend I was texting with, and she's like, oh, when this kind of stuff happens, I kind of think maybe there was something worse that was gonna happen that's kind of like saved you from something. You know, it's hard to know. Like, was this kind of some kind of divine intervention to feel this crappy? You know what I mean? But she's like, Well, you could have been otherwise, maybe you would have gotten an injury or hit by a car. Who knows? Like, maybe there's something, some reason for this. Sometimes I feel like it's just life. We just get sick. There's no reason, it's just bad luck. Um, but I I I'd like to think that's the case. Like maybe it saved me some some other worse outcome. I don't know. I'll never know. Never know. But um now moving forward, I have to kind of think about what's gonna happen because a week off is not ideal. Like missing all that training um isn't great. But I think I could, if I start to feel better here within the next few days, I think I could get back to training and build up some momentum. And I have to change. I was gonna take like a um kind of a recovery week in a few weeks, and I'm not gonna be able to really do that because I've already taken a recovery week, essentially. Um, so I have to kind of then reshape my plan. This is why we write our training plans all in pencil, so to speak. So I'm gonna have to re configure my plan a little bit, you know, try to take um advantage of the next few weeks and getting back into some higher mileage weeks before I sort of ramp down for the race. I mean, grandma's is in like seven weeks, so I don't have a ton of time, but I still have time. It's not like it's next week. Um, so I I think as long as I can, hopefully by tomorrow and Saturday feel better, I can start to get my training going again. I've been really trying to just take it easy this week, as easy as I can, and minimize stress and minimize obligations as much as I can so that I can recover. And so hopefully by tomorrow, I it's really just like for me right now, the coughing and like the gunk that's still there and it's and the fatigue that kind of worries me the most. Um, it's generally I don't feel as terrible, but that's kind of where I'm like, well, I'm still having these sort of symptoms that aren't great, but I don't have like a fever and or chills or aches. And so um, in generally, other than occasional cough, it's kind of not gen, I don't have it a lot like here in the lungs. So it's all kind of like up here for the most part, um, all the symptoms. So I think I'd be safe to do an easier run as long as I don't overdo it. But if it's like this lingers for several more days, that's it's kind of where where I'm worried. Um you know, some I am doing a lot of other things like to kind of keep myself healthy, like um certain supplements zinc and NAC and vitamin D and trying to get lots of sleep. But, you know, the body is gonna recover as the body recovers. You can do, I mean, I threw all that stuff at it when I started getting sick, and you know, it doesn't seem to have made a difference. And so sometimes it's just gonna be what it is. Your body's gonna do what it does, and you're gonna have to recover, you know, and listen to your body and hope that the recovery goes quickly and you get back to to feeling good. But it's at this point hard for me to say exactly when that's gonna be. So I don't know how much of a setback this is going to be. But it it, you know, it it happens. So I guess worst case scenario is I try running and for the next few days, it just doesn't go well. I'm not able to do my workout, takes another week to really fully recover. So maybe I'm easy running is all I'm able able to do. And basically now I've had two weeks without much training. I think in that scenario, it's definitely going to impact my race. It's hard to say for sure. I mean, I built up a lot of fitness. The nice, the good news is why I I don't like those shorter training plans of like 12 weeks or eight weeks, because if this stuff happens, you it's gonna ruin your whole thing because you didn't give yourself enough time. Well, I've been training, you know, my training plan was at least 20 weeks long. I mean, I started officially training in March, but I was training before then. So it's not as though one week is really gonna make a huge difference as long as I'm able to get back. The problem is if it now goes into two weeks, and now I'm like detraining significantly at this at two weeks. So it's really going to depend on how the next few days go and whether I'm gonna be able to get back into it and do some more mileage and get back into the training again in any significant bat capacity, whether or not this is going to have to be a complete pivot. Um So I guess it's going to be two to be determined a little bit. But I mean, let's just say, like worst case scenario, that happens. You know, that's where it's kind of like this is part of the process. And this is the unfortunate, sucky part of the process sometimes is whether it's an injury or an illness like this, and then you have to pivot for a few weeks, or you know, in some cases, it's even a worse outcome of like an injury just takes you out and you can't even do the race, or you have to totally decide or do a different race or push it out or something like that. But the worst case scenario is that I have to, you know, take another week off totally easy. I'm kind of