4 Simple Ways to Beat Fatigue

In high school, while all my friends laced up for track practice, I parked on the sidelines with a snack, counting down the minutes until we could head back to my parent’s basement and lose an hour to YouTube. Running felt like something other people did—the naturally athletic, the overly disciplined. Not me.

So when I picked running up in 2024, when I was in my late 20s, it wasn’t part of some lifelong dream or well-thought-out plan. It was more of a last-ditch attempt to find a workout that stuck. And, unexpectedly, it did.

What began as a casual 5K at a Long Island winery quickly snowballed. Less than a year later, on a whim, I entered the New York City Marathon lottery—and somehow got in. It set something bigger in motion. I wasn’t just running for fun anymore; I was training.

At first, marathon training felt easy to romanticize. Early mornings, new gear, the quiet satisfaction of watching mileage tick up week over week… but then, about a month in, the reality set in. And it hit hard. Marathon training didn’t just ask for time; it demanded everything in me. My legs were constantly heavy, my energy perpetually low, and my brain felt like it was running on fumes.

After Sunday long runs, I was completely gassed. I felt mentally and physically drained, like nothing was left in the tank. It made me feel like my entire life revolved around running—and recovering from it. I loved what I was building toward, but I didn’t love feeling like I had nothing left for anything else.

That’s when I realized something had to give. Not the goal, but the way I was getting there.

So I started digging into recovery strategies, fueling habits, and any training changes that could make a difference. The real shift came when I started learning from marathon experts who actually live this practice day in and day out. Once I found a system that worked, everything started to click. The runs felt better, the exhaustion lifted, and, most importantly, I got parts of my life back.

These are the strategies that helped me train smarter, manage the fatigue, and actually enjoy the process—without feeling completely wiped out along the way.

Prioritize Sleep

It sounds obvious, but in practice, getting enough sleep was the hardest habit to lock down. I’m someone who thrives on a full calendar: dinners, events, last-minute plans that keep me out later than intended.

For a while, I tried to balance early morning runs, long workdays, and something social almost every night. But soon, the cracks started to show in my training. My easy runs (ones that were supposed to feel relaxed and conversational) were leaving me out of breath, and paces I could normally hold without thinking suddenly felt out of reach. Even shorter runs left me more drained than they should have, which was a major sign something was off.

My run coach, a USATF level 1-certified coach, Doug Guthrie, called it out. After a few days where I felt off, he kept asking me the same question: How much sleep did you actually get? The answer wasn’t great: I was often getting less than six hours. And the pattern was hard to miss once he pointed it out—the shorter the sleep, the worse my runs felt the next morning. He told me a lack of sleep is one of the biggest reasons runners underperform.

The fix wasn’t glamorous, but it worked. I started treating sleep like part of my training plan—something non-negotiable, not something I’d get to if there was time. That meant going home early from nights out, being more selective with social plans, and building in actual wind-down time.

After making that commitment and getting more rest, my pace felt steadier again and my recovery didn’t drag into the next day. Turns out, the most impactful training shift I made had nothing to do with mileage and everything to do with recovery.

Turn to Nutrition for Energy

If sleep was the first domino, nutrition was the second. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, if a run feels off, it comes down to sleep or fueling,” Guthrie says.

I thought I had a handle on what I was eating because I knew runners needed plenty of carbs. But unlearning years of diet culture telling me to fear bread was a different story. I was underfueling without realizing it, going into long runs without carb-loading the night before and foregoing energy gels and electrolytes. When I finished, I was completely depleted, and then wondered why I felt wrecked for the rest of the day.

As Guthrie explains, a lot of runners overcomplicate fueling, when in reality, “it often comes down to simple math based on the day’s training load.” Your body has a baseline it needs just to function, before you even factor in miles logged. Layer in marathon training and the demand climbs quickly. “Carbohydrates are what fuel the work, and protein is what helps you recover from it,” Guthrie says. “If you’re not getting enough of either, it’s going to show up in your training.”

I got more intentional about eating enough carbs before runs (a slice of sourdough became my go-to) and refueling after with a mix of protein and carbs (chocolate milk became a staple in my house). After fueling up, my energy stopped tanking postrun, recovery felt smoother, and I wasn’t dragging through the rest of my day. It wasn’t about eating perfectly; it was about eating enough to support the work I was asking my body to do.

Go Slower

At first, I was fixated on speed—chasing PRs, stacking Strava badges, proving (mostly to myself) that I was getting better with every run. But instead of improving, I was constantly exhausted and my “easy runs” didn’t feel easy at all.

“Not every run is supposed to be fast. In fact, most of them shouldn’t be,” says Guthrie. This completely reframed the narrative in my head. Slowing down felt unnatural to me, almost like I was doing it wrong. But in reality, I had been running too hard, too often, and it was catching up to me.

The biggest hurdle with slowing down wasn’t physical, but rather mental. Running slower felt boring, even frustrating, so about a month into training, I picked up small tricks that made a big difference. I started giving my brain something to do so my pace didn’t creep up, like counting dogs or picking a color to spot along the route. It sounds simple, but it worked.

Once I embraced truly easy runs, my legs felt fresher on harder days, my endurance improved, and I stopped dreading the miles in between my Sunday long runs. Slowing down, ironically, was what helped me move forward.

Try More Intentional Recovery Methods

Not every recovery day needs to involve an easy run, and I learned that by accident. A friend of mine invited me to a yoga class at a studio she loved, and I went without thinking twice about how it fit into my training.

Before this class, I had a rigid mindset that if I wasn’t running, I was falling behind. But I quickly learned the benefits of cross-training. Yoga wasn’t a distraction from my goals, it was active recovery. Low-impact movement got my blood flowing; the yoga flow worked out my tight muscles, and overall, it gave my body a break from the constant pounding of the pavement.

After that class, I realized swapping in yoga, cycling, or even swimming wasn’t a step back in my training, but a strategic move forward. Now, I fit yoga into my routine about once or twice a week, usually after a long run or a harder workout when my body needs it most. I treat it as part of the plan, not a deviation from it—and it’s made a noticeable difference in how strong I feel heading into my next run.

I could say the same for saunas. While I originally resisted them, after I tried my first session, I realized how the heat gives me a way to recover without adding more physical strain, something that became essential as training ramped up. Sauna time has now become less of a luxury and more of a tool I rely on to keep my body moving the way it needs to.