Running Sober

I’ve read that there is no such thing as an “addictive personality.” There are many different pathways that can lead to addiction and many different personality types—- depression and anxiety can lead you to lean on addictive behavior, but so can narcissism, hyperactivity, or any other number of quirks, flaws, neurodivergences, etc. And of course, there is a substantial genetic component that goes beyond that type of psychoanalysis. I don’t know what exactly it is about me that makes me prone to addiction, but the results are what they are regardless. What I know is that when I was 22, the Montgomery County Court thought it would be a better idea to send me to a day of substance abuse training instead of putting a conviction for public intox on my record, and at that training the guy said, “Everyone, at some point in their adolescence, probably has an experience where they drink way too much and do something regretful. Some people wake up the next day and decide to never do that again. Other people wake up the next day and start counting down the days until they get to do it again.” I knew then that I was in the second group, but it took another twenty years before I was ready to do something about it.

Along the way to dealing with it, I went through that same pattern—- excess, consequence, repetition—- with a variety of other substances and behaviors. Quite a few of them were negative and destructive, but some were positive. I don’t know what it is about my personality that makes me susceptible to addiction, but I’ve learned that I can’t necessarily beat it, but I can try to use it to my advantage and get addicted to some things that make my life better instead of worse. This isn’t going to be a “drunkalog” essay about my years of drinking—- hearing others share their experiences with alcohol is tremendously helpful and I would strongly encourage anyone who has questions about their relationship to substances to check out an AA meeting and listen to what people have to say. But here, I want to specifically talk about the intersection of addiction, exercise, and health. Let’s talk about it.

I’ve been a runner since I was in junior high school. I distinctly remember being in about 6th grade, playing tag with my friends, and realizing I wasn’t as quick as some of them. “That’s ok,” I reasoned to myself. “I don’t need to be fast because I’m an endurance athlete.” I had not, up until that moment, shown any interest or aptitude for long distance running. But I made a choice to make it a part of my personality and lifestyle in order to help me deal with that frustration of not measuring up to others. From there, I joined the junior high track team and ran “distance” (the 800 meters) at a few meets, and felt like I was now an athlete., I would repeat this same behavior my freshman year of college when I discovered that drinking more than anyone else was a helpful personality trait to adopt when I wasn’t sure how to make friends and fit in. I discovered the ability to construct my self at an early age, but I didn’t always make the wisest choices about what pieces to add.

When I was started high school, I was less than 5 feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds. I was moving to a relatively big public high school from a relatively small Catholic school, mixing in with a large group of incoming freshman who already knew each other from junior high. I knew a lot more about Start Trek and Mystery Science Theater 3000 than I did about sports. But I was going to be an athlete, so I started showing up to summer cross country conditioning in June. I don’t know how I would have navigated that transition into high school without XC, but it would have been a radically different experience. Running gave me a shake and bake set of friends—- good guys, too, who liked to have fun, didn’t take things too seriously, and were accepting of my personality quirks. I was kind of good at it—- I wasn’t a varsity runner or on track to get a scholarship, but I wasn’t slow either and was reasonably competitive at the JV races. It gave me a sense of pride and belonging, but also something to do with myself after school, a reason to be outside in the sun, and a healthy amount of exercise every day, all of which helped me stave off depression and anxiety issues that would be a problem for me later in life. By my senior year, it was clear I wasn’t ever going to be a varsity athlete, but I had turned myself into a lifelong runner by sheer force of will, and cross country had given me the framework to fit in in high school that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I learned to like running and it has been an essential part of my life and personality every since—- when I can’t run, I feel more depressed and more physically tired, and when I do run, it almost always makes me feel better physically and mentally. I’m addicted.

When I want to college, I added a second defining attribute to my personality. I became a drinker. I went to an all male school where almost everyone was in a fraternity, so I rushed with everybody else and ended up in the intense social environment of a fraternity house. I needed to find a way to fit in, fast—- or to stand out, but in a socially acceptable way. I was terrified that people in the house would realize that I was different and weird, and drinking beer became my best defense mechanism. Of course, they still thought I was weird and different, but they also enjoyed hanging out with me, so that was a win. Drinking in college was a readymade personality trait that told me who to hang out with, who to exclude, and how to identify myself in a new group. I was a drinking guy. After I graduated, I kept on drinking, even though I was no longer doing it to fit in. Over a period of years, I got to a point where drinking was an essential part of my life—- when I couldn’t drink I felt anxious and depressed, and when I did drink it almost always made me feel better, even if I did stupid things that I deeply regretted while I was drinking. I was addicted.

For a long time, my two addictions—- running and drinking—- played off of each other in weird ways. Obviously, getting drunk all the time makes it harder to exercise or exercise productively, but the two habits reinforced each other in some weird ways, too. Running a half marathon in the morning is a great excuse to drink a case of Coors Light over the course of the rest of the day. Running clubs—- or other cardio heavy activities I did, like rugby and judo—- are great opportunities to meet people who want to go get a drink with you. When I was thirty years old, I made up my mind to run a four hour marathon so I started cutting weight all summer, but I discovered through my calorie counting app that I could still drink as much as I wanted to as long as I exercised even more and cut out other indulgences. So I did. For a long time I was an athletic alcoholic, and even when I really started to slip into my genuine problem with alcohol, I kept finding ways to mix in exercise to hide the truth from myself and others. When I was drinking too much to go running consistently, I discovered I could get what seemed like a pretty good cardio workout shooting baskets in my driveway and chasing down rebounds, but, unlike running, I could drink beer while I did that. For the last year or so, when I knew I was an alcoholic and was probably killing myself with booze, I thought I could manage it by continuing to do healthy things like exercise. I deluded myself into thinking that my two addictions could somehow cancel each other out.

