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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

At 53 I am beginning to acknowledge that I will never run a sub 4 hour marathon again. That's not just age; my priorities are different and I don't want to put in the hours it would take. I want to keep doing a marathon per year, but I can see that there will be a day when I can't.

I already skipped last year due to an injury. I think it's better. I'm being careful about recovery.

I don't mean to be maudlin. I have probably five decades left to live, and much to do that isn't running. But there's a loss of a part of identity that isn't thrilling me.

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As someone who can run at a pretty competitive pace, speed isn't everything. I notice that operating at the top competitive levels of most sports tends to destroy your body pretty quickly -- lots of stress injuries, sprains, accidents, etc, simply because you're pushing it so hard so often. When I really tried to push it, I could go faster and further... at the expense of actually enjoying myself.

I trail run in a much more relaxed way now -- enough to get a good workout, but definitely not as competitively as I used to road run. I've also picked up trail biking, and it's been SUCH a relief to just not think about my speed. I focus more on the experience of enjoying nature and I feel like that's a much healthier place to be. You can still push it occasionally, but there's a really pleasant niche at 60-80% of your max capacity! I also get the opportunity to share the sport with friends who aren't quite as speedy as me; turns out it's more fun to be social during an activity than to push myself.

And I have to say: at 53, even 4 hours is very very respectable. Try to remember that these things are first and foremost hobbies that are supposed to be fun!

At the age of 52 I ran my first marathon, not an organized race, I just picked a day, trained and ran it with a friend (an Ultra runner) who paced me round. I will never be fast but the sense of accomplishment of even a 10k or a 5k makes running such great form of exercise for the reasonably fit person.

I ran my first half marathon earlier this year; I am 48. I'm slow but before two years ago I'd never run so much as a 5k.

I would like to run a full marathon someday but I have no desire to run "quickly" for such a distance; I honestly think the training for that would leave me in worse shape than I am now.

It can be done with 16 weeks of training, 3 runs a week 10k, 15k, 20-25k. Each run you just need to train running the last 5k at a faster pace.

are those the total distance per week, or per run?

Per run

Per run. Training for a 42km race, you have to train some endurance (put the length in).

Can you elaborate on this or do you have a link to more info?

If you are on strava , you can see my training log.

> I have no desire to run "quickly" for such a distance

Don't run it "quickly" then. I know a bunch of people who are normally in the 5:30-6:15 range for a marathon (and several of them are well into the multi-100s of marathons run). If you have "6 hour" runs[1] near you, they're probably a good option for working up to / slowly doing a marathon.

[1] Run as many laps as you want in 6 hours. Handy for slow marathons because you know there'll be people around for at least 7 hours. Handy for bailing at a half / 10k / etc. since you can't DNF after you've done one lap.

> You can still push it occasionally, but there's a really pleasant niche at 60-80% of your max capacity!

Also, there's tons of studies that show elite endurance athletes train at Zone 1/2 (60-80% of VO2 Max) for 80%~90% of their training.

I'm 41 and have been running since I was 17. The past decade I've spent doing increasingly difficult ultramarathons. Until a few years ago I really thought that if I just stayed consistent I'd be able to run my whole life - I still hope I can as it's my therapy. But I just lost 8 months and counting to a knee injury sustained during a race. It's been a real wake-up call that my body is going to have something to say about my plan. Training time is also at a premium now as I have a 2 year old. Amazing (and hopeful) to see someone still doing hard trail ultras at 81.

The most substantial joy isn’t in winning races or setting PRs. It’s in the running.

Totally agree. My forced time off has clarified that all I really want is the health to get outside each day and stay healthy. Anything else is a bonus.

Everyone has their own luck. Appreciate that you can still run. Also 40 and knee injured with cartilage damage. I ran 3 marathons in the past decade and running was my passion, but now I have to be content with just walking.

This is one of the things I love about rock climbing. It really seems like an activity that people can gracefully continue into their later years (if you're lucky enough to stay able bodied enough).

Activities that are hard on your body, and 100% physical, can be really unforgiving when it comes to the aging process.

With rock climbing you can kind of shift your focus.. maybe do more trad climbing instead of sport or bouldering. Focus on different types of climbs, maybe more technical slabby climbs where you're on your feet more. You can still feel like you're genuinely participating in the activity you love, even if you can't do exactly the same things you did before to the same extent.