starting to detrain by this point, I'm losing fitness. You know, it's going to be hard to regain a lot of that fitness and then six weeks of training at that point. So I might have to change my goal at that point. And you never know. I mean, there's a lot of things that can happen. It's not as though that's just totally gonna determine I have to change my goal. But if I start to get back into training and realize I've lost fitness, yeah, I might have to tr change my goal a little bit. And the magnitude of how much I have to change it is gonna kind of be determined over those few weeks once I do start feeling better. But it's possible. And so I guess I'm trying to kind of grapple with that and realizing, okay, what does that mean? You know, do I kind of pivot and then sort of just like, okay, it's gonna be what it's gonna be. Let me just sort of keep training, have fun with it, just do grammars, and maybe there's less pressure because I maybe don't know what's gonna happen. Or, you know, maybe I'm able to get back to it and and it's gonna be just like this was a little bit of a blip. I I just don't know. And so that's the thing about setbacks, is sometimes we don't know, depending on how long the setback is for and what happens, we don't always know how much that's gonna impact us. It does, I think, depend a lot on how much you've been training ahead of time. Like I said, if a setback happens and you've only had eight weeks of training or 12-week training plan for a marathon or something, then it's a lot more of a setback probably to have a whole week off of training. But, you know, it's hard it's sometimes really hard to say until you can really get back into the training and see where you're at. So at this point, for me, anyways, it's up in the air a little bit. Um, and I don't really even know if I have any good suggestions for this because like I've said, I've never in a while, in a long time, or most of my other marathons more recently, I really haven't had any significant setbacks. And so this is really the first time I've kind of had to deal with this recently. Um but I just want to say that I definitely understand how frustrating it can be. So if there's other, you know, people listening out there that are also having some setback of some sort, it feels frustrating and isolating. And just know that you're not alone and that people experience this commonly, and it's just kind of part of the process. And we all get sick sometimes, well, maybe not all of us, but we get sick or we deal with little injuries that pop up and it's common. And so the body, the one thing I think I have to keep telling myself is that the body doesn't deteriorate that quickly. Like, yeah, two weeks is probably where we really start to lose fitness a bit more, but like one week of not training much, it's not like I'm just like now back to square one. You know, it's not as though all that other training I did was for naught. And now I'm like back to square one and my fitness is completely gone and I'm screwed. That's not the case. Sure, I'm sure there's a little bit of like loss, but not a significant amount just yet. And so it's just trying to remind ourselves that when this happens, is I think as the days go by, it's hard not to start to worry more and more and more about that fitness being lost. And it does take a little bit more time than that to come, like you're not gonna be starting at square one, as long as you can kind of try to get back to it. So that's the first thing I know I've had to remind myself is it's okay. The your body, you've been doing this a while to like I, you know, I have to remind myself I've been running for a while, my body's gonna get back to it, and it's gonna be fine. And I think that's where it's also, I don't think I did a very good job about this when I first started feeling sick, because it wasn't, you know, even though I pivoted on Wednesday, I still ran when maybe I shouldn't have. And then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I still, you know, well, mostly Friday, Saturday with that test. I just think it was like an unfortunate circumstance in some ways because normally maybe I would have rescheduled things and not taken that, but that definitely delayed the sickness for me. So one suggestion I would definitely have is don't do what I did, unless you have a certain exam, you have to you know can't reschedule and it's gonna cost you$350. When you start feeling bad, like take the time off. Take it off from running, you know, reschedule what you've got going on, take care of yourself, be kind to yourself, rest, don't push through. Because I think if I had done that or been able to do that, maybe you know, Thursday, Friday, even Saturday, I I don't know. It's hard to say again because you don't know the trajectory of an illness, but maybe I wouldn't have gotten worse on Sunday. Maybe I would have actually started to let my body recover and then felt better. And maybe I would have been able to start running or feeling more like running today. So I would have been able to start running sooner. You know, when it when it comes to illness, anyways, I think taking the time to recover and allow your body to rest and not push through because you have a million things to do. I know it's hard as a parent, too. So I'm talking to, you know, I'm a parent. Obviously, I had to go pick up my son from school. You know, I still