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training schedule is disrupted.
    2. In the early weeks of your marathon training, you develop a pain in your shin that gets a little worse each day. You think,
I should take a few days off
. Then you think,
I can’t take a few days off. I’ll get out of shape. The pain will probably go away on its own
. So you keep training, and as a result you develop a stress fracture that sidelines you for a month.
    Grandmother’s advice was prudent: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Yet every runner I know, including myself, has committed the sin of knowing better. Most people eventually learn to avoid repeating certain costly mistakes. Not me. As many miles as I’ve logged, I still make remedial blunders—like the one that had just turned my foot into an oozing, ticking time bomb.
    It was nearing two in the morning when we reached our hotel and approaching three o’clock when I finally lay down to rest.
Two down
,
forty-eight to go
, I thought. My body felt like it was still running.
    When I stepped outside the motel door in my running attire three hours later, I was greeted by a wall of warm, swampy air and a swarm of aggressive mosquitoes. Twenty hardy souls had signed up to run with me today, and it would be a test for all of us. We met up near the front gates of the Stennis Space Center, a sprawling NASA rocket testing facility located in a vast emptiness near the Mississippi–Louisiana boarder. We glistened with premature sweat and swatted our hands ineffectually at buzzing vermin as the thick air folded in upon us.
    The Mississippi Coast Marathon is a flat, out-and-back course that travels along a quiet stretch of rural highway. And I mean flat. Its only hill is an overpass. We could nearly see the turnaround spot from the starting line. The mercury rose steadily as we ran. Waves of heat and moisture wafted skyward from the highway, blurring the horizon. Thick green foliage lined the roadway. A pungent, earthy vapor permeated the atmosphere, like a spinach salad being microwaved.
    My blister began complaining almost immediately. By mile six it was shouting. At the halfway mark, it was screaming bloody murder.
    Garrett and Koop met us at the turnaround holding plates of cut bananas. Reaching for a slice of banana, I stuck my finger right through its yellowy-brown skin. The sun had roasted the exterior into oblivion. The innards were syrupy brown, but I was hungry, so I slurped down the warm mess with both hands, dribbles of pudding-like extrusion running down my chin. What runner hasn’t done something similar? Replenishment takes precedence over vanity.
    Almost exactly one year earlier, the area where we were now running had been pummeled by Hurricane Katrina, and there were lingering signs of devastation everywhere. We passed houses and shops missing roofs and windows, felled trees, and mangled road signs. At one point, we passed a bog that smelled of rotting animal carcasses.
    Knowing When to Say When
    Toughness and determination are good qualities to have as a runner, but there can be too much of a good thing. Sometimes you need to be smarter than you are tough or determined. Here are four circumstances under which you should immediately stop running and “live to fight another day”:
    • Never try to run through more than moderate pain in a muscle, bone, or joint.
    • Stop running whenever you experience dizziness, light-headedness, confusion, or blurred vision—all of which are symptoms of heat illness and severe dehydration.
    • Don’t try to continue training as normal when experiencing signs of overtraining syndrome, including persistent fatigue, declining performance, lasting muscle soreness, and low motivation.
    • Do not attempt to run when experiencing a fever, flu-like symptoms, or other ailments, including diarrhea and food poisoning.
     
    “This area got hit pretty bad,” said a gentleman in his late forties running next to me, who introduced himself as Jeff. Many of the runners