You'll feel worse this week. That's correct 🔋

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Accumulated fatigue three weeks from Chicago

👋🏻 Hey Reader!

Saturday September 19 · Week close

If you felt worse this week than at any point in the block, that is exactly what should be happening.

We're three weeks from Chicago, and this is the highest point of accumulated fatigue in the whole plan. You aren't losing fitness — you're building it under a layer of tiredness that hasn't lifted yet.

And if you're not running Chicago, this still applies: a fall half, your first consistent weeks, any long block. The line between normal fatigue and chronic exhaustion is thin, and around this time of year plenty of people cross it without noticing.

Sunday October 11 · 7:20 am

22 DAYS

🔋 It isn't a discipline problem

Heaviness from the first kilometre. Light insomnia despite the tiredness. That mental sluggishness coffee doesn't touch.

Almost everyone reads it as weakness of character. It almost never is. It's your nervous system asking for a strategic pause — and the word that matters there is strategic, because a pause done right doesn't erase the work: it consolidates it.

🚦 Which side of the line are you on?

Both feel similar from the inside. What separates them is how they respond to rest:

NORMAL BLOCK FATIGUE

✓ Improves noticeably after one or two easy days.

✓ Legs feel heavy, but the pace shows up when you ask for it.

✓ You sleep well, even if waking up is harder.

✓ Resting pulse within your usual range.

✓ You still want to train, just with less spark.

ACCUMULATED EXHAUSTION

✕ Doesn't improve after two or three easy days.

✕ The pace won't come even when you push harder.

✕ Insomnia or fragmented sleep despite the tiredness.

✕ Resting pulse elevated several days running.

✕ Irritability, apathy, or dread before training.

The test that settles it: two genuinely easy days. If the body comes back on the third, it was normal fatigue. If you're the same or worse, you crossed the line — and that doesn't get fixed by pressing harder.

🛠️ Three steps for this weekend

None of them costs you fitness. All three help you absorb what you've already trained.

Cut volume, not intensity

This is the classic error: people run the same distance but slower, and stay just as wrecked. Cut kilometres and keep some short, fast stimulus — a few strides, a few minutes at pace. That keeps the neuromuscular signal alive while the body recovers.

Eat more, not less

At the peak of the block many people lose their appetite exactly when they need fuel most. Raise carbohydrate on loading days and don't skip the post-training meal even without hunger. Energy deficit is fuel for exhaustion.

Protect sleep like it's a session

It's where adaptation happens. One extra hour of sleep this week is worth more than any training you could add. And if insomnia is part of the picture, that's your clearest signal the nervous system is overloaded.

What NOT to do at 22 days out

Don't add work to compensate. At three weeks there's no time left to build anything new — everything extra you do now no longer turns into fitness, it turns into fatigue you'll carry all the way to Grant Park.

The hard block is already done. What's left is collecting on it.

The most expensive reminder of the year

In April, Sabastian Sawe ran London in 1:59:30 — the first official sub-two-hour marathon in race conditions, 65 seconds under Kelvin Kiptum's record.

He was going to Berlin on September 27 to defend his title with the world record in his pocket. An injury took him out.

Two weeks in a row with the same lesson: first Ingebrigtsen passing up the duel of the year in Budapest, now Sawe out of Berlin. If the fastest man in history can't skip biology, neither can you or I.

🇩🇪 Running Berlin on the 27th?

If that's you, you're exactly one week ahead of the Chicago crowd — and everything in this series applies to you too. Goal pace, the long run at marathon pace, mile-by-mile nutrition: the city changes, the physiology doesn't.

Your taper starts now. Reply and I'll tell you what to adjust for the fastest course in the world.

📖 Full article — the rescue protocol, day by day

🇺🇸 Read full article → 🇪🇸 Leer en Español →

Your weekend task

Two genuinely easy days. Then see what happens on the third.

Reply on Monday with one word: back or same. Depending on which, I'll tell you what to do with the three weeks left.

And if you joined this list recently — welcome. I write five or six times a week about training with your head: Tuesdays the big edition with news, Wednesdays the Chicago series, and the rest runs from absolute beginners to physiology that doesn't fit in a reel.

You don't have to read all of it. Take what serves you this week and leave the rest — that's what the archive is for.

Have a good long run this weekend, and recover well. See you Tuesday.

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