Godwits pack on fat before their long flight because the ocean won’t feed them. Prepare for the stretches with no help.

Some stretches offer nothing along the way, and the only variable you control is what you bring into them. Exam weeks, a season of double practices, a month where money is tight: in the middle there is no resupply, so preparation has to happen while things are easy. That is the uncomfortable part, because preparing is least appealing exactly when it is possible.

Look at the calendar and find the hard stretch you can already see coming. Then do the boring groundwork now: sleep banked, assignments pulled forward, the shift swapped before you need it. Help is thin once you are in the middle of it.