The Cost of High Performance and the Post-Sub-3 Dilemma
Jéssica Fazzio reflects on the sacrifices required to break 3 hours and the challenge of balancing ambition with personal life.
Breaking the sub-3 marathon barrier requires sacrifices that go far beyond maintaining a healthy lifestyle. On Girls Who Run, Jéssica Fazzio discusses the limits of amateur high performance and keeping running enjoyable.
Clocking a sub-3 marathon is the pinnacle of performance for many amateur runners, but the journey takes a heavy toll on daily routines and personal choices. Appearing on the Girls Who Run videocast by Stemma Sports, marathoner Jéssica Fazzio opened up about the sacrifices needed to maintain elite-level amateur performance and the reflections that emerge right after crossing that threshold.
Meticulous Routines and the Level of Sacrifice
When she ran her first marathon, Jéssica was in a very different stage of life: she was a recently promoted analyst, single, and managing fewer corporate demands. As her career advanced and she stepped into a management role in 2022, professional demands increased substantially, coinciding with the start of a relationship and grueling training cycles for Major marathons such as Boston and Berlin.
Reaching the sub-3 milestone demanded discipline that goes far beyond a standard healthy lifestyle routine. Jéssica explained that her preparation required rigid sleep schedules, strict dietary control, and the near-total elimination of social compromises, such as sharing a glass of wine with friends or going out on Friday nights before Saturday long runs. During her Boston training cycle, she cut alcohol entirely, allowing only slight flexibility while training for Berlin.
What Is the Ceiling, and Is the Price Worth It?
Consolidating such an impressive result raised a common dilemma among competitive amateur runners: what comes next? Targeting even faster times, such as sub-2:50 or sub-2:40, demands an escalating level of sacrifice. Jéssica reflected on questioning how much higher the personal cost should go, especially during a period when career ambitions and life as a couple required dedicated presence.
The runner emphasized the value of maintaining a well-rounded identity where sport coexists with career and leisure, without letting running become one's sole dimension. Giving up other essential aspects of life began to jeopardize the very joy of lacing up her running shoes.
Her journey ultimately led to reclaiming a sense of balance. When the equation between effort and fulfillment no longer adds up, recalibrating one's relationship with training becomes essential: running must remain enjoyable and make sense within the life an athlete chooses to build.