Finding Strength, Passion, and Courage in My Training

  J Solle on the United Airlines NYC Half course. Photo provided by MarathonFoto. 

There’s a point in marathon training, and perhaps in the marathon itself, where doubt creeps in and overtakes your confidence. It can sit on you like a barrier wall that tricks your brain into thinking that you might not actually be able to run fast, or get up the hill, do another rep, or make it all the way to 26.2.

I know that when doubt visits me during the 2026 Boston Marathon, I’ll be ready. I know that because I trained through the most adversity that I’ve faced in a long time this winter, and I found my strength, passion, and courage doing it.

Training for Boston

Coming off the 2025 TCS New York City Marathon, I took time to pause, reflect, and reset. I hadn’t hit my goal, and I had raced through intense discomfort, letting doubt take over my day. In the wake of the race, I confronted the mixed feelings of disappointment but also a spirit of achievement. I knew that I was going to have more to give, and I was ready to search for it.

What I didn’t know was that my winter training block was going to throw challenges at me that I hadn’t experienced before. Training for a spring marathon during the heart of winter is no small feat any year, but this year it was bitter. Coming into January, I started to slowly up my weekly mileage and increase my long run distance on the weekends. With each weekend came a new challenge: colder temperatures, stronger winds, and worse conditions. In parallel, I left my job and started a new role that would challenge me in different ways and hopefully still leave me space to dedicate myself to training. I found myself navigating new challenges in my day-to-day life that I hadn’t expected—in my professional life and life outside of work that both made me turn to running to find self-reflection and strength.

A Close Friend's Advice

In early February, as I was gearing up to start a 17-mile run, the weather conditions on my phone displayed wind 18.1 MPH, feels like -7 degrees. As I started layering up, I called my friend and confidant Tina Muir and told her I was doubting myself and rethinking my plan to do the long run. I wanted to try to escape my doubt and leave it behind to get through my run. Tina, a former professional athlete, counseled me to do the opposite—to bring my doubt along with me, and learn to be comfortable with it. She reminded me that doubt is not something to be afraid of, but something that we can learn to take with us.

 J with Tina Muir at the NYRR RUNCENTER featuring the New Balance Run Hub.

I thought of her words as I started up Harlem Hill in Central Park for the first time, and then the second. Step after step and mile after mile I continued on, pushing to get the time-on-feet workout done. At that point I knew that peak training for the Boston Marathon was just starting, and that my strength was going to be dependent on dialing into each and every run. I was careful and meticulous to try to protect my body from the cold, dressing in thick layers; two pairs of pants and two pairs of gloves.

I carried water in a bottle to hydrate during the run, knowing that the public fountains in the park were shut off for the winter. When I tried to drink water after about 75 minutes, the top of my water bottle had frozen shut. I stopped, took out my phone, and used it as an ice pick to knock through the top to suck on the ice chips at the bottom of the bottle before continuing on. After the run, I reflected on the doubt that I had about being able to continue on for two hours in those conditions. I felt grateful for my body for carrying me through the run, and courage from knowing that I was able to do it the way I originally planned.



The next weekend, back to just standard winter freezing temperatures, I ran 21 miles in Central Park. As the miles passed and my tempo got more intense, I could feel that it was one of those days where doubt would start to seep in. I knew I had to decide how I was going to combat it. Would I let it get the best of me, or would I hear Tina’s advice that doubt was just a signal to my body that I needed to learn to carry with me?

Running Through Doubt

In January, I ran 204 miles. In February, 215, and in March, almost 250 miles. Each day that I committed myself to my training, the run that was assigned to me by my coach, I felt myself getting stronger. And each day that it was cold, raining, or snowing, or I felt like I didn’t have the strength to accomplish the workout that I was being asked to do, I came back to Tina’s words as doubt creeped into my mind. We would often talk about our workouts, me training for Boston and her preparing for a 100K ultra in the summer, comparing notes, our fatigue levels, and our courage to keep pushing through whatever adversity was facing us.

And as I pushed on, running became my form of strength and quiet solitude this winter. In every moment of self reflection on the quiet roads, I learned not to doubt myself less, but how I would combat doubt in my brain. Every time I showed up to run and find my strength, I showed commitment to myself and to my training. When I wasn’t provided a map to learn how to address the doubt that entered my mind, I plotted my own route. That route was drawn by the small wins—convincing myself to run through the cold or when I was anxious or upset about something in my day-to-day life. I showed myself that every time I wondered if I could achieve something, I did.

Through adversity I found my strength and a respite that filled my cup. When I suited up to run my last long run, 23 miles, I knew that I was carrying the strength of every other time that I had run this winter and proved to myself that I could do it. It carried me all 23 miles to a feeling of accomplishment that I hadn’t felt in my training before. As I stopped my watch at the end of that run, I knew that Tina’s advice had carried me through.

When I hit the start line at the 2026 Boston Marathon, I know that the commitment that I had to myself throughout the last four months is the antidote to any doubt that will surely seep into my mind. It will carry me through 26.2 miles, and many more hundreds of miles of training after. And regardless of the outcome of the race, I will have proved to myself what my own strength is long before I hit the start line.


 J with their partner Jacob Caswell at the United Airlines NYC Half finish line.

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