Things came to a head when we welcomed our second son home. At that point, I realized that I was going to either need to stop drinking, or probably lose my family. So I went to AA. It didn’t work right away—- the six months between deciding I needed to stop and actually stopping were the longest, hardest months of my life. I hated myself for drinking, but I kept doing it. I kept making promises to myself and others that I would turn around and break. If I could have switched back to the place where I thought I didn’t have a problem, I would have, but once that truth was incepted into my brain I couldn’t get rid of it. Finally, my wife said the right things and I ended up in the right AA community and I haven’t really looked back. It’s been three years plus of sobriety for me now, and I feel better about it today than I have at any other point in the past. I’m one day at a timing it like everybody else, but that’s easier to do when you’ve got a thousand and some-odd examples of days where you didn’t drink.

I give a ton of credit to my AA community, my wife, and my family for helping me to quit drinking. But I don’t think I could have silenced that addiction without indulging in my other one: running. When I stopped drinking I was able to start running, and I kick started a positive reinforcement cycle where the more I ran, the healthier I got, the more weight I lost, which made it easier for me to run even more, all of which made it less and less likely that I would start drinking again. And since I have an addictive personality, I started to need to run more and more to get the same feeling. I ran 5ks, half marathons, and then full marathons. I ran trail races, and then trail races at night in the winter, and then trail races that advertised themselves as “brutal.” And then I got hurt.

Seven weeks ago, I had to stop running, three weeks before a marathon, because of pain in my ankle and foot. I got an xray and was told I had a stress fracture. Goodbye running endorphins, hello walking boot. It made me miserable. I missed my running endorphins, missed being outside, missed having time to myself, all of it. I started putting weight back on. I didn’t have big races to look forward to. I didn’t have that sense of controlling something—- that I had a plan and a goal and knew how to execute it. I worried about starting drinking again, but I didn’t. I tried to indulge some of my indoor, low impact addictions—- video games, reading, jigsaw puzzles. And I invested a lot of time building this website and planning my grand running adventure for next summer. I didn’t kick my running addiction, but I didn’t want to. Instead, I white-knuckled my way through those seven weeks and have come out the other side, slower and heavier but sober and ready to get started again.

I’m now putting my plan to run 5 half marathons in 5 states in 4 weeks next summer into motion. It’s a charitable project, and if you’ve read this far I’d really appreciate it if you donated even a little bit to help me raise funds the National Diaper Bank Network. I’m still addicted to running, and I still need to set challenges for myself. After the injury, I hope I’ve learned to manage my running addiction a little more carefully. But time will tell—- I’m out here one day at a timing it, just like everybody else.

If you would like to donate to my project, you can use the Donate button at the top of this page, or access my GoFundMe directly using this link: https://gofund.me/0e379e8f

The Savage Gulf Marathon, or, Again, But Faster!

This blog will eventually be the place where I document my training to run 5 half marathons in 5 states in 4 weeks next summer, but as I am still laid up with a leg injury, I’m using it to reflect on some of my favorite/least favorite running experiences. How did I end up injured? This is not the story of that injury, but it is the story of the personality flaw that led to my injury. Enjoy!

In one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, Calvin asks his dad how they determine the weight load limit on bridges, and his dad responds, “They drive bigger and bigger trucks over the bridge until it breaks. Then they weigh the last truck and rebuild the bridge!” (This is funnier in comic strip form than when I write it out. I tried to figure out how to embed an image in this blog and couldn’t. Blame SquareSpace, not me or Bill Watterson). That comic sums up my approach to my own personal limitations—- when it comes to running, or stress, or number of dogs, or extra curricular commitments at school, or drinking (up until October 28, 2021), my approach has always been to try to do more and more until I hit my breaking point, and then back off slightly. This explains why I agreed to help publish a student newspaper as a first year teacher, why I adopted a senior herding dog with behavior problems when we have two little boys at home, and why I ran the Savage Gulf 25K in Tennessee last March.

I found the Savage Gulf Marathon website because I wanted to travel somewhere warm to run a race during Spring Break, and I have an extremely loose goal of someday running at least a half marathon in all 50 states (running a half in Alaska or New Mexico or the like will involve me somehow becoming independently wealthy, but I’ve got many easier states to get to before I need to worry about that), but I decided to run it because it advertises itself as being “brutal, unforgiving” and one of the most challenging trail races in the country. I had already done a variety of races that had seemed like they might be too challenging for me to complete and the bridge was still standing, so this seemed like the next biggest truck to drive across it. I decided to do the 25K (15 miles) instead of the full marathon in a rare moment of clarity. In order to register to run the full marathon you had to supply evidence that you had complete a 26.2 mile race in the past and, although I did have evidence of that, it was over ten years ago and probably not actual evidence that I could survive the experience. So, I did the “humble” thing and signed up for the (relatively) shorter distance.

Because my wife is amazing and cool and understanding, I drove down alone to Tennessee at the beginning of Spring Break with just my dog and an audio book of Dune Messiah to keep me company. The drive was pleasant, the countryside beautiful, and the book interesting if not quite entertaining, so the trip started out great. I spent my first night there in a little Airbnb and then headed down to the aptly named “Savage Gulf” state natural area. It was a beautiful early Spring morning, ideal conditions for a race, and the vibes at the start were wonderful and welcoming. There were only a few dozen runners there, but everyone was in good spirits, even thought the race merch and been ruined in the shirt press and we wouldn’t be able to brag about our achievements with clothing. They took a “before” picture of the group, and off we went.