Well, badminton and table tennis are two other sports that come to mind where an older player does not by any means imply a lower performance.

A lot of my rock climbing buddies have broken their ankles, legs. So they can climb pretty ok still, but walking is another story...

I was at a motocross place a few years ago when a guy who was doing laps around the pro track came off and pulled up to his truck.

Seeing him ride, I would have guessed he was in his 20's. After his helmet came off, he looked about 60. When I saw him walk he looked about 80.

I boulder every week with my 74 year old dad, which I'm really grateful for. I get the feeling we've got another year or so until he has to stop.

I love climbing, but lets be honest - in later years it is quite brutal on your fingers and overall wrists. Things like osteoarthritis affect climbers too, heck based on some discussion with a doctor doing a lot of ultrasounds of hands its expected that climbers have messed up joints in hands and she could see some damage on mine too (I climb for a decade, in my early 40s).

For every guy climbing till his 70s there are a lot of those who had to stop for reason XYZ much before. If its not this its shoulder, anything in legs, spine and so on. Genes play a huge part too and thats pure lottery.

This might not be the case, and there is even a suggestion that climbing could protect against OA : https://www.climbing.com/news/does-climbing-guard-against-ar...

I have back issue (possibly an injury, but will need a MRI to confirm as nothing shows on CT) - I find that the issue is helped by climbing, and light weight-lifting involving the back-and-shoulders - just lifting dumbbells with arms outstretched, enough weight to offer resistance that engages the muscles properly.

I find the "puzzle"(or crux) in the climb make it less boring then repetitive movements at a gym, plus the genuine sense of fear from the danger helps me push my limit a bit (though I did have a poor fall as a result, so needs some caution).

Also, practical if you like to work with your hands, and I think for guys having decent arms and shoulders are particularly attractive.

Just over a year ago I was climbing in Owens River Gorge and ran into John C. Hoffman. He was 78 and doing laps on a 5.11c, with his wife Anne belaying. He casually mentioned he had bolted the route we were on back in the 90s. I'm not sure his current limit, but at 74 he was redpointing 5.12c. He's a dedicated ORG local and has been climbing since the mid-70s. His advice was simply: don't stop.

In fact I do gym climbing as well, and it's really clear that the sport skews very young. There are a few older people there, some of them very talented, but you see an awful lot of college tee-shirts.

I was never a great climber -- I miss doing V3s, but the V2s keep me interested. (A lot of that is actually due to pandemic, which cost me a bit of the very specialized bits of muscle that go into crimpy and slopey routes. I am gradually getting some of it back.) I should do more top roping, which affords a bit more room to solve problems without falling off and starting over.

I ran my last marathon at 37, and I remember realizing that the lead-up to that was the fittest I would be from then on. Not that I've given up on fitness since, but it's definitely something to come to grips with. And I agree with you, a lot of it is priorities.

I went through this at much younger and I completely understand the feeling of loss of identity. I was a college rower back in the day, and at my peak I was doing 11 workouts a week, plus weightlifting. I finished school and it was hard to not completely lose enthusiasm for rowing because I knew I was the fastest I would ever be because I'd never have that kind of time again to train.

As an athlete, there's a big difference in mentality between trying to get better over time vs just trying to not get worse too quickly.

It all comes down to the same form of grief we have acknowledging our own mortality. You can’t escape it.

You should let yourself feel it, and eventually you’ll make peace with it.

I would suggest that aging endurance athletes who are struggling with injury and recovery look into cycling. In my local community there are a lot of guys in their 60s and even 70s who enter 100k and 200k races and touring events

Good cardio and strength without the impact.

Plus you can coast a bit when you need to breathe.

There is still risk of significant injury from road accidents. Other, perhaps safer, options for low-impact cardio include swimming and rowing (whether on an erg or on the water).

Trails in the woods: no automobiles.

but plenty of pesky trees ;)

They'll only hit you once, and not again when you've stopped moving. So as long as you don't land on top of a tiger snake, you'll be good. :)

Source: Have hit plenty of trees MTB riding, and seen snakes, but fortunately not both at the same time.

Gravel roads are popular recently in much of the US, and part of the draw I guess is less cars.

I'm a roadie for life though and fortunately the roads are pretty safe here. But I have definitely seen some regions in the US where I would not want to ride my bike on the roads.