have to go do stuff like that. There's no maybe taking complete rest, but to do what you can to rest. And it's okay to to reschedule things if you have to. And I think that's sometimes where I struggle a little bit. And I think that may have delayed my illness a little bit. And so one piece of advice for illness is just yeah, when you feel ill, allowing, you know, the recovery, allowing your body to recover and rest is going to be really important. I think this is also important when it comes to like an injury. So let's say in the alternate world, let's say like think of another scenario here, and it wasn't illness. What if I went on a run Wednesday and I started to feel something weird in my knee or ankle or I don't know, just some kind of weird, I don't know, pain or something like that. No, I I'm trying to think of like if it had been a different scenario, like how I would have reacted to that. And so I think if it had been something like that, I probably would have stopped running. And I probably would have just tried to give myself a few days off and and sort of nib it in the bud, so to speak. But I do think it's like a tendency for runners to want to keep pushing through. And okay, I've got this little, uh, it's like a little annoying thing in my knee. I'm gonna keep going though, you know, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna stop. And then, you know, to kind of keep with the training plan this tendency to want to just push through. And I think in most whether it's an injury or an illness, I think to to have the ability to be like, nope, I'm gonna take a few days off. I'm gonna maybe, you know, in a case of an injury, I'm gonna go to the PT and get this figured out. Maybe you you stop running then one day it hurts, and then you realize like you try to run the next day and there's still you're still feeling it, you're like, okay, I'm gonna get this figured out right away. Uh maybe with an illness, you go to the doctor right away, try to figure out what's going on with you. I don't know. But you know, trying to get rather than trying to push through to like take that moment and and nip it in the bud. Because I think if in my case too, like had I actually taken the time to take it off if I could have, you know, because I had not obviously I wasn't running Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, but I was doing other things that were stressful. So it's kind of like that whole holistic thing of it. Like it's everything, everything contributes, right? And stress from taking an exam or stress from meeting with clients or having other obligations, your body doesn't really differentiate between that type of stress and running stress. So even though I wasn't running, I was still putting other stress inputs in. My advice would be just like trying to really take it as soon as that stuff happens, take, you know, take the next few days off, figure out what's going on, rest if you need to, whatever you need to do to do it, and be really like active in that right away. Because the longer you wait, or the more you put it off, or the more you decide you're gonna kind of ignore it and you've got to push through it, the worse it's gonna get, and the more of a an issue it's gonna become, and the more it's gonna kind of sideline you, and um the more of a setback it's gonna be. So I think that's my one piece of advice of just like trying to figure it out right away, get it taken care of, because if it's something, like most cases, many cases, it's something that maybe needs if just a few days off and a few rest days. Maybe it's maybe not, you know, a stress injury would be an example. Like if you get a stress fracture or something that's it's not gonna get better in a few days, that's just like a total setback. But um, for the most part, give it a few days, try to work with a PT, go to the doctor, figure out what's going on, get a clear picture of what you're dealing with, and then you can kind of move on. You know, I wish I'd gone if I'd had been able to, maybe Thursday, you know, just had been tested, gone to the urgent care, so we just had them do the testing then. I would have still not known what to do for that exam on Friday because I don't know. I guess I would have had a doctor's note, but they didn't make it easy. So, anyways, I didn't do that, you know, but that's okay. So I'm just saying that's what I would probably do different next time. I think setbacks are tough. Um, this is kind of where I'm at with my training. I feel like that was a long-winded way of talking through that. But I think people might understand. And if you're going through it, feel free to reach out and tell me about it. Tell me what's going on, you know. I guess company love or misery loves company. But thanks, you guys. I'm hoping next time I chat uh in a couple weeks, I'll have more positive news and I'll be feeling better, hopefully. And um, I can talk a little bit more about recovery and what I do for recovery in between sessions at that point. Um, but thanks, thanks y'all, and I appreciate you listening. Um if you do feel like it would be helpful to work with a sports dietitian. You know, now I can officially call myself a board certified sports dietitian. So feel free to reach out to me at Katie at fuel the number two run dot com. I'd love to hear from you. Um otherwise, yeah, we'll check you all. We'll see you all later. Bye.