The first three miles of the race were relatively standard trail running fare—- dirt trails with some gradual ups and downs, plus some spectacular views out over the titular gorge. But at around mile 3, we reached the entrance into the “Stone Door” and decided down down down a rough hew set of narrow stairs , tightly bound by rock walls on both sides, for around a mile until we reached the true challenging section of the race. For the next 9 miles, we would be running over a constant series of rocks and boulders, across several bridges that threatened to bounce you into the creeks below, and up and down a constant series of small hills. There was next to no flat ground—- every step was on a rock or between two pinching rocks, and if I wasn’t wearing a sturdy pair of running trail running shoes I would have had to drop out from damage to my feet alone. There were no truly technical parts of the run that would have required advanced training or specialized gear, but I’m only using words like “trail” or “path” to describe the course because I don’t know a better one for “unending series of assorted sharp rocks that make every step an opportunity to break your ankle.”

I keep using the word “running” for what we were doing, but there were only scattered opportunities to really run. What I did was shuffle along as quickly as I could, trying not to kill myself. At one point, shortly after the midpoint turnaround which had made me feel like I was in great shape, I ended up stacked up behind a few slower runners as we struggled up a hill. One of them asked me if I was trying to run the hill and I said I was, so they let me pass them, which just made me self conscious of the fact they they were now behind me and I would look like a real jackass if I slowed down to the point that they caught back up and passed me again. I pushed on.

When I reached the end of the bouldering section of the race and started the climb back out of the gorge, I thought that I was through the worst of it. But the climb back up to the high ground was, without doubt, the hardest running I have ever done in my life. It was about two miles of steady uphill, moving back up the same amount of vertical distance we had covered going down the stone stairs. It was not technical in the same way—- we were now running on regular dirt path, but the combination of the climb and the beating my muscles had already taken made it feel impossible. For most of that climb, I honestly didn’t understand how I was going to make it up to the top. I thought I would just need to start a new life at the bottom of the gorge, or maybe have to wait for a park ranger to show up with a llama or something to ferry me out of there. I kept going though, one foot at a time, and eventually reached the aid station at the start of level ground, knowing I now just needed to do those three easy miles of trail running back to the start line. And that’s when my legs quit.

I was hit by a series of cramps that ran up and down every muscle group from my feet to my hips. I had no choice but to walk. After a few hundred yards of walking my legs would start to relax and I would try to run again, only to be hit by another wave of pain and involuntary spasms. Back to walking. The people I had raced past back on the rocks passed me. The lady who talked really loud to the other runners and who I had pushed myself to get away from passed me. Runners I hadn’t seen since the start line passed me. I struggled along—- what had taken me about 30 minutes to run that morning now took over an hour as the sun beat down on me and baked in my first sunburn of the year.

When I reached the finish line, I collapsed into a lawn chair and discovered I could not sit comfortably because of the continued cramping all up and down my legs. Any position I put my legs in was only comfortable for a few seconds until everything seized up again and I had to move around. I choked down some salt tablets and regular Coke that the race director recommended as a solution, and I writhed in pain. After about half an hour, things started to calm down and I was able to get to my feet and eat some cold pizza. Another fifteen minutes after that and I was well enough to drive back the airbnb. The bridge had not quite collapsed, but I now had a pretty good idea how big of a truck it would take to knock it down.

A few months after that I ran the marathon I was training for and survived. So, I started training for another marathon, but with a faster goal and a more intense training routine. And then, I was in pain all the time, diagnosed with a stress fracture, and watching football in a walking boot on race day instead of running my November race. My response to those setbacks? Make a plan to run 5 half marathons in 5 states next summer! Please donate to the fundraiser! I’m doing more stretching, I’m taking more rest days, and I have no time goals in mind whatsoever—- that’s what counts as taking it easy for me. None of the races I have signed up for use the word “brutal” in the description. Here’s hoping that’s enough!

I’m Fast in Japan

This will eventually be a blog documenting and reflecting on my training to run 5 half marathons in 4 weeks in 5 states next summer, but I’m still in a walking boot (pending an MRI tomorrow), so in the meantime, enjoy some classic stories and thoughts about running and other topics. If you’d like to learn more about my running project and the charitable work I’m trying to use it to do, click on the Home button.

I moved to Japan in the summer of 2004, when I was 24 years old. I would end up living there for two years, teaching English to junior high and elementary students, travelling around Asia, and drinking a lot of Sapporo beer. I rode a bike everywhere I went for most of the time I lived there, and I started learning judo two nights a week, so I ended up in the best shape of my life. I made some really good friends, had some big adventures, and watched every episode of the Sopranos multiple times on bootleg DVDs I bought in Vietnam. My time in Japan was a real coming-of-age experience for me—- I went to a small, all male college in a small town for undergrad, so my two years overseas pushed me to learn a lot about myself, how to interact with other people, and how to interact with the world that my relatively sheltered life up to that point had, well, sheltered me from.

When I first arrived in Japan, I barely spoke 50 words of Japanese and didn’t know anyone who lived in my small town. I learned the best way to bike to work and where the grocery store and video rental place were, but without a car the surrounding neighborhoods were a mystery to me for the first few months. One evening, a few weeks after I arrived, I went for a run that forced me to confront some realities of living in the big world, although it took a while for the lessons to sink in.

I went out for my evening run at twilight, hoping to do a 3-4 easy miles around town. As one of the only Westerners in town, I stood out, and as I jogged the familiar streets groups of students were constantly shouting “Hi, Paul!” at me because they had seen my 15 minute personal introduction lesson that I was performing as a travelling road show at all the different area schools. My confidence was high and I felt like I had this whole “living abroad” thing under control. I ran the familiar route to the city town hall and back, and the sun had set by the time I got back to my apartment building, but I decided I wanted to get in another mile or two. I kept jogging past my apartment and around a corner I hadn’t explored yet, planning on making four left turns and ending up back where I started.

