I Am Not a Runner

I am not a runner.

Or at least that’s what I told myself as a kid.

Then again into my middle school years.

And yet again as a young adult.

And pretty far into adulthood, too.

If that’s what I kept telling myself, then it must be true. I am not a runner.

Growing up with a father who was a runner, I always saw how much he wanted me to be active. He ushered me outside into sports when I would’ve rather been inside with my imagination - and then in later years, with my guitar.

Once I had to start showing up to baseball practices and games, I realized quickly that I had no desire to become good at sports. It just wasn’t in my makeup. All that running. All that…outsideness.

Despite not being a runner I would, in fact, try running every so often.

Once every few years I would go for a run and hate it, chalking it up to being out of shape and not wanting to feel tired. In gym class, I would push my improv skills to the limit in an attempt to avoid running that dreaded mile around the faux-asphalt loop in the sun. “Uh coach, I think I pulled something and can’t really run today. So, coach, my lunch period was just before this and I ate a lot, I can’t run on a full stomach!” Eventually, when they did catch me off guard and force me to do the run, I would have moments during the second loop where I’d maybe glimpse what it felt like to have a small rhythm in my stride… but it was quickly replaced by the pounding of my heart in my ears and my wheezing breath. I’d get all in my head about the fact that I was running and not just allow myself to be running.

Post the gym-class mile, I never really gave running another chance.

As far as I was concerned, it was settled: I am not a runner.

I had not yet learned that maybe the stories I tell myself, or conversely, the “truths” I avoid thinking about, can be changed…maybe…

Let’s now jump ahead to late 2009. I was living on my own about two and a half hours north of NYC and I was finally getting really good at something - drinking.

In fact, I was so good at it, that I could even manage to do a lot of other things halfway decent while keeping my drinking uninterrupted. I was succeeding at my job, I was gaining notoriety for my music production skills, and I was even hanging onto relationships. But from the corner of the room in my mind, I was also watching myself completely and totally flush my whole life’s potential down the drain.

Barely hanging on…doing just enough to succeed? Was that really all I wanted out of this short little adventure we have earthside?

I decided that those were thoughts for another day - better to stuff them into the mind-closet and keep the bottle around because the bottle made me “feel better” and those thoughts of actually being better made me feel, well, not that way.

Drinking actually allowed me to feel at ease and quiet my overactive mind, so I suppose that was why I was getting so good at it–I thought I was helping myself. And to borrow a term so many alcoholics use, I was self-medicating.

But after a while, the thoughts I not-so-neatly stuffed in the closet started pounding on the door and demanding my attention. I’ll spare you the vignettes of ups and downs; the failed attempts at sobriety and the relapses once, twice, third-time's-a-charm type of thing, as they were as you would picture them - awful and not fun or successful for very long.

The clock raced forward and through the good fortune of meeting a person who truly saw me for me, relocating south to vