With my runners now, they get two month-long breaks during the year.

I didn't give myself enough breaks during the training year to recover. I didn't understand the power of periodization.

I'm doing great heart-wise. I get a complete stress test once a year, and those have gone well. I have stents in two arteries, and they are holding up. My other arteries haven't shown any additional clogging.

Trust me, my runners aren't going to run one event while looking past it to the second event. When they get on the line for the 10K, that's a do-or-die situation for them.

Winning times in the New York City Marathon have not dropped all that much over the years, but rather U.S. runners went backward. In 1983, there were 267 U.S. men who broke 2:20 in a marathon, and by 2000 that number was down to 27.

You have to change things in order to get to where you want to go. And things might get worse. But if you're not getting where you want to be, already, in a sense, it's as bad as it can get.