There are very few straight lines or right angle intersections in small Japanese towns. Everything in a warren of twisting, interconnected streets packed densely with buildings and identical looking rice fields. Many streets don’t even have names—- my address for my apartment just had a number and the name of my neighborhood, the idea being the postman learned where everything in their assigned section of town was and didn’t need a street name. I didn’t really appreciate all of that until I made my first left turn and vanished into the night.

The road I was running on twisted left and right, climbing up and down hill, without presenting me with a clear major intersection that would help me get oriented back toward home. I remained confident though, and thought that I was keeping track of when the road veered left or right so that I knew where I was pointed and where my apartment was. This was 2004—- years before google maps or phones with GPS. I was wearing a tshirt and shorts, with no money, ID, or cell phone. I knew my address, but next to no other Japanese. When an opportunity to turn left presented itself, I took it, still fully confident that I knew exactly where I was.

The new street I was on was as knotted as the one I had just left, and the buildings were all both identical and unfamiliar to any landmarks I recognized. I jogged on, and after another half a mile or so of running, I finally started to realize that I didn’t know how I could keep going and improvise my way back home. So I doubled back to retrace my steps. But everything looked different in the dark and from the opposite direction, and I couldn’t be sure which of the cross streets was the one I had come from. After what felt like the right amount of time had passed, I took my chances on what I was pretty sure was the street I had turned off of, but after a few more minutes of running it became clear that I was on a new, third, unfamiliar street.

I thought I knew what direction I was heading, but I couldn’t be sure. I ran for a long time, taking a series of turns that felt like some prehistoric innate sense of direction was letting me know which way to go but were more likely random panic. I remember running past a school with lit up soccer fields that I had never seen before, which worried me because I had been to most of the schools in town. Had I run out of the city limit? When it finally started to sink in that I was lost, in the dark, with no way to contact anyone or even communicate with strangers, I started to panic. Instead of stopping to consider my options, I kept running.

Eventually, I had to recognize that I really only had two options: I could stop somewhere like a bus stop and literally stay there all night until the sun came up and I could hopefully find my way back, or I could flag down a cab and try to explain that I didn’t have any money but could he please drive me home and then I would go up and get my wallet and pay them… The first option was unfeasible, especially since it was starting to get cold. The second option would have worked, but would have been very embarrassing. As one of the only “gaijin” I was a kind of a local celebrity and news of my misadventure would definitely find its way back to my boss. In Japan, work culture is very hierarchical and supervisors take a paternalistic approach to their employees. If my story was repeated around town, I would get a lecture and might even be told that I shouldn’t be out running anymore, or I would be “encouraged” to go running with some middle aged teacher in the district instead of being on my own. That prospect made spending the night sleeping in a rice field sound appealing.

And then, I went around a corner, and I was looking at my apartment building. It had been over an hour since I decided to run a little further and do some exploring, so I had travelled at least 6 miles. I had made god knows how many turns. And somehow, by blind luck, I popped back out where I started. Years later, I used Google Earth to try to figure out the route I had taken that night and couldn’t make any progress at all. All I know is that I ended up safe and warm in my apartment, soaking in a hot bath and drinking a Sapporo.

Looking back on it, the lesson I should have learned was that I needed to be more cautious, that I wasn’t as competent as I thought, that living in a foreign country was not just an “adventure,” it was a real place with real consequences that I didn’t necessarily understand. But, since everything had worked out fine in the end, I didn’t have to learn that lesson. A few weeks later, I did almost the same thing—- I was visiting a town on one of the other islands, by myself, and the guidebook (remember, it’s 2004) mentioned that there was a nice youth hostel “at the top of the hill.” That evening, I set out from the train station to find this youth hostel, even though I didn’t know if the hostel still existed, if it was open, which hill it was on top of, or even what the specific word for “hostel” was in Japanese. And somehow, I ended up sleeping peacefully on a youth hostel bed that night. My heterosexual white male confidence had defeated my stupidity once again!

I’ve got stories about times where my blind confidence ended up costing me big, but they aren’t about running and they aren’t fun stories, so I will save those for another time. I like to think that I’m older and wiser now, and maybe I am, but at least technology has caught up my foolishness and I always have my Garmin and GPS phone with me when I’m out running. Maybe I should throw a 500 yen note in my pocket too, just in case.

First Race, Best Race, Worst Race

I started the blog on this website to document my training and experiences as I prepare for my 5 half marathons/5 states/4 weeks road trip next summer. However, as I am still wearing my walking boot the only training I’m able to do involves an exercise bike, which doesn’t make for very interesting content (although I am enjoying watching old episodes of Battle Bots in the basement while I exercise. My six year old is really into it, it’s a new shared thing for us. Anyway.) So for today, I thought I would write about my first significant race, my favorite race that I’ve ever run, and my worst racing experience. Let’s see if I can discover a unifying idea about life as I work through this!

Oh, and I’m talking about races that I ran since I got back into serious running in my late 20s. I’d love to write the story of running the semi-state cross country meet my sophomore year of high school and losing my glasses on the first turn so I had to run the whole race blind, but that was 30 years ago and I literally just told you every detail I can recall. Onward!

