Being into running is a lot like going to Harvard or being from Texas. You never have to ask somebody if they are any one of those things. They will make sure you know pretty much as soon as you get introduced to them. I feel like every self-indulgent asshat that runs has some profound story about how they got into it. I am no different.
There were two specific moments that made me into a runner. The first one got me into running to begin with. The second one made me pursue distance running, by which I mean going beyond 10k races and ultimately running a marathon.
The first instance was in May 2001. I was living in southern California at the time, which I did for a little over a year. Looking back, I feel like that year was definitely the worst one of my life.
In my teens, my mother had quite a few physical and mental health issues which caused her and my dad to become estranged. They got back together and moved to a suburb of Los Angeles in 1996 but her overall health did not significantly improve. In 2000 I decided it would be a great idea to quit my job in Boston and move to California to help out. In my head I figured I’d move in with the folks for a couple months, get a nice job, and move into my own place somewhere close to them. The reality was nowhere near that.
I left a pretty sweet job at Monsanto where I extracted DNA from plants all day. That was the whole job. Show up at 8am and cut leaves off plants. Grind them up with mortar and pestle, then breakdown the plant material and go to town on them with Qiagen kits. At around 3:45pm take all the different Eppendorfs full of DNA to the spectrophotometer and record the concentration in μg/mL. Easy peasy. My dumbass figured I could find another job like this someplace in Los Angeles.
Truth was Los Angeles had basically zero biotech, and I wasn’t qualified to do much else. I couldn’t find a job quickly and a couple months became several months. I wallowed on the floor of my parents’ place and grew to resent them for no reason. They never told me to quit my job and move across the country, but if I didn’t blame them for my predicament then I would have to blame myself. This did irreparable harm to my relationship with my folks that never got undone. My mom and I only spoke about twice a year until she died in 2018. My father and I have barely spoken since her funeral.
Being in this mental state obviously affected my physical state. I never really got fat but I got “skinny fat”. Not really doing anything just made me a doughy, pudgy, weak person. So that is where I was at come May 2001.
Despite how horrible living in L.A. was, I did have two good friends from college who also lived out there. One of them was the poster boy for jocks. If they were casting Stan Gable from my stable of friends, this guy would be it. Tall, good looking, great at every sport the moment he picked it up. A Chad before the term Chad existed. To protect his identity, I’ll refer to him as Chad from here on out. The only joy I had in my life was when I would go to their place on the beach and get black out drunk. On Memorial Day weekend a mutual friend of ours from college came to Cali to hang out for the long weekend.
The friend who was visiting was always our “fat friend”. He was the jolly, lovable dude with the big love handles on the side. I’ll call him Albert for the duration of this post. Well, since college he had been working hard on himself and lost the weight. He was looking svelte and trim and we were all genuinely happy for him. We did lots of partying and reminiscing on or near Hermosa Beach that weekend. Albert, Chad, and I went to a local park to play some basketball in between bouts of heavy drinking.
So the three of us decide to play some 21 (which is like 1-v-1-v-1 basketball, first person to 21 wins). Chad obviously wins, but Albert and I keep it respectable. Something like 21-19-18. We decide to play again. This time the scores were 21-18 … to 6. Guess who was the 6?
Early in that second game my everything gave out. Fuel level dropped to zero. My lungs were burning and my legs felt like they weighed 500 pounds. I could barely move and thought for sure I was seconds away from having a stroke or catching fire. After the second game I had to beg out and sit on the sidelines while Albert and Chad continued playing one-on-one.
You know how they say you never remember the exact details of the most important moments of your life, but you never forget how you felt? Well, I don’t remember anything about who actually won that game or any of the particulars that happened. But I remember every single emotion that went through my head sitting there sucking down Gatorades and watching my “fat friend” and my “jock friend” living a life that was entirely beyond me. Shame, disgust, powerlessness, depression. I swore I would do everything in my power to change this.
