About 18 miles into the 2025 New York City Marathon, I hit a wall. My back ached. My thighs quaked. My left knee ominously popped with every other step.
I knew from months of training I'd need some extra motivation by this point in the course. The race was more than halfway over, but there were challenging hills and an entire 10k of distance ahead. I'd even programmed a Taylor Swift pump-up playlist for this moment. It still wasn't drowning out a little voice in my head saying I couldn't shake it off.