First Race. The first race I ran once I got back into serious running (after I started dating my future wife, found the will power to quite smoking, and generally started working on getting my act together) was the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon in the Spring of 2009. At the time, running 13.1 miles sounded like an impossible feat, no different than saying I was going to run to the moon or something. But I signed up and commenced a very loose training regimen, ultimately relying on “being 28” more than strict monitoring of VO2 max as my secret weapon. A few weeks before the race, I received a thick envelope in the mail from the Mini-marathon, and I said to myself,. “Ah, this must have my bib for the race in it, I will put it somewhere safe,” and put it, unopened, on a shelf. I was coaching high school track at the time, and we had a meet the Friday night before the race. It was a cool evening in the low 50s, and a brief but intense squall of rain rolled through before things started, thoroughly soaking me and my cotton sweatshirt and dockers. Then the temperature dropped. That might have been the most serious danger I’ve been in because of cold, even though I’ve been in much colder conditions. At one point, I went to the bathroom and my hands were so numb I couldn’t work the buttons on my pants—- I got it done somehow, and then was able to borrow a jacket from an assistant coach and live through the experience.

When I finally got home that night, very stressed about the fact that I’d been out in the rain and cold for hours the night before this big race, I opened up that envelope from the race committee to discover that it contained not my bib, but the credentials I was supposed to have used at the expo earlier that week to pick up the bib I needed in order to enter the race. Having only ever run high school competition races and neighborhood fun runs before, I had never heard of a race expo and had no idea that, as the handout in the envelope clearly stated., “THERE ARE NO RACE DAY PACKET PICK UPS. YOU WILL NOT BE ADMITTED TO THE RACE WITHOUT YOUR PACKET.” I was devastated, having spent several months earning people’s respect by announcing I was training for the mini I had no desire to have to tell all of them that I didn’t run because I didn’t open an envelope. I decided to show up the next morning with the expo ticket and hope for the best.

I arrived the next morning dressed to run and carrying the expo ticket, went to my assigned corral, and was told in no uncertain terms that I would be unable to join the race without my bib. In a total panic and unsure what else to do, I stood next to the gate with a not-so-bright look on my face while the race started and thousands of people started jogging past me. And then, as the serious runners sped off into the distance and the fun runners and walkers started to pass by, security let their guard down and I jumped into the race. I ran whole 13.1 miles without credentials, confident that, at any moment, race stewards were going to wrestle me to the ground and throw me in mini-marathon jail. That didn’t happen. I finished the race, and my time of 1:52 and change remains my all time half marathon PR—- I’ve probably run twenty more 13.1 milers in the years after that one and never gotten close to the time I ran on next to no training, with no race bib, and nearly having died of hypothermia the night before. The power of being 28! When I told the story to my class the next week, one of my students told me, “That’s so punk rock!” and this remains one of the best compliments I’ve ever received.

Worst Race. As for the worst race I’ve ever run., that was a few years later. Having completed the mini and discovered that this accomplishment did not make me feel that my life was now complete because of this monumental accomplishment, I decided I would need to run a full marathon, which would, no doubt, finally eliminate all of my self doubt forever. I knew I couldn’t jump off the couch and run 26.2 miles the way I had the mini, so I made an effort to follow an actual training plan. In order to motivate myself to stick with it, I signed up for a series of other races of increasing difficulty leading up to the marathon. I didn’t stick to my training plan, but I showed up for the races anyway, which is how I ended up running a 30 kilometer race that I was in no way prepared for.

When I arrived at the race, I knew I wasn’t in enough shape to run 18 miles, so my plan was to run the first nine miles at my race pace, then walk the entire tenth mile, then run the remainder of the race at whatever pace seemed comfortable. I did not design this plan with the help of any kind of coach or expert, it just seemed like a thing that might work. I forgot to wear my watch to the race, but I assumed there would be timers and supporters out on the course that could give me a sense of how I was doing. It was a cold, rainy day, but I was confident that it wouldn’t affect me all that much. The other side of the superpowers of being young is stupidity.

Before the race started, we were told that many of the volunteers for the course had not shown up because of the weather, so we wouldn’t be able to count on manned mile markers or water/nutrition support on the course. I definitely would not be getting regular updates on my time. As the race started, I was worried about this, but I figured I would be with the big pack of runners and things would work out alright. Remember, my only previous experience running a race this long was the Indianapolis Mini, literally one of the most popular races in the country. This random 30k, the name of which I don’t remember, was not that. I didn’t appreciate at the start of the race that this meant I could not count on being surrounded by a constant moving crowd of other runners (this is called foreshadowing…).

The race started and I went out too fast, because that’s what I always do. I knew I was running too fast, but I liked running with the faster runners and felt confident in my “walk the middle mile” plan. I made it through the first half of the race OK, and, as planned, dropped down to a walk. It was raining, it was cold, and a steady stream of runners passed me as I walked along the empty sidewalks of Indianapolis. I couldn’t help but notice that the stream of runners was getting thinner and thinner, and also more depressing as the level of athleticism of the people jogging past me steadily decreased. But I stuck to my plan. By the time I found the next mile mark and started running, I was alone.

But “started running” is not entirely accurate. I had done 80 minutes or so of vigorous exercise followed by fifteen minutes of walking on a 40 degree day in the rain. Every muscle in my body had tightened up and started to cramp. When I told myself to push it back up to race pace, my quads made a sound like the Millennium Falcon’s disabled hyperdrive and I started shuffling along. By myself. With no way to tell how long I had been out on the course or how far I still had to go. There were no volunteers, only a few mile markers, and sporadic paint on the sidewalk indicating which way to go. For long stretches of the race, I had no idea if I was still on the course or not. I ran past a golf course named “Purgatory” and legitimately wondered if I had died. Somehow, I shuffled to the end of the source, staggered through the finish chute as the race staff was packing up, and made it home. From that point on, whenever I find myself running a race and start feeling unsure if I have enough fitness to finish it, I remind myself that I survived running through literal Purgatory and I can probably survive this other race too.

Best Race. The best race I ran was just a few years ago, on Grand Island in Lake Superior. This story will be shorter because It’s a pleasant memory and those make for less compelling drama. It’s a story of everything working out great—- I had a pleasant drive up to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and checked into a wonderful AirBnB cabin in the woods with no TV or cell reception. We caught the ferry out to the island at sunrise and I took some amazing photos of daybreak over my favorite body of water. The island itself is almost entirely undeveloped, but the trail was not too technical or challenging. We got to run along the beach for stretches, up and over some hills, along clifftops, and finished by running out into the brisk refreshing waters of the big lake they call gitchigoomie. Every aspect of the race production was great, I had designed my training regimen perfectly, and I finished with a profound sense of satisfaction. See, that’s a less entertaining story.

So, what does it all mean? These stories are good evidence of the fact that I was faster in my twenties but much happier in my forties, I suppose. A reminder that running has been one of the great through-lines of my life. An explanation of why being injured has made me so depressed, but also inspiration for me that this too shall pass and I will be back out on the trail before too long. And, hopefully, it was entertaining to read. This website is part of a fundraiser I’m doing for the National Diaper Bank, please click the donate button!

Setbacks, or, A Mouse Stirring in Christmas Decorations

We unpacked our Christmas decorations today only to discover that throughout the year, while we had been suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, a family of mice had been making themselves at home in our collection of holiday bric-a-brac. The tree skirt, a variety of little plush snow men and reindeer, and several singing and dancing cloth figures with “Try Me” switches attached to their hands had all been shredded into rodent bedding and comingled with generous assortment of mouse poop. It was not exactly a Christmas miracle, and it came at the end of a very frustrating week.

Working backward from discovering that our three cats have been absolutely not pulling their weight, yesterday I got cute trying to pull my car into the driveway and managed to hit BOTH my wife’s car on my left side and the garage door trim on my right, scraping a generous amount of paint, destroying a wing mirror, and leaving a gouge in the garage itself in the process. A few days before that, my injured leg that I thought was healed up swelled up and started throwing arcs of pain at me again, so I have an MRI to look forward to later this week and potentially quite a bit more time in the boot of shame coming. Earlier in the week, my 3 year old was diagnosed with another ear infection, explaining why he hasn’t slept through the night for a week. Fundraising for my running project has gone very slowly, with next to no participation from friends and family and my social media promotion fading into internet obscurity moments after I publish it. Add that to the existing stress gumbo of the national and international news, my students lack of motivation as cold weather sets in, my six year old’s discipline problems at school, and the sorry state of the Chicago Bears, and it is easy for me to feel like things are not exactly going my way.

On one level, it is easy for me to apply some “power of positive thinking” magic to this and work on seeing the bright side. The most important, family heirloom type Christmas stuff was not damaged by the mice, and much of what we threw away was Target junk we had accumulated unintentionally over the years and won’t be missed. The damage to my car is all cosmetic, and the biggest problem there is honestly that I feel stupid about it, not that I set us back in any kind of material way. I would much prefer not to be injured than the alternative, and it sucks that my son has another ear infection, but PT and a new set of tubes are relatively easy solutions to medical problems that hospitals full of people would happily trade for. There’s plenty of time for my fundraising project to pick up speed, and again I’m more embarrassed to push it out to family members and get no response than I am genuinely hurt by it. And the news will always be stressful, students will always struggle with motivation, etc. There’s not much to be gained by complaining about it. I have my warm house and loving family, a stable career, I consider the lilies of the goddamn field, etc.

But thinking through all of that doesn’t necessarily make the things I’m frustrated about any less frustrating. They are still there, even if I am able to put them in better perspective. It’s a real tricky situation that one of my biggest frustrations—- my injury—- directly impacts my best mood improving coping strategy—- exercise. The car thing will end up costing a minimum of a few hundred bucks, and just because I have a positive attitude it doesn’t make us a thousand dollars richer. I’ve put a lot of work into this fundraising project, and sure, it might take off later, but if it was going to generate a lot of interest it seems like it would do that right away. Sometimes, things legitimately suck.

The line I’m trying to walk is allowing myself to feel the suckage of sucky things so it doesn’t overwhelm me later because I’ve just been denying it, while also accentuating the positive enough to keep it moving one day at a time. Let me know if you’ve got any advice on how to do that!

Winning and Running, or, Number Go Up!

In 2018, the World Cup briefly took over my life. My son had just been born 5 weeks premature, and I had long days in the NICU with nothing to do but watch TV on my computer. Before I knew it, I was completely invested in Harry Kane and England’s run through the tournament. I held Joey, who was barely five pounds, slept all the time, and drank formula by the milliliter, and watched game after game. Although England was my adopted team for the tournament, Joey and I had just as much fun learning about all the other teams and players, from Belgium to Ivory Coast to Japan, and, by the time Joey was home and England were bounced out of the semifinal, I decided I was now a soccer fan.

I wanted to keep that thrill I’d discovered watching the World Cup going, so I decided I was going to pick an English Premiere League team and get invested. To choose my team, I used an online quiz designed for Americans to find an EPL team that aligned with their attitude and values. The first suggestion it gave me was Arsenal, but I’m too big of a hipster contrarian to unironically root for one of the four or five big, name brand EPL teams. I therefore went with the second suggestion, Crystal Palace. I bought a shirt, I started arranging my Saturdays around their matches, I was in!

Two things jumped out to me early on in my Crystal Palace fandom. First, Crystal Palace were not very good. They weren’t terrible either, and they won enough games to stay out of the relegation zone. But they lost more than they won, often without scoring a goal. The second thing I learned was just how fierce my competitive drive was. I had arbitrarily selected this team based on a BS online quiz, but that was all it took for me to suddenly start yelling at the TV when they missed shots and to build up a pit of dread and anxiety in my stomach as hopeless games started running out of time. I checked the table all the time, did math in my head about how many points they would need to beat this team or that team, started carrying mental grudges against players from other teams who celebrated too much, the whole thing. Despite being a continent away and disconnected from my life in almost every way, Crystal Palace was making me miserable. After one season, I cut bait on the project and haven’t allowed myself to get invested in “football” since.

The same thing happened to me last year, during my first effort to create something on the internet. I find AI and its implications for teaching fascinating, and last fall I couldn’t understand why more of my colleagues at school weren’t interested in it, or only wanted to figure out how to catch kids using it to cheat. As an outlet, I started a YouTube channel where I made videos about AI in education, talking about ways I was using it in class, books I read on the topic, and the like. But within a few weeks of starting the channel, proving that I could build a thriving YouTube community became more interesting than the actual content of the videos. I started social media accounts to cross promote the videos, but to make that work I had to build up my number of followers on those sites. The game of accumulate subscribers, followers, and views replaced my initial genuine interest in discussing things I was interested in. I started to feel stressed about getting my videos made according to the schedule I had created in my head, and angry when they didn’t get the number of views I wanted. I started spending small amounts of money promoting videos and tiktok videos, at which point I started to feel like I was going to need to monetize my channel in order to earn the money back, which meant I needed to stress even more about it. By the time I quit the project and deleted all the content, I had completely given up on talking about AI in education and was only making videos in order to prove (to myself, since no one else cared) that I could.

I like to win, and when I do, the victory stops mattering and I just set a new goal for myself. I have to guard myself against that mode of thinking as much as possible, and differentiating my feelings about things that actually have real stakes or impact on me from things that only matter because I’ve made it a competition in my head between me and someone else. For example, the recent election did not go the way I wanted it to, and it left me feeling very anxious and depressed. Some of that feeling was fear about what might happen next in the country, but I have to be honest and say that a lot of that feeling was frustration that people I disagreed with now got to think they were right and I was wrong. I lost sleep over the fact that, somewhere out there in the world, Elon Musk and Hulk Hogan were feeling validated and smart, and that pissed me off. The fact that Steve Bannon was out there feeling like he’d backed the right horse made my angrier than any of the policies that he was likely to help see enacted. That’s not healthy.

I think this is why trail running is now my favorite type of racing. I’m 44 years old and a solid middle of the pack runner. No one, and I mean no one, will care about my 5K PR time, or where I finish in the men age 40-49 age group at a half marathon. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care, and it’s easy for me to make myself miserable if I run slower at a road race than I did on the same course last year, or if I was on pace for a PR and then fell apart in the last mile. But when I do trail races, that all goes away. The courses are so different, you can’t compare one to the next and even the same course is different year to year. Navigating the terrain is enough a challenge in the moment that I don’t have time to start doing math in my head about where I’m at pace-wise and how I’m falling short of my plan. When I do trail races, all I care about it finishing and feeling good about my effort. The goal is to find ways to make the other challenges in my life feel the same way.

I doing this fundraising project for what I believe to be very good reasons. I want to raise money for a meaningful cause. I want to create an opportunity for me to exercise, be out in nature, and process my negative feelings in a healthy way. I want to inspire other people to do the same—- I hope you, reader, get inspired by what I’m working on here and decide to do something yourself and start a project that has meaning and value for you. But already, I can feel that same need to make this successful for the sake of being successful. I’m looking at the number of new visits to this website. I refreshing the number of donations to the GoFundMe. I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what to put on Bluesky and TikTok to get my subscriber numbers up. But I also recognize it happening, so I’m going to take some deep breaths, calm down, and focus on the genuine meaning of the project. It’s easier said than done, but I’m going to hold myself accountable to it because I know if I let that competitiveness take over, I’ll stop enjoying what I’m doing, and before too long, I’ll quit.

On Running Injuries, or, All That You Love Will Be Carried Away

I’ve been a teacher for almost 25 years, and one truism I’ve learned is that almost everyone at a school—- students, teachers, admin, parents—- is always counting down the days until something happens. How long until Fall Break, how long until Christmas Break, Spring Break, Summer Break, until I graduate, until that one kid graduates, until I’m done with this class, until I’m able to retire, etc. I’m not sure if that’s true of other careers since this is the only one I’ve ever had, but since schools are so dominated by bell schedules, calendars, and cyclical routines, it is especially prevalent there. But, although I am always aware how many minutes are left with my most difficult class or how many days until I get to go on my Spring Break out of the Midwest, I try to catch myself when I get to far into that mode of thinking and recenter myself in the present. When I was starting out, an older, wiser teacher told me, “When you get to be a certain age, you start to realize that if you’re always counting down the days to something else, you’re really just counting down the days until you can’t enjoy them any more.” That struck a chord with me, and I’ve held on to that idea ever since.

I found myself thinking about that lesson when I was recently diagnosed with a stress fracture and had to stop running for about a month. I’ve always been physically pretty durable—- this is the first broken bone I’ve ever had, I rarely too sick to go to work, I function well on next to no sleep, I’m the only person in my family who never got COVID, in my drinking days I was pretty effective at life even when I had a screaming hangover, etc. Don’t get me wrong, psychologically I’m a house of cards waiting for a stiff breeze to knock me down, but physical durability and resilience has always been a kind of super power of mine. And as a life-long long distance runner, I had gotten complacent relying on that physical durability. I’m lazy about stretching, I’ve been known to jump my mileage up in stupid increments trying to get ready for a race, I run races that I haven’t trained for, I run in shoes that need to be replaced, and that physical constitution has always been there to bail me out. Until this time. This time, I ended up in a walking boot and crutches a few weeks before I was supposed to be setting a PR running the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. A few days ago, with my doctor’s approval, I took the boot off and started trying to build myself back up into a running shape. My foot started swelling and I felt more pain than I’d been in for weeks, so its looking like back to the boot and a probable visit to an MRI. My super power did not bail me out this time.

So, I’ve had time to think over these last few weeks. I’m going to come back from this injury, I know that. But this has forced me to realize that, at some point, one of these days, I will have to stop running. Hopefully that won’t happen for another few decades, but no human being has been able to beat those odds yet and I doubt I’m the exception. At some point in my life, I will go for my last run. I may or may not know it at the time, but I will put my running shoes on for the last time some day, and then I’ll never run again.

I started reflecting on the fact that this is true of everything else in my life, too. Since I’ve got all this time on my hands, I made a list of things that I like that will someday be taken away from me. At some point, my boys will be too big for me to pick up and carry around, too old for me to read stories to, and on and on. There will be a last book I ever read, a last conversation I ever have with my dad, with my wife, with each of my friends. I’ll smoke a last cigar, watch a last horror movie, and drink a last Diet Dr. Pepper. As Stephen King once titled a short story, “All that you love will be carried away.”

Of course, the same is true for all the things in my life I don’t enjoy. I will change my last diaper at some point, and clean up the last little boy pee accident off the floor. I’ll watch my last car insurance commercial, request a code for my last two-factor authorization, make my last mortgage payment, and manage my temper throughout my last frustrating customer service phone call. All those things will be taken away as well.

The lesson for me is two fold. First, never take the things I love for granted. Second, stop getting angry about the things I don’t enjoy. Because the one thing that is true about both is that they are finite. All things, George Harrison would remind us, must pass. That holds true for stress fractures the same as it holds true for childhood innocence. As a runner, I’ve been struggling through long runs that felt for all the world like they would literally never end, like I would be out in the rain by myself hobbling along on a tweaked calf muscle for the rest of my life. But all of those runs did end, which is why I’m writing this on the couch under a cozy blanket instead of somewhere around mile 11 of a 30K I did ten years ago that seemed like it was going to kill me. And just the same, every blissful vacation moment on a sun drenched beach I’ve ever experienced is now consigned to a rapidly receding past, never to return.

At some point, I will no longer be dealing with this injury and I will be running again. And I plan to make the most of it, which is why I’m organizing this trip (and asking for your help in doing it, you wonderful reader you). And right now, even though my foot hurts, it’s overcast and 35 degrees outside, and both my kids are sick and whiney, I’m not going to look past today. Because if all you do is count down the days to Summer Vacation, you’re going to wake up one morning to find yourself dead.

Why Diapers?

When my wife and I were preparing for the birth of our first child, our son Joey, my students in my Advanced Speech class were preparing to purchase a class fish. The students collected money, worked out a plan for who was going to change the water and when, researched fish bowls, etc. (Advanced Speech was not the most challenging class offered at my school) while Carah and I worked on building Ikea furniture and cramming the What to Expect… books. Both my son Joey and the class fish, a betta who ended up with the unlikely name of Gas Station, arrived at around the same time. A few months later, one of the students complained loudly in class, “It’s stupid that we had to raise money to get this fish and all it does is swim back and forth in the bowl, but Mr. Kennedy got to have a baby and that didn’t cost anything and Joey is way cuter and more interesting than the fish.” She had, one might say, an incomplete grasp of the economics of the situation.

Having children has in fact been the single biggest financial stress of our lives. We were only able to have our boys because of the miraculous but incredibly costly process of IVF. Little kids demand frequent doctor visits, including the occasional trip to the ER, and we soon became familiar with our insurance plan’s deductible in ways we hadn’t been before.; Since both of our son’s were born premature, we had to spend money on the most expensive versions of formula every month. And there are the standard baby expenses of things like diapers. We had some help from our parents with childcare, but both boys were in daycare within six months of them being born, and, with our boys spaced three years apart, we have been making daycare payments equivalent to two monthly car payments every month for the last six years.

The wonderful thing for us is that we have been able to meet those expenses. That is partly because we have worked hard for our college degrees and careers and have money to pay for things like formula and diapers, but it is also because we have had robust support from friends and family. We would not have been able to afford IVF, and literally would not have children right now, if not for the financial help provided by Carah’s family. We were able to navigate many of the financial realities of childcare because our kids were fortuitously born between the various financial and social crises of the last ten years. And we have had frequent, often unsolicited, purchases of things like diapers by helpful family members. We have been able to raise our kids comfortably because of a variety of factors largely outside of our control, and, despite everything I just listed, being able to pay for childcare in all its forms remains my single biggest source of financial worry and a consistent source or stress and anxiety in our family. I can’t imagine dealing with all of those expenses without the help of our family and social support network.

That’s why I chose the National Diaper Bank Network as the charity I want to raise money for in this project. Most of the people who helped us out with our kids will never ask for any kind of repayment and, frankly, don’t need it. So I want to try to pay that love and support forward to others who aren’t as lucky as we are. Because of the financial realities I described above, I’m not going to be in the position to make a huge donation to a charity like this any time soon. But what I can do is organize a project like this, publicize it, and ask for help. So that’s what I’m doing now. Please consider donating to this project to help families in need. Raising a child is considerably more expensive than raising a betta fish, but that doesn’t mean any family should be deprived of the opportunity.