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Never one to waste a spare moment, Matt Fitzgerald clambered into the second row of his Mazda CX-90 on a recent weekday morning and cracked open his MacBook so that he could work on another book.<\/p>\n
Mr. Fitzgerald, 52, is many things \u2014 writer, public speaker, coach \u2014 but mostly he is prolific. He has written or co-written 34 books<\/a>, most of them about running, endurance sports and nutrition. He writes early. He writes often. He writes a lot.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes I do feel like I\u2019m doing B-plus work on a dozen things versus A-plus work on three or four,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I am who I am. There\u2019s always a couple of things where I try to give the absolute best of myself at any given time, and I guess that\u2019s enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Fitzgerald has the sort of slim, athletic build that hints at another part of his identity: distance runner. He has been prolific in that area, too, finishing 50 marathons \u2014 his fastest in 2 hours 39 minutes 30 seconds. And, once upon a time, he would have been jogging on the quiet, snow-dusted road in Flagstaff, Ariz., where he had parked his sport-utility vehicle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Instead, Mr. Fitzgerald was waiting for John Gietzel, a 48-year-old business consultant from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to finish loosening up so that he could close his laptop and coach him through a series of hill sprints. As for himself, Mr. Fitzgerald has barely exercised in three years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI probably wouldn\u2019t be doing this if I hadn\u2019t gotten sick,\u201d Mr. Fitzgerald said. \u201cBut I\u2019ve found it surprisingly rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Fitzgerald\u2019s bout with long Covid<\/a> has, in important ways, forced him to reshape who he is and what he does. In the process, he has found vicarious joy by starting a business called Dream Run Camp<\/a> out of his home in Flagstaff, where he lives with his wife, Nataki, and a rotating cast of recreational runners who pay between $45 and $115 a day to stay in one of four guest bedrooms and be coached by him.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m trying to create a happening,\u201d said Mr. Fitzgerald, who shared his long-term vision: \u201cFast forward a few years, and everyone in the world has heard of Dream Run Camp, and there\u2019s this mystique about it and it\u2019s all good vibes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He organizes group runs every morning. He has \u201ccoach\u2019s office hours\u201d every afternoon when he emerges from his writing lair to offer PowerPoint presentations on topics like \u201cDisrupting Complacency\u201d and \u201cHard Fun.\u201d Mr. Fitzgerald\u2019s campers, whom he calls \u201cdream runners,\u201d can stay for however long they like, up to 12 weeks.<\/p>\n Mr. Gietzel, who has a job that allows him to work remotely, is staying for about a month so that he can train for the Mesa Marathon<\/a> on Feb. 10. Mr. Fitzgerald plans to be at the finish line.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s some kind of magic here,\u201d Mr. Gietzel said. \u201cI\u2019m already feeling it.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Fitzgerald had no way of knowing it at the time, but he now believes that the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in February 2020 changed his life. He had traveled to Atlanta to make some promotional appearances ahead of the event and then race in the Publix Atlanta Marathon the day after the trials. \u201cThat weekend was much fun,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After returning home, Mr. Fitzgerald fell ill. His wife soon got sick, too. They both believe they had contracted Covid, though all of this happened before the availability of at-home tests and before widespread government shutdowns.<\/p>\n \u201cWe both stayed home and recovered, because hospitals were packed,\u201d Nataki Fitzgerald said.<\/p>\n Mr. Fitzgerald felt horrible for about a month \u2014 \u201cIt was by far the sickest I\u2019d ever been,\u201d he said \u2014 before he slowly resumed his old way of life. In fact, he was running and exercising without issue through the summer of 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAnd then it all started to unravel in mysterious ways,\u201d he said. \u201cMy neurological symptoms just became showstopping. I couldn\u2019t do anything. I couldn\u2019t write. I couldn\u2019t create a training plan. I didn\u2019t want to interact with people.\u201d<\/p>\n Much remains unknown about long Covid. While there is no test that determines whether symptoms like fatigue, brain fog and persistent headaches are a result of the virus, long Covid can persist for weeks, months or even years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>.