I’m currently training for my third New York City Marathon, and I wish I could say that by marathon number three, running 18 miles (a typical training distance) on a Saturday suddenly feels normal. It does not.

What has gotten easier is knowing what works for me. I’ve seen it all from blisters to not hydrating enough, and not using the proper gels. When I trained for my first marathon, I was figuring everything out as I went: what to eat on a long run, what to carry, what to do when my legs felt like they’d been hit by a bus the next morning and, perhaps most importantly, how to stop my nipples from bleeding. (Nobody warns you enough about that last one.)