I wish I liked cycling. I did a fair bit of triathlon, and always dreaded the cycling leg (and the training for it).

I was a swimmer first, never really competitive but I am still in the first wave without even trying. And then everybody passes me on the bike, and it's hours of my back killing me. (Aero bars, drops, hoods makes no difference, though at least switching back and forth lets the painful part shift around.)

The thing I really like about running is that I can do it any time: in the dark, in the rain, in the snow. And if I let my mind wander, I won't run off the road at 20 MPH.

> 53 > probably five decades left to live

;-) maybe make plans as though you have a lot less, and enjoy the bonus years instead?

I am a male of similar age in New Zealand, and my median lifetime prediction is the age of my parents. My parents started really slowing down 10 years ago, and have elderly issues, even though they have mostly led much healthier lifestyles than I.

I exercise, am skinny, low cholesterol and eat quite healthily.

High blood pressure since 27, genetics.

I can tell myself it doesn't matter but when I'm honest - it saddens and maddens me that there are those who live terrible (health wise) lives, are objectively terrible (just bad people) people, and will outlive me by decades.

Why are you convinced that high blood pressure will lessen your lifespan?

I'll need you to point me to data that doesn't show this because even the most basic searches gives plenty of results.

Seems like high blood pressure is correlated with a lot of unhealthy behavior. So I would speculate someone with only high blood pressure but a normal weight and lifestyle is not going to live decades less than normal. Not a doctor so I may be off base.

Quick google search revealed about 7 years of decrease in lifespan on average with people who have hypertension, but it also doesn't discriminate between fitness levels and other factors (whether it's treated or not, say), as you say.

Anyway, I thought OP had some harder evidence about their own claim, but it seems to be a guesstimate.

This is the same as all health research. We don't do controlled studies for ethical reasons, so we end up with lots of confounds. There are lots of clever ways to eliminate those confounds, and current research is considered sufficient to find a correlation between high blood pressure and heart disease, heart failure, stroke, kidney damage, vision loss, memory loss, and cognitive decline. There could be confounds not yet considered yet, but after reading a lot of research myself, I believe this is causative.

HOWEVER, we should put this in context. Apologies in advanced for switching to cholesterol for this example. For example, from memory, total cholesterol above 7mmol/L increases the risk of heart attack by around 20%. Your average typical annual risk of having a heart attack is 0.23%, so high cholesterol increases this to 0.28%. That's still low in nominal terms. Smoking, on the other hand, can increase risk of hart attack by as much as 700%. This raises one's annual risk to 1.61%. Still low in nominal terms, but much higher than high cholesterol. Now consider the many other factors we control, like diet, pollution, exercise, stress, and alcohol and other drugs. These mediate the nominal risk further still.

My current position is to lead a healthy lifestyle while individually combating the clearly bad lifestyle choices like smoking. I don't smoke anymore because it's so obviously hazardous that the benefits are not worth it. I might consider taking statins in the future if the side effects are few.

I expect to drop dead same as the last 5 generations of males in my family did, due to a heart attack at age 75 (Unless something else gets to me first), today we live longer, but they were far more resilient and more active

You’re more fortunate than the significant fraction of people who would rather not be living at all.

Oh man, yeah, my privilege for sure. Doesn't stop the feelings though.

> it saddens and maddens me

Yeah, unfair, eh wot? Maybe a god could create equality and perfect justice, but anecdotally I haven't seen it happen yet.

Is it possible to learn to be chiller and more accepting? Is stress twice the killer for those who were gifted dodgy genes by their ancestors?

You are surely already in the top 10% of humanity, so sour grapes that another fellow gets 20% more than your riches in time is hard to swallow ;p

Personally, the bastards in my world seem to get their comeuppance because while they present a lucky face, I often find they have shot lives when I know more detail.

I'm a mostly-good middle-aged white guy from New Zealand (godzone[1]), so I reckon chances are that I have a similar outlook to you.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/3q4nth/hi_nz_wh...

Reading the comments there reminds me that Reddit can be a pretty nasty place. Like "Do you have any other questions? Cos if this is your lot then you should stay out of pub quizzes" - needless hostility.

If it makes you feel better my dad is in his mid 70s, does a hike most everyday, and the only meds he's on is for glaucoma.

