2026 has been my worst running year by far.
The mask of indestructibility finally came off. After seven years of running with barely two months off in total, I got hit with two back-to-back bone stress injuries in the same foot. I used to think I would be absolutely devastated if I ever got properly injured. The thought of losing months of running scared the shit out of me.
So it is funny, in a strange way, that as I start returning to running, I feel oddly grateful for this period.
I would still rather not have had a navicular stress reaction followed by a fourth metatarsal stress reaction. But this year has forced me to step back, take a deep breath, and finally find some peace in the sport I love so much.
I use the word peace deliberately.
Before the first injury, I was at an all-time low with running. We missed making NCAA XC by one point, and I was terrible for basically the entire season. I put a lot of that blame on myself. I was our returning “best” cross country runner, and I felt like I had let the team down. I had taken too many risks over the summer, and by the time I realised it, I was already too burnt.
I was also trapped in this constant state of comparison with my teammates. They were flying, and I desperately wanted to be flying with them. When you are training the house down but faltering every time you race, it is only natural to start questioning everything. Eventually it got so bad that I was honestly relieved when I got hurt. It felt like a weight had been taken off my shoulders.
At that point, I did not even care about running well again. I just wanted to get the love back.
That is the thing with this sport. It can give you so much, but it can also take just as much if you let it.
My first injury was a low-grade navicular stress reaction. It was mild enough that I could still do most things on it, which made it easy to convince myself I was fine. But if you know anything about naviculars, you know they are notorious. They can end careers, and they can be absolute pricks to figure out.
In true matthanso fashion, I rushed back.
I found the love again, but it was hidden underneath a foot that kept flaring up. Still, I was just grateful to be running. I started leaning into my teammates more, which is something I had honestly avoided since transferring to Lipscomb. The comparison issues started to fade. I gained a perspective I had not really had since my breakout in 2024. I was finally enjoying running again.
Then, just as the navicular had finally settled and I was getting back into decent shape, my fourth metatarsal flared up badly. This time, I was not grateful. I was devastated – not because I was missing out on races, but because I was missing out on travelling with my boys.
Once the initial disappointment wore off and I settled back into injured life, I started to realise that this period will become a huge net positive. My body is now stronger than it has ever been. But more importantly, I have continued to build an identity outside the sport to the point where I no longer feel like I need running to be happy.
I definitely do not have everything figured out. But I do think this year has given me a more balanced and honest view of what it takes to be a high performer in this sport.
Experiences and relationships shape who you become. I have been fortunate to race and train at a high level, rub shoulders with exceptional athletes, and build relationships with people in the sport whom I deeply respect. I do not regret my journey at all. But if I had my time again, these are the lessons I would want at the front of my mind.
1. more often than not, less is more
I have spent a lot of my running career stuck in the “more is more” mindset.
There is no doubt that consistent high volume is one of the biggest indicators of success in distance running. You do not get good at this sport by avoiding work. I still believe that. The aerobic monster is not built off shortcuts, hacks, or pretending that thirty miles a week is the same as ninety. At some point, if you want to be good, you have to run. You have to put in the years. You have to live through the boring, unglamorous, repetitive work that slowly changes you.
But my philosophy around volume has changed a lot since being injured, especially after some in-depth conversations with Ben Bayless, someone I look up to a lot.
Ben and I are similar in many ways. I hope he does not mind me saying this, but I think he also used to get caught in the same mentality as me. We both lived for the grind: huge mileage, big sessions, and constantly looking for another edge.
He was a decent collegiate runner, but he is nowhere near the runner now that he was then. I still find it hard to wrap my head around his 2:15 marathon and 64-low half marathon. He is also confident he can improve on both of those times significantly, which I do not doubt at all – he literally did not fuel properly for either.
The main reason for his post-collegiate improvement was not that he went deeper into more mileage, more threshold, more intensity, or more of everything. It was simpler than that. He put feeling good at the centre of his training.
