Celebrating Three Years Running

Keeping a good run going

Looking back on a lovely 2023 running, I can’t help but take stock of the journey three years and counting.

Dec. 28, 2020: at the tail end of that first year of the Covid slog, I climbed atop my dusty treadmill and vowed to not miss a day working out through 2021.

I started eating better, too. And dropped almost 95 pounds by the following December. And kept that streak going into April 2022.

But the streak was only a means to get going. And keep going.

Running has been alternately motivating and meditative for me since I was 13, and the times I wasn’t doing it — which was all too often after college — were torture.

Seeing a street blocked off for a Saturday morning race. Catching after-work runners bobbing happily uphill on my commute home. Even glimpsing Runners World on a magazine rack made me grit my teeth because I wasn’t doing what I wanted to be doing.

Well, queue the balloons and confetti because it’s been another year — 3 straight now — that I didn’t give up what I fought to win back.

Some highlights:

• Great first races that were very well run in Omaha and Lincoln— the Early Bird 10-miler; the Wine Run 5K and in Council Bluffs (which I frigging won, somehow!); The Good Life Halfsy in Lincoln
• Racking up some “big-ass medals” in the coastal Carolina racing series for virtual 5K, half-marathon and 15K — I’ll be running the Oak Island 10K in person in 2024
• Racing with my youngest brother, Sam, at Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina for a Memorial Day 5K — we’ll take on the Fargo Marathon next June
• Retuning to Pittsburgh to my favorite 10K of all, The Great Race, and coming back from Achilles injury to do it
• Running through knee pain to finish top 10 at the River City Rainbow Chase 7-miler in Yankton for a family St. Patty’s celebration
• Jumping into a twilight trail run in Sioux Falls just an hour before joining my Scout troops for a frigid Thanksgiving parade
• And, oh yeah, notching a PB in marathon #3 in my wife’s (and Garmin’s) hometown of Olathe, KS

Motivation to spare for next year

This year was no doubt my most challenging year of my running renaissance.

I battled aching knees and a nagging Achilles. I put on (more than) a few happy pounds enjoying burgers and chips and scotch and beer — enough so I started to envy the young runners with nary a load to carry. I passed a lot of them, anyway, but it made me more mindful of the effort to stay in racing shape as I hit the downhill of my late 40’s.

I had to pull out of a marathon I was really looking forward to: the Sundance to Spearfish race through the Black Hills in September. But it was the right decision, to heal. And it turned me back on to stretching and weight training 2-3 times weekly. And set a goal for 2024: two marathons, with proper load management.

I know, at 47, I can’t run all-out every time out. I know sleep to be right at the top of the list for race prep. I know eating isn’t just what I allow myself to do after the hard workouts. And I’m even more grateful for the times I can let it loose and fly a little: a lot of slow and easy goes into limbering up enough to be flight-worthy.

I wrapped the year with a final, non-racing road trip, spent with family for the holidays. But I’m proud and grateful as ever that every morning, whether before a 9-hour drive, or tearing into presents, or heading out for a honky tonk burger, beer, and fries, that I strapped on the shoes, threw on my running kit, and hit the street or the treadmill.

After another 1,900 miles in 2023, I am ready for another 2,100 more!