<\/p>\n While Mr. Fitzgerald said his neurological issues had improved in recent months, he still experiences chronic fatigue and \u201cpost-exertional malaise,\u201d meaning that anything involving physical effort leaves him feeling awful.<\/p>\n \u201cExactly the disease you want if you\u2019re an endurance athlete,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Early last year, he felt good enough to try to ease back into running. After six weeks of gradually building his workload, he was able to jog for 30 minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then the bottom dropped out again,\u201d said Mr. Fitzgerald, who has not jogged beyond short distances since.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It has been disorienting for someone whose entire life revolved around sports. He recalled one of his fondest experiences as a runner, when he spent 13 weeks training for the 2017 Chicago Marathon as a self-described \u201cfake professional runner\u201d with HOKA NAZ Elite<\/a>, a Flagstaff-based team of world-class distance runners. Mr. Fitzgerald concluded his time with the team by running a personal-best time for the marathon at age 46, and by writing a book about it called \u201cRunning the Dream<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As Mr. Fitzgerald struggled with the effects of long Covid, he reflected on that experience in Flagstaff. He knew he could no longer run \u2014 at least, not anytime soon \u2014 but he could envision a way to stay involved, by using his expertise to coach others.<\/p>\n After convincing his wife that they should uproot their lives in California and move to Flagstaff, which is a high-altitude mecca for runners, Mr. Fitzgerald welcomed his first campers \u2014 sorry, dream runners \u2014 last May. He has hosted about 30 so far.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve known him to be someone who delivers on his ideas,\u201d said Ben Rosario, the executive director of HOKA NAZ Elite.<\/p>\n Running camps are not exactly a novel concept. Steph Bruce, an elite distance runner, and her husband, Ben, have a weeklong camp for runners<\/a> in Flagstaff each summer. There are countless others across the country.<\/p>\n The difference with Dream Run Camp is that Mr. Fitzgerald\u2019s dream runners live in his house.<\/p>\n The walls are adorned with artwork of top runners. There is a communal recovery area with a hyperbaric chamber and a contraption called a vibroacoustic therapy bed. His garage is outfitted with high-end fitness equipment. The backyard features a sauna and a small pool for exercise swimming. Mr. Fitzgerald and his wife live in an attached guesthouse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a tough thing to promote,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2018Come to Dream Camp, and be a little bored! It\u2019ll be great for your running!\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cBut there\u2019s some truth to it. I see people who come here who are kind of clenched from their normal lives, and after they\u2019ve been here for a few days, they\u2019re liquid.\u201d<\/p>\n While Mr. Fitzgerald seems to have made peace with some of his limitations, he cannot accept being a bystander forever.<\/p>\n Just after midnight on New Year\u2019s Day, he padded downstairs to his computer so that he could sign up for the Javelina Jundred<\/a>, a 100-kilometer ultramarathon in Fountain Hills, Ariz., in late October. Mr. Fitzgerald acknowledged how incongruous it sounded.<\/p>\n \u201cI literally cannot run one step right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n By way of explanation, Mr. Fitzgerald cited Charles Barkley\u2019s final season in the N.B.A. After Mr. Barkley ruptured his quadriceps tendon in an early-season game, he vowed that he would be back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sure enough, about four months after sustaining his injury, Mr. Barkley returned to play in one final game<\/a>, scoring a basket on a putback. He left the court to a standing ovation.<\/p>\n In his own way, Mr. Fitzgerald said, he wants to do the same. He even has a working title for a book that he wants to write: \u201cDying to Run: An Ailing Athlete\u2019s Quest for One Last Finish Line.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not doing this because I\u2019m recovering,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m doing this because I\u2019m not<\/em> recovering.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Fitzgerald does not expect to race, per se. He only wants to finish within the event\u2019s 29-hour cutoff, even if that means walking the course.<\/p>\n \u201cI can just survive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n