For someone like him, or someone like me, who has already spent long stretches running consistent 100mile+ weeks, you can still train at a very high level off around 80miles/130km a week. That is not low mileage. It is still serious training. But it gives you a better chance to feel good more often, recover properly, and actually absorb the work.
At first, I fought back against this idea. I love the grind. I have always been proud of being durable and willing to do more. There is a part of me that still wants the biggest week, the hardest session, the most brutal block. That part of me has helped me a lot. But it has also hurt me just as much.
That is the distinction I wish I understood earlier: work ethic is only useful when it is pointed in the right direction. Smart work will almost always beat hard work.
I saw a reel the other day that compared an oak tree and bamboo in a storm. Before you click off the article hear me out. The oak was hard, strong, and rigid. It looked impossible to break. But when the storm came, it snapped. The bamboo was softer, more pliable, and less impressive on the surface. But it bent, absorbed the storm, and survived.
That image stuck with me because it is now exactly how I now think about training.
For years, I wanted to be the oak tree. Hard. Durable. Unbreakable. The runner who could just keep stacking miles, sessions, doubles, gym, and everything else without needing to bend. That identity is powerful until the storm comes. And the storm always comes eventually. It might be a bad season, a niggle, a stress reaction, emotional burnout, poor sleep, bad life stress, or just the quiet accumulation of doing slightly too much for slightly too long.
The answer is not to become soft in the lazy sense. The answer is to become soft in the adaptable sense.
Soft wins when soft means pliable. Soft wins when it means you can bend instead of break. Soft wins when it means you can pull back before your body forces you to. Soft wins when it means you can take an easier day without seeing it as weakness. Soft wins when it means you are mature enough to choose the training that lets you keep showing up.
As runners, we often confuse suffering with stimulus. We assume that because something feels hard, it must be the thing that makes us better. But I now think you often adapt better from the training you feel good within. You finish sessions with more control. You bounce back the next day. You stack weeks instead of surviving them.
The best training does not always look heroic. Sometimes it looks almost underwhelming. Controlled threshold. Easy mileage that is actually easy. Strides that leave you feeling sharper, not cooked. Long runs you recover from instead of long runs that become a weekly race. That is not softness. That is maturity.
Does that mean every run should feel amazing? No. That is not realistic. If you are training hard, there will be tired days. There will be heavy legs. There will be sessions where you have to concentrate and suffer a bit. But if you are feeling bad more often than you are feeling good, alarm bells should be ringing.
This is still something I struggle with. I am wired to want more. But I am becoming more confident that the next version of me will be better because I will chase the right amount, not the most amount.
The goal is not to avoid hard work. The goal is to be durable enough, adaptable enough, and honest enough to keep absorbing it. Find the volume and intensity that almost feels too easy at times. Lean into feeling good instead of constantly trying to press for more. That is where peak performance is built.
2. it is an individual sport – stop worrying about what everyone else is doing
I have been a student of the sport since 2019. I have read the books, watched the videos, studied the training, and immersed myself in the tricks of the trade. I absolutely love it. But sometimes I think I know too much.
I say that because all that knowledge can become dangerous when it turns into comparison.
I have compared myself to competitors. I have compared myself to teammates. I have compared my training to pros. I have looked at people running more than me and convinced myself I was not doing enough, even when I was already running 110miles/175km+ a week.
That is a dangerous trap. Unfortunately, it took getting injured for me to properly snap out of it.
Now I want to use what I have learned to build the system that works best for me. There are obvious principles that nearly all successful distance runners share: consistency, aerobic development, appropriate intensity, recovery, and belief. But there are also many different ways to train well.
Look at the three big hitters in the men’s 1500: Jakob, Josh, and Cole. They all train very differently.
Jakob’s training is built around maximising lactate-controlled threshold work, with touches of quality when needed. Josh follows more of a classic miler model: plenty of volume, but also a lot of quality. Cole’s training is more left field: a lot of drills, weights, cross-training, and race-specific quality.
All three have found systems that work for them. More importantly, they seem to believe wholeheartedly in what they are doing. They are not constantly looking sideways and panicking because someone else is doing something different.
