Caregiving: It’s a Sprint AND a Marathon

Lindsay Friedman posted this on LinkedIn titled—The Hardest Lesson Caregiving Taught Me

Something I wish someone had told me earlier in my caregiving journey:

You have to pace yourself. This isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon, and most of us start out running way too fast.

I’ve watched so many families, including my own, pour every ounce of energy into the first few months after a diagnosis. All the research, all the appointments, all the worry, all the sleepless nights. It feels like the right thing to do. It feels like love.

But here’s what I’ve learned: caregiving can last years. Sometimes decades. And if you give everything you have in those early months, you won’t have anything left for the long road ahead.

I started thinking about my energy differently. Not as something unlimited that I could just push through, but as something finite that needed to last.

That shift changed everything for me.

I began weighing decisions differently. Not just “Can I do this?” but “Can I keep doing this for years without breaking?” Sometimes the answer meant asking for help. Sometimes it meant letting something be good enough instead of perfect. Sometimes it meant resting before I felt like I’d earned it.

One of the hardest things to accept was that my own well-being wasn’t separate from the care I was providing. It was directly connected. When I was depleted, the care suffered. When I took care of myself, I showed up better for everyone.

I know it can feel selfish to rest when someone you love needs you. But staying in this for the long haul requires you to rest before you break, not after.

You can’t be there for them in the moments that matter most if you’ve already given everything away.

So if you’re in the early days of caregiving and running on adrenaline and love, please hear this: slow down. Protect your energy. Ask for help before you’re desperate for it.

This is a long journey. Pace yourself so you can be there for all of it.

And then this comment by Holly Larson

Caregiving looks urgent at the beginning, so most people design their lives for a crisis instead of a continuum. What you’re naming here—thinking in years and decades—forces different choices from the start: energy, support, expectations, even what “good care” means. Sustainability isn’t a compromise; it’s the only way the care actually lasts.

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Now I want to get into my take, not as a direct reaction to Lindsay and Holly, because in their contexts, they both are spot on. But I want to translate it into my context, and I hope it resonates with many others.

From my perspective, I’m doing both. I’m both sprinting and marathoning, and there is little choice in the matter.

I’m sprinting in the day-to-day to keep up with things. I’m even lucky enough to have some part-time in-home support, and there are still many, many things to keep up with. For example, simply keeping up with my wife’s medications is a real challenge that I categorize in the sprint arena.

I must in real-time:

• Order and organize meds

• Deliver meds 4x a day at specific times

• Observe the effects of the meds

• And provide feedback to her doctors for any adjustments

I never realized that something as seemingly simple as medications could be a “thing,” but it is.

I also must manage her medications with her doctors longer term. Talking to them about the overall strategy and supporting them with medication adjustments, suggesting new medications, and focusing on the bigger-picture symptom-management journey.

This example applies to nearly everything I do. Other examples include:

• Paying bills for the month AND looking at our annual budget shortfalls.

• I’m trying to pay for our current caregiver support (no easy task because it’s out of pocket), but I’m also looking longer term as I run out of steam and need more support.

• Trying to earn revenue as a part-time Agile Coach, while trying to maintain my brand and pivot with the AI disruption in my market.

There was a really important point that emerged from these posts. It’s the concept of embracing good enough. Which is fine when I’m considering what’s for dinner (burger or steak), but it’s much more nuanced and challenging when it’s about my loved one’s care, and I’m largely the one delivering it.

For example, daycare!

We visited an adult daycare facility over a year ago. I viewed it as a cost-effective care option that gave me space during the day to work while my wife received focused care. The facility was ~$100 per day, so at $500 a week, it was roughly 25% of the cost of in-home care for the same period.

But…

My wife had a very visceral reaction to the facility, saying that everyone was too old and too frail, and there was no place for her to rest. So, we decided to pass on it for now.

The point I’m making is determining whether something is “good enough” for the moment. It wasn’t then, but I’m seeing a point in our future where I may want to ask Diane to spend time at that daycare.

And I may need to override her wishes for daycare if I think the facility is “good enough,” given where we are in our journey. What if I feel guilty and anxious about it? Can I get to a point where I realize that this is a “good enough” decision? Where can I balance that decision against the situation and sprint + marathon energy dynamics?

Caregiving is often about good-enough decision-making given the situational context, including the caregiver’s context. And to be crystal clear, these good enough decisions are some of the hardest things I think caregivers do. Mostly because they’re never perfect or will they make everyone happy. But someone must balance things out and I’m just beginning to see the challenges in achieving this balance in my own caregiving journey.

As I said, the article implied that we could make the choice—either to Sprint or to Marathon. My experience is that there is no choice. One versus the other. That we can somehow achieve a nice balance.

I don’t see it that way. Instead, I see it as we need to do both and somehow manage our energy across them.

The other thing is that the Sprint (the urgent, the day-to-day) always gets in the way of the Marathon. Meaning that the energy, whatever we have, is drawn to the immediate over the future.

That seems to be the nature of things.

Ok, Bob, now that’s depressing. Is that all you have?

Well, I don’t have an answer. Because there is no answer. But I do have something to add in parallel to the Sprint + Marathon reality. That is, we need to start raising our voices—

1. About the (apparently refused to be seen) crisis.

2. That we can’t do it all alone.

3. We need help. Not family help or local help, but everyone’s help (local community, local/state/federal government, healthcare, LTC facility management, immigration, regulation, and full visibility & transparency).

4. Help in the form of $$$, direct support, healthcare reform, caregiver financial assistance, pharma reform, and LTC facility reform.

5. Did I say we need HELP?

Without the above, I see many well-intentioned people talking about caregiver planning, priority focus, and self-care, etc. That's helpful, but it won’t solve the bigger problem. In fact, much of the workaround or “better dealing with it” advice does us a large disservice.

We need to be raising our voices more. So, here I am, saying whether I’m Sprinting or Marathoning… the world needs to know that caregivers need help… now.

Take care of yourselves,

Bob.

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