The very next day I started running. The first day I went about a half mile before I had to stop and walk back home. The next day I went a little farther. And the next, and the next, and the next. Soon I improved enough to get all the way to a local track over a mile away. Then before I knew it I could go to the track, do some laps, and then make it back home. I decided to sign up for a 5k in July. I ran that in about thirty minutes and then signed up for a 10k in August. That was around 57 minutes. Both were PRs at the time.
My friends were nothing but supportive as I started running. Chad even gave me a $20 gift card for fogdog.com. For those of us who remember fogdog, it might be time to take our rheumatism medicine. They were an online sporting goods store in the late 90s dot-com boom when simply adding “.com” to your name made your stock price triple. Dot-com then was basically what AI is now.
In September I moved back to Boston and continued on with my life. I got a job and my own place like an actual adult. Running stayed a significant part of my fitness routine and I still ran the occasional road race (shoutout to the Somerville 5K and Gobble Gobble Gobble). I pretty much stayed around 3-5 miles a day until the second specific moment.
Fast forward to summer 2008. My Army Reserve unit got put on orders in Boston to prepare for an imminent mobilization. To say we were excited would be an understatement. We trained in and around Boston, and went on extended trips to Fort Hunter-Liggett and Fort Irwin. Everything was trending towards the mobe into autumn. Then all of a suddenly the mobilization got cancelled right before Thanksgiving. They didn’t need us to win the war after all.
This was devastating for most of us. Lots of folks in my unit worked for small local companies that did not have enough employees to qualify for USERRA protection. I was working for a start-up with 4 employees so I also became unemployed just before the holidays.
The holidays are my worst time for binge eating. Even when everything is going great for me, it is really tough to avoid a few extra pounds. This particular year a few pounds turned into a lot of pounds. I sat around at home and ate and felt depressed. I felt ashamed and embarrassed having to explain to my friends and family that I was staying in the continental US. Like I was scared they would think I had lied about the whole thing.
I did not realize how bad I let everything get until I got chosen to attend Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course (BNCOC, pronounced “bee-knock”) in February 2009. I had to do a preparatory physical fitness test in Boston and, while I passed everything, the numbers were down from my usual. Then when I got to Fort Dix for BNCOC I was over the limit on my weigh-in. Fortunately I made the body fat tape test on the number. I literally was at the highest body fat you could possibly be and still be able to complete the course.
Once I graduated and got back home I knew I needed to do something to get my waistline and life back under control. I figured I could do worse than turning to running to achieve that again. This time I wanted to up the ante and decided to sign up for the Army Ten Miler in October.
Army Ten Miler was a great experience, but my run that day made me feel like I left a lot of meat on the bone. I really tired out after about mile 8 and slogged my way to the finish. Once I got home I knew I needed to completely remake my stride if I wanted to do longer runs. And I wanted to do longer runs.
In the winter of 2009-2010 I totally broke down my running style and became the most biomechanically efficient version of myself. In May 2010 I ran the Providence Half Marathon and then in October 2010 I did the Marine Corps Marathon. For me, running a marathon is a binary experience. Once you do one you never need to do another. That said, I continued distance running recreationally and have done several half marathons and ten milers since, but nothing that long since 2022.
Running helped me improve my life and physical fitness. It is not a panacea. I am a firm believer that the most important workout you do everyday is in your kitchen. If you want to run to lose weight, be prepared to put in way more effort preparing meals than pounding pavement.
When I ran the marathon I could look at a piece of chicken breast from the other side of a room and tell you everything there was to know about its calories and macronutrient content. I weighed 142 pounds on race day and felt like a strong crosswind would legitimately knock me over. That sort of shit isn’t for everybody and I never want to be that small again.
I know a lot of people run for mental health reasons. More power to them. I have never used running for that. Lots of people talk about getting the “runner’s high”, but not me. The only time I feel joy about my run is as soon as I finish because I know it is the longest possible time until I need to run again. If I knew of something else that could give me the same aerobic and endurance benefits, with the advantage that it can be done anywhere, I’d switch as fast as possible. Pun intended.
But anyway, those are the reasons why this self-indulgent asshat runs. Yours might be similar or they might be different. I’m certain whatever they are, they are just as important to you as mine are to me.
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