You can learn from everyone, but you cannot copy your way to your own ceiling. At some point, you have to stop collecting ideas and start committing to the model that makes you better.
This sport has to become me v me. For anyone reading, it has to become you v you.
That sounds simple, but it is hard to live. It is hard when your teammate drops a monster session and drops you like a sack of shit. It is hard when someone you used to beat runs a huge PB. It is hard when you see a pro’s Strava and suddenly your own training looks small. But if every decision you make is a reaction to someone else, you are no longer training. You are just chasing arbitrary noise.
The only comparison that actually matters is whether you are moving closer to the best version of yourself. Are you fitter than you were? Are you healthier than you were? Are you more consistent? Are you learning what training you respond to? Are you becoming more robust mentally and physically? Those questions matter far more than whether someone else did two more reps or twenty more miles.
This also applies to junior progression. Everyone develops at a different rate, and this used to eat me alive as a junior. I would train the house down and then watch people around me flourish. I wish I had understood that junior distance running is mostly developmental. Puberty plays a massive role, and some of the best juniors do not progress nearly as much as seniors.
If I had my time again, I would not give two fucks about what my competitors were doing. As long as I was progressing, learning, and staying healthy, that would have been enough.
Distance running is an individual pursuit. Your job is to find out how good you can become, not to build your career around someone else’s timeline, training, or progression.
3. plateaus are natural – lean into them
I am a great example of the ebbs and flows of distance running.
I have never progressed in a perfectly linear way. Some people seem to improve every year, and that can be frustrating to watch. But most athletes do not develop like that. Progress is usually messy. You improve, stall, question everything, adjust, and then, if you stay in the game long enough, you break through.
A plateau does not always mean your training is wrong. Sometimes it means the work has not had enough time to surface yet.
That is the part runners struggle with. We want proof. We want immediate evidence that what we are doing is working. We want a session, a race, or a lactate test to tell us that we are on the right path. But the sport does not always give you that. Sometimes the only thing you have is belief in the work.
That belief cannot be blind. If you are injured, cooked, under-fuelled, or getting worse for months, then you need to be honest and change something. But if the training is sound, if you are healthy, if you are stacking weeks, if you are building capacity, then sometimes the answer is not to panic. Sometimes the answer is to keep going.
The better image for development is not a ladder straight up. It is more like a “geometric spiraling upward.” That image makes so much sense to me now. Progress is not always a clean climb upward. Sometimes you circle around the same lessons again and again. Sometimes you feel like you are going backwards, but you are actually gathering momentum for the next upswing.
A lot of people throw in the towel when they do not immediately see the fruits of their labour. In reality, they might have only needed a few more weeks, months, or even years to reach the next level.
There is a severe lack of universal justice in this sport. You can train hard and still race badly. You can do everything right and get sick at the wrong time. You can be fitter than ever and still not get the result on the day. That is the brutal part of this sport. But it is also what makes the breakthrough feel so meaningful when it finally comes.
Looking back at my own progression, there were clear periods where I was not improving much at all.
2019
1500m 4:15
3000m 9:03
5km 15:15
2020
1500m 4:09
3000m 8:57
5km 15:25
2021
1500m 4:05
3000m 8:49
5000m 15:15
2022
1500m 4:00
3000m 8:30
5000m 14:47
2023
1500m 3:57
3000m 8:27
5000m 14:43
2024
1500m 3:47
3000m 8:17
5000m 14:10
2025
1500m 3:47
3000m 8:12
5000m 14:10
Staying in the game is something I feel like I personify. There have been long stretches without meaningful improvement, including now, where I have plateaued again. But I genuinely believe the next jump is around the corner.
That belief matters. You cannot train well if you are constantly acting out of fear. You cannot absorb a block properly if every average session sends you into an identity crisis. You have to believe that the boring work is doing something.
That does not mean being stubborn for the sake of it. Sometimes a plateau is feedback. Sometimes it tells you the stimulus needs to change. But the change has to come from clear thinking, not panic. The worst thing you can do is abandon good training every time the payoff is delayed.
