Last Sunday (28.06.2026) was meant to be the Hella half marathon in Hamburg. For me this was a training run, one of two half marathons I’ve got in the legs before the Dramathon in October. Instead, the organisers pulled it — too hot, too risky for a field of runners who’d trained through spring and summer, not heatwaves. And do you know what? I didn’t feel too bad about it. I swapped the start line for family and friends instead, and had a genuinely lovely weekend in Hamburg.

But it got me thinking on one of my walks this week — there’s a proper academic writing lesson buried in a cancelled race, if you go looking for it.

The plan was never the point

I didn’t train for months to run one specific half marathon on one specific Sunday. I trained to build endurance, get my legs and my head ready for October, and to have a couple of dress rehearsals along the way. The half marathon was a checkpoint, not the goal. So when it got cancelled, the training didn’t evaporate — the fitness, the long runs, the (many) blister plasters were all still banked. The Dramathon is still on track.

We do this to ourselves in academic writing all the time — we treat a single deadline, submission or writing session as the whole point, rather than one checkpoint in a much longer process. If that one slot gets cancelled (a meeting overruns, a caring emergency, your brain just isn’t having it that day), it can feel like the whole plan has collapsed. It hasn’t. The reading you did last week, the notes you made, the argument you’ve been quietly building in your head — none of that disappears because today’s session didn’t happen.

Sometimes the conditions really are the problem

What I appreciated about Sunday is that nobody tried to frame the cancellation as a personal failing. Nobody said “you should have trained harder” or “real runners would push through”. It was simply too hot, and pushing through extreme heat is genuinely dangerous, not admirable. The organisers made the sensible call and everyone adjusted.

We’re nowhere near as generous with ourselves about writing conditions. If a session doesn’t happen because you’re exhausted, overloaded, or dealing with something else entirely, the instinct is to call it a discipline problem rather than a conditions problem. Sometimes the conditions really are the problem — and the sensible, unglamorous response is the same one the race organisers made: cancel it, don’t force it, and pick the next sensible slot instead of white-knuckling through something that isn’t safe or sustainable for you.

The backup plan is not a failure state

The bit I keep coming back to is how easily I pivoted. No race, so — family and friends instead. No huffing about wasted training, no doom-scrolling about missed mileage. Just a straightforward swap to something that was still genuinely good for me, just different to what I’d planned.

This is basically the logic behind my commitment inventory and my ideal week themes: if I know in advance what “good” looks like beyond the one specific plan, it’s much easier to pivot without it feeling like a loss. For writing, that might mean:

  • If the 90-minute deep-writing slot falls through, have a 15-minute “tidy the reference list” version ready to go
  • Know which tasks need your best brain (drafting, argument-building) and which can absorb a lower-energy day (formatting, filing notes, replying to reviewer comments)
  • Let a cancelled session become protected rest or a catch-up with a colleague, rather than guilt-time

Trust the long game

I’ve still got a half marathon in September and the Dramathon itself in October, and one cancelled Sunday changes precisely nothing about my ability to get there. Your thesis, paper, or grant application works the same way. One missed session, one cancelled writing retreat, one week that goes completely sideways — it’s a checkpoint, not the whole race. The training you’ve already banked is still there. Adjust, don’t abandon, and get back to the plan when the conditions are right for it.

So, next time a writing session gets rained off (or, apparently, heat-waved off) — ask yourself what your “family and friends instead” version could be. It still counts.