I'll be enjoying my turn with glaucoma, since I also have his high blood pressure.

I'm in the same boat -- I'm 45 and a mediocre mountain bike racer, but over the last few years my motivation to train has gone down considerably. The problem is bike racing has been my "thing" for so long that's it's weird to think of cycling season coming and going without me.

I raced road bikes throughout my 20s. A few days ago I hit the 10 year anniversary of my last race. At this point in my life, I can barely relate to the person who practically organized their whole life around racing and was deeply embedded in the local scene. But I completely relate to your feelings about the season coming and going. Even a few years after hanging up the cleats, I would still sometimes get the itch to drop into my city's local crit. There is something a little cultish about bike racing that is hard to give up. I don't know anyone who managed to have a healthy relationship with it for more than a decade. But it is a lot of fun at its best.

> I don't know anyone who managed to have a healthy relationship with it for more than a decade.

Absolutely! When the 2020 season was cancelled due to Covid, one of my teammates asked "what are we supposed to do now, ride bikes for fun?" They were joking, but I think the sentiment rings true for a lot of people.

What type of racing are you doing? I am stating the obvious here but there is more than one discipline of MTB and switching could give you a jolt of motivation (if you want that jolt).

> But there's a loss of a part of identity that isn't thrilling me.

As a friend of mine put it, "aging is a process of renunciation".

Latching to this comment -- would love feedback and guidance on how to run past the clinks and jerks in knees, ankles, and back etc when it comes to running, not to mention lungs.

Used to easily run half marathons as if it was nothing and on average 8-12km daily pre pandemic. Then COVID happened and my world closed down so did my running (and pretty much everything else) and now I struggle with everything. Yes, I am ~3 years older (early to mid 30s) but I don't think that should limit me. I also put on weight but I lost it then a bit of it keeps creeping back.

What's the way to get back - how should one approach it? Muscles? Gym? Strength? How?

I’m turning 36 this year and averaging about 80km/week these days. Although I didn’t stop for the pandemic.

The main thing that has helped me is to fix my form – make sure you always land with your leg straight down underneath your hip. Work with a reflective surface or a coach until you get this down and know what correct feels like. Then be conscious of this until it’s 2nd nature.

Second important thing are fresh shoes. No more than 600km.

Third – barbell squats and deadlifts. This gives your legs strength and balance so muscles/tendons can hold your joints steady.

Fourth – I added daily foam rolling this year and it really helped with tightness and resulting imbalances in my legs. Made running much easier.

Oh and make sure you eat enough. That helps with muscle soreness.

As credentials I offer that I ran a 3:15:28 marathon in November at 35, my fastest ever.

> Second important thing are fresh shoes. No more than 600km.

That’s what shoe companies want you to believe. I just run until they fall apart. A couple of thousand km easily.

2:45 marathon at 41.

Thank you for this aspect of using gear long term.

> I just run until they fall apart. A couple of thousand km easily.

Amazing! What kind of shoes do you use?

Mine do basically fall apart around 600km and I can feel a big difference in cushioning. New shoes feel like springs that give my feet a sproing, old shoes are like running barefoot – no sproing at all.

Adidas adizero adios (the old ones, before they grew a thick sole). Allbirds had a nice shoe they developed together with Adidas, which is discontinued now. Some Nike free, but they have too thick a sole for my taste… At the moment, the shoes I like best are discontinued. Luckily I have a couple of pairs in reserve. You know the writing is on the wall when they are heavily discounted; good time to buy a couple of pairs.

By the time I need to buy new ones, fashions will hopefully have shifted back…

By the way, when I say fall apart, I mean it literally: toes peeking out and losing bits of the sole.

I also rotate the shoes: the older ones are for the easy runs, the newer ones for tempo or intervals.

I'm 72 (73 next month), and I run dirt trails. Concrete is terrible on the joints, and asphalt only a little better. It's surprising how easy the dirt is on my joints. Part of it is that dirt is just softer, although I suppose another part is that you're not running as fast on trails because of the twists and turns, and ups and downs (I'm not much faster downhill than I am uphill).

I'm out east now, where the dirt has a lot of clay. I've run near Phoenix, which is more like compacted sand, and near Seattle, where the trails in the woods are even softer and easier on the joints.

Lungs--well that's a different story, especially on the uphills.