I actually look back fondly on the plateau periods now, because I think those are the phases where a lot of the real growth happened. It is human nature to want reward for effort as quickly as possible. But there is something deeply satisfying about finally breaking through after years of quiet work.
In my own journey, the breakthroughs usually came when I changed the stimulus.
My first big jump came in 2022 after roughly three years of fairly stagnant high-volume training: around 80 miles/130km a week, two sessions, and a 16mile/25km long run. The big change was lowering the volume slightly and increasing the intensity. I moved to around 60-70miles/100-110km a week with three sessions: one threshold session, one shorter 1500m-paced workout, and one more traditional track session.
Then I stagnated again for almost 2 years before changing the stimulus once more. I increased my volume to around 90miles/145 km a week and started implementing double threshold. The breakthrough that followed still feels like a dream come true. If you had told 2020 matthanso that I would run 3:47 and 14:10, I would have told you there was no chance.
Now I am thinking about how to break through this current plateau. I will follow the same broad blueprint that has served me well: stay patient, believe in the work, stay in the game, and when the time is right, change the stimulus intelligently.
Plateaus are not proof that you are failing. They are often the space where the next version of you is being built.
4. be in the sport for the right reasons and lean into community
The first three lessons are mostly about performance. This last one matters more than all of them.
Not just for performance, but for wellbeing and longevity in the sport.
This is the lesson it took back-to-back stress injuries for me to properly understand. You have to be in the sport for the right reasons. Your reason to run cannot only be to run fast. It has to be because running adds something meaningful to your life.
Far too often, this sport has felt like it has taken a massive toll on me. I have always been competitive and hard-working. I want to win. I want to run fast. There is nothing wrong with that, and if you are reading this, you probably feel the same way.
The problem starts when performance becomes the only reason you run.
If your identity is tied too closely to your results, then your wellbeing rides the same rollercoaster as your running. For too many periods in my seven years in the sport, there was almost no distinction between matthanso and matthanso the runner.
As I mentioned earlier, I have had long stretches where I stagnated. Those periods were not all bad, but this recent one was by far the lowest I have ever been. I wanted to run well so badly that when it was not happening, I could not deal with it. I felt lost. I felt like my purpose was gone.
The strange part is that I was surrounded by great communities: my college team, my club back home, and friends who genuinely cared about me. But during those low periods, I wanted to isolate. I pulled away from the exact people who could have helped me most.
What brought me back was a principle that has always served me well:
If I am having fun, I cannot lose.
When I think about my two biggest breakthroughs in the sport, both came during periods where I was also just absolutely balling out in life. It was almost a train-hard, play-harder mentality.
I am not saying that going out, drinking, and doing stupid shit is a prerequisite for running fast. It is not. What I am saying is that balance matters. I now know that I thrive in running when I am just having fun and finding fulfillment in all aspects of life. You have to know who you are without running, and that part of you has to be strong.
You have to be confident that if running is not going well, your whole life does not fall apart with it.
It is easy to enjoy running when you are fit, healthy, and racing well. The real test is finding out why you run when it is not going your way.
This injury period has taught me that I am not in the sport only to be the best or to break 14 in the 5k. I still want those things. I still want to be great. But that is not the whole reason anymore.
I am in this game because I love to run. I love running with my mates and being in it together through the good and the bad. I love getting out in the bush and exploring. I love having an outlet where I can pursue something hard, even when it does not immediately pay me back. I love competing and putting it all out there.
Everyone’s reason to run will be different. But if your reason is centred only around performance, this sport will eventually take more from you than it gives. If your reason is rooted in love, community, challenge, and growth, then running can add to your life in a way that goes far beyond times and results.
Do not mistake this mindset for a lack of ambition. I still want to be great. I just do not need it in the same desperate way I used to.
“Running to him was real; the way he did it the realest thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as diamond; it made him weary beyond comprehension. But it also made him free.” – Once A Runner