Amy Puzey | When Perfect Training Isn’t Enough

Sometimes the best training in the world isn’t enough to reach your goal. Amy Puzey found this out easier this month when she lined up at Houston Marathon and struggled from the starting gun.

Amy Puzey and husband Jacob Puzey

So how’d she handle the situation? Did she panic? Did she take a DNF? Looking back, did she have the strength to keep up the pace if she’d tried just a little bit harder? And what was the cause, considering every indicator showed that she’d have a successful time, taking her below the three hour mark for the first time?

In this episode, we talk about what caused her to keep going, rather than just calling it a day. What does Amy think caused her epic bonk? What can she do next time to hit her goal? Anything? And what’s it like to be married to a fellow elite MUT runner who rarely has a bad race? And we talk about balancing family obligations (she’s got six kids!) and training while recognizing the inherent guilt of taking time for yourself. We finish up with diet talk and a fun Fartlek round.

Amy Puzey and husband Jacob and Rivers Puzey

Amy Puzey Episode Notes

Here’s our interview with Jacob from a few years ago.

Intro music by David Rosales. Outro by AJ LeGrand.

Follow Amy Puzey: Strava | Instagram | Facebook

Amy is National Race Director for 5Peaks Adventures. (NFI)

Below is Amy Puzey’s post from her Facebook page:

Houston Marathon recap for those who are interested:I can see it now. I couldn’t a few days ago. But looking at this picture it has all become razor clear. Noah’s telling me: “Mom, we love you. No matter what. All we want are your cuddles, your love, your time. We don’t give a shit about the difference between a 2:45 and 3:10 marathon. We love You. These are words that Jake has repeated to me over and over for the past three months, but it didn’t change my goal. I was determined and I was sure I had it in me.The goal was always to break 3. Two other marathons of 3:01, or 3:00.51 in the past ten years. Surely I could do this with a little more focus, some higher mileage and dedication. My body seems to break around 100k/ week so I can’t ever go much higher than that and I realize that’s not the best way to try to hit an Olympic Trials qualifying time when other athletes are doing double that mileage. And Jake was realistic about this with me as my coach. And the reality was that I only had two weeks over 90k. But somewhere along the way, I started feeling good, confident. Workouts were going so well. I was smashing the predictor runs and they were hard but not impossi...