The “why i run” cliche article
If you follow any ultrarunner, runfluencer, or professional in the sport of ultrarunning for long enough you will undoubtedly see some sort of media in which they ask and answer the question, “Why do I run?”
While I believe doing the same is in many ways cliche, I also believe that cliches exist for a reason, and that is because there is both wisdom and relatability in these cliches.
So for those of you who accidentally ended up on this page and just want the short version of “why do I run?” here’s the TLDR: it’s simply that when I stumbled on running as a pursuit to something more in my life, I found that I truly enjoyed it. From the way it made me feel, to the way it challenged my belief system, and the way it helped me set a good example for others in my life, and so much more. For the much longer answer, we need to go back a few years… get yourself a snack and let’s go on a 2-3 RPE run down memory lane.
Sometime around the age of 16 I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder. I very vividly remember the feeling of the color draining out of the world. It was like the opposite of the first time Dorothy opens her front door after being thrown into the land of Oz. For years I went through the gamut of different forms of therapy and medication that never seemed to work.
Fast forward to age 21 and I joined the US Navy. I thought this sense of service and purpose outside of myself may help guide me out of my depression and help me find some direction in life, but unfortunately for me wherever you go, there you are. Those same emotions not only followed me through 5 years and 3 deployments across the globe, but also got dramatically worse with the inclusion of excessive binge drinking as is so common among the armed forces.
On my last deployment to The Federated States of Micronesia, (a small island nation off the northeast coast of Australia) through a strange turn of events I ended up spending most of my time with a guy named Dustin. He was a former combat deployed Army Scout who grew up in the backwoods of Tennessee and as my luck would have it, he was really into this niche thing I had never heard of called ultrarunning.
It started with him inviting me on a run and spiraled out of control into me deciding that with his help and with a 6 month deployment worth of running under my belt I would sign up for my first ultra, The Wild Wild West 50 miler in Lone Pine, California. Unfortunately, life can be cruel and roughly one month into my deployment I received a call from my brother that our mom had unexpectedly passed away from what we later found out to be a combination of a severe heart attack and subsequent brain aneurysm. Autopsy doctors later told us that even if she had been on the operating table the second it happened there would’ve been a slim chance of survival.
[A spur of the moment trip I took my mom on to NYC 9 months before she passed. My favorite photo of her.]
I’ll refrain from making the rest of this post a eulogy, but in short, my mother was a beacon of light and joy in this world. She was the kind of person who made everyone smile when she walked into the room, and she shared her love for people through her amazing cooking. She was a certified Zumba instructor and didn’t drink or smoke. She was what most people would consider to be in peak health for someone in their mid-50s. For all these reasons it was especially surprising that this happened to our family when it did.
If you know anything about the military it is likely that the term “sacrifice” is thrown around a lot. I was very fortunate that I served during peacetime and the sacrifice was not life or limb, but instead the continued degradation of my own mental health. When my mom passed I was allowed 12 days to fly back across the world and attend her funeral before going back to Micronesia to finish the deployment. Day after day I grieved largely alone on the wrong side of the world with only the pillars of running and alcohol dependency to carry me through.
[Left: Dustin - the guy that started all this ultrarunning nonsense
Right: My best Top Gun impression at the ambassador’s house]
To add further insult to injury we were slated to finish our deployment and come home at the end of March 2020. Well for anyone who wasn’t living under a pile of impenetrable rocks, I’m sure you remember what happened to the world in March 2020. With the global shutdown happening 2 weeks before we were supposed to come home, my final deployment was extended from 6 to roughly 10 months total while wondering what the purpose of it all was. The purpose of sacrificing my youth for our country and the purpose of living at all.
I’ll spare you further details of that period of my life since in all honesty it went by in a blur of anger, depression, and a drunken stupor that at times I doubt I’m remembering with 100% accuracy. The important thing with my running that happened in this period is that even as the global shutdown subsided, since the race was in California they were slow to reopen. No race permits were allowed in many areas, including that of The Wild Wild West 50 Miler and in the 2 subsequent cancellations of it I fell out of love with running.
After my voluntary separation from the Navy my future wife and I moved to the wonderful state of Colorado. In that time I got into rock climbing and life went on, but my days were still marred by the hold that depression and alcohol had on my life. I lost a lot of weight from rock climbing and subsequently gained it all back from the drinking.
In 2023 my now wife and I found out that she was pregnant with our first child. You would think that the realization I was about to be responsible for another human being would spur me into action to get healthy and get my sh*t together, but that wasn’t my reality. That would take 5 months after the birth of our daughter Evie.
On a balmy, May day in Colorado Springs our car started spewing smoke and flashing all sorts of angry errors. I dropped my wife and daughter at home and on the advice of my grandfather who was a General Motors plant manager of some sort back in the day, I filled some part of the engine with some sort of fluid and took it to the mechanic (I know very little about cars). I was informed it would be a few hours to get things in order and checked Uber to see what the ride home would cost me.
Maybe it was the chronic lack of sleep or maybe the universe decided it was time for its grand plan to come to fruition in my life, but never have I been more offended at the price a rideshare app offered me. $20 to go a whopping 4 miles. In my frustration I clearly remember remarking out loud to no one in particular,
“I used to run. I know I can run that far!”
Joke’s on me…
I absolutely could not run that far. To this day that is still one of the most grueling runs I’ve ever had. So just over 2 years ago after dragging my limp body home due to my financial prudence (or cheapness) I made the decision that I was failing as a father if I couldn’t set a better example for my daughter as she grew up.
On that day I decided to do something hard for the next 50 days straight just to prove that I still had that dog in me. By day 2, I realized that the hardest thing I could possibly do was get back into good running shape, so I decided I would run all 50 days. By day 9 I had made the decision I would sign up for my first ultra.
[August 2024: My first ultra finish at Loopy Looper 12-hour. 38.5 miles]
Through my training I not only stopped drinking about 2 years ago in preparation for my first 100 miler, but also finally got a handle on my almost 15 year long depression to begin leading a happier, fulfilled life as a father, an ultrarunner, and a coach.
This is already becoming quite the memoir so I’ll leave you with some closing thoughts that may give you some more tangible takeaways.
So, “Why do I run?”
I run because there is a version of me that didn’t try to change his life for the better, and I’m terrified of becoming that again. I run because the physical weight I shed from that challenge pales in comparison to the person emotionally and spiritually who came out of the other side of those 50 days. I run because there is a small girl asleep in her room while I write this who I hope sees me as Superman for as long as possible. I run because when I have a brief moment of flow through the mountains at mile 80 of a 100 miler, I FEEL like Superman.
I run because I am grateful for my second chance at life.
Ask any great ultrarunner why they run, and somewhere deep down I think we all understand that it isn’t about the time on the clock when you finish a race. It is about the pursuit of something greater than ourselves that we run.
The pursuit of greatness for ultrarunners isn’t our name in lights or any sort of mainstream recognition. It is the pursuit of something we become when we skirt the knife’s edge. In the space between “will my body fail me?” and “this is who I am, and this is what I do” lies the truth in who all great ultrarunners are. Ultrarunners are the modern-day Warriors in a Garden.
A little bit of peace, a little bit of buried insanity, and a whole lot of grit.
[The Pursuit of Greatness]