I was faster at 64 than I was at 62 also.

But I'm certainly not an athlete, never have been.

It's not running either since those particular shoes of mine have wheels.

So I'm very dependent on pavement for this activity.

>Concrete is terrible on the joints, and asphalt only a little better.

>He had worn out an average of two and a half pairs of running shoes each year ever since 1978

I don't have that kind of longevity. I did get new wheels a few years ago but I only had the old ones since 1983, so that's nothing like 1978. I don't lubricate them every year since I'm trying to get more exercise in a shorter period of time once I really thought about it. Didn't always have that good an attitude and it really helps now, same with skating into the wind which I used to dislike for obvious reasons. Last night storms were coming after work but I thought it was my last chance this week for dry pavement so I went anyway. For a while there it was 20 MPH wind with gusts to 30 before it finally did rain me out so I didn't get in the whole 10 miles. It was only really rough for the 25% of the time I was heading eastbound, where I only went about 2 MPH but with that kind of wind it takes as much energy as going 22 to 32.

>“Here’s something you’re probably too old to do.”

In regular shoes I usually go about 3 MPH for about 3 hours in my employer's chem lab, sometimes two or three times that. Not exactly toxin-free but it is what it is. I've got instruments in opposite ends of the lab and if I want to experiment as much as 3 people would do that's just what it takes. There's somebody there 24 hrs, once-in-a-while me. Up until less than a year ago I was getting the $10 running shoes from Walmart and wearing them out in 3 months. People in the lab give me a hard time because I keep wearing them an additional 3 months after that. They don't realize I'm also dancing to the oldies a few hours a week, often with much younger women who seem to like the oldies just fine. I'm no Mr Bojangles but for this I like it when there is no tread any more and the shoes have softened up quite a bit. With inflation I think those cheap ones will never be available again so I've downgraded to the $24 kind now. It's the only thing close.

Talk about asphalt, might as well throw this in here for a little relief, disregard if you hate petroleum chemistry. Now with heavy fuel oil we sometimes determine a component known as asphaltenes. This consists of some heavy solid hydrocarbon molecules of somewhat nebulous structure, dissolved in the oil, but not actually paraffins or tar. None of which I would ever want to get onto any expensive shoes. Anyway I'm a senior operator and advanced chemists still seem to expect me to know more than people actually can about this flaky stuff, even after they are fairly skilled at performing the difficult test. So occasionally I have to explain it in detail, and with my lengthy background I relate it to skateboarders of all things. It helps them to remember the fine points of unknowability easier. I tell them exactly what asphaltenes really are. First there are skateboarders who prefer solid concrete most of all, other times there are some that only want to skate on asphalt. Those are the asphalt-teens. Whose-ass fault was that anyway. Nobody's fault but mine.

Right above my brass plaque from ASTM I still display (what I thought was) a unique sticker from a short promotional run by a local printer, which I never have actually stuck to anything since the guy gave it to me with my letterheads when I had started my own lab back in the 1990's:

"The difficult we will do immediately, the impossible will take a little longer."

Since that's what I mainly do day-to-day scientifically for decades now.

TIL this saying was actually coined by: >Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer who led the first crossing of Greenland on skis

And this is what I just happened to "run" across earlier today:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/a-96-year-old-form...

Plus this about another marathoner mentioned in the Dag story:

>Singh, who attributed his physical longevity to abstaining from smoking and alcohol and to a vegetarian diet

Seems to work for me so far.

> What's the way to get back

The best way to get back is to stop worrying about getting back and to just go out the next chance you get.

Go for a half a mile walk tomorrow. Ease into it slowly. Gain mileage by 10% a week. If you’re consistent you’ll be back in no time.

But don’t worry too much about all that: just get moving.

Echoing the other advice, good shoes, get fitted for the first pair at a running shop that analyses you first.

Secondly don't fall into the trap of thinking that you can jump back into running 8km or so daily, you need to build yourself up slowly first, use an easier program like couch to 10k after which you should be in good enough shape to start increasing frequency of runs.

While you're in this phase concentrate on easy paced runs, so hopefully the lungs shouldn't be an issue, you should run at a pace where you can hold a conversation without struggling for breath.

I'm closing in on 40 and trying to run my first sub 4 hour marathon before then. I figure you don't really start running that fast after 40, so this is my last chance to ever be a 4 hour marathoner.

FWIW - I started running distance seriously only when I was 38. Ran my first half at 39 and ran my fastest half yet ( 1:39) at 44. Ran my first marathon at 45 - (3:56). I've gotten faster since then (per my 5K speed), but haven't run another marathon since - it is a significant time commitment.

You have more time than you think, especially at the marathon distance. If you were looking for sub-3, then yeah, you’d better hurry, but 40s isn’t at all old for a sub-4 marathon, especially if you’re willing to put in the miles during training.

Males have to get to 65 years old before a 4-hour marathon will even qualify them for Boston.

I didn't realize it was even that relaxed.

I'd wanted to qualify for Boston in my 20s, which at the time required a 3:10 marathon. It was just barely at the limit of possibility, if I had a perfect day, which I never did.

Then they dropped that limit to 3:05, and that might as well be on the far side of the moon. So, I never run Boston. Ah, well. That was a very stretchy stretch goal.

Don't sell yourself short. I only started running when I turned 38. I ran my first marathon in 3:53 when I was 42, and my second one in 3:41 when I was 44. I'm now nearly 48 and am planning on doing another one later this year and am training for a sub 3:30 time.

Always remember Ed Whitlock, he didn't start running till he was passed 40 and he was still running sub-3 hour marathons at 69 years old.

You have plenty of time, I've trained with lots of people that started late and were still running impressive times.

If you look at the ultra runners finishing races by age you'll see a lot more in their 40s than their 20s.

>I have probably five decades left to live, and much to do that isn't running.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

My parents died in their 50's and I'm sure as hell ain't going to die younger than them.

My second powerlifting meet a dude had SEPTUAGENARIAN embroidered on his belt and he wasn't the only septuagenarian at it; the other was a judge's mom whose third deadlift continues to be the best strength sport attempt I've ever watched live. Granted this is a much easier sport than endurance running IMHO, but my point is there's room to do sports for a while yet.

I’m normally a runner but I’ve been doing a shit ton of inclined walking to train for a climb.

I’ve come to actually love walking now, weirdly enough. Feels meditative. I think part of the key is focusing on form, which leads you to sometimes forget your physical existence.

I've been recovering from a hip injury and can't run more than 2-3 miles but I can walk. My real goal is to climb Denali among other peaks and I'm wondering how I can get into shape during this period with just walking. Do you just max incline 4mph and go for a couple of hours?

Read about cardio zones, understand and internalize them. Then, do all of your training in zone 2. If you have to breathe through your mouth, you’re going too fast and need to slow down.

Be strict about not going anaerobic. Try to get 8-10 hours of cardio a week, with 25%-50% of that on a weekend hike, and ideally one other day that’s 90 minutes or so. Also do some strength training.

But volume is king. If you try to go too fast you’ll only train your anaerobic ability, which you can’t sustain in a hike. You want to be extremely good at going fast at a low level of exertion.

I’m nowhere near 4 mph at 15% incline. More like 2 right now. But I’m gradually getting there with all this volume, and I only started training two weeks ago for this season (before this I was trying to only focus on weights). I also plan on adding a lot of low intensity stair climbing soon.

Despite how much time I’m spending, my body feels great. It’s not like running, which beats you up.

If you ever think you might get into running. Do it when you are in your 20s or 30s. Your PR will last your entire lifetime.

If you ever think you might get into running, do it when you're in your 40s. You get to keep making PRs for several years.

Sure, but your lifetime PR in 20s - 30s is going to be better than in your 40s.

However, it really doesn’t matter. Don’t not get into to running (or other sport) just because you are not young (double negatives used for emphasis).

If you compare yourself to other people in your age group, would that mean less of loss of identity?

Running for me has always been about myself. I was never competitive; I just wanted to set personal records.

Of course, I was young and male and healthy, and just finishing put me in the 95th percentile of everybody. I could compare myself to an age group rather than everybody, but that too is a narrowing of identity.

I could drop from marathons and do half-marathons, which are a far less ludicrous sport. Marathons really aren't good for you. It's more about being willing to endure those last 6 miles than actual fitness. A half marathon doesn't have a month-long recovery time. And completing it would still put me in a 90%+ bracket (of some poorly-defined, purely idiosyncratic notion).

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