Runner With Long Covid Creates Flagstaffâs Dream Run Camp

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.

Mr. Fitzgerald, 52, is many things — writer, public speaker, coach — but mostly he is prolific. He has written or co-written 34 books, most of them about running, endurance sports and nutrition. He writes early. He writes often. He writes a lot.

“Sometimes I do feel like I’m doing B-plus work on a dozen things versus A-plus work on three or four,” he said. “But I am who I am. There’s always a couple of things where I try to give the absolute best of myself at any given time, and I guess that’s enough.”

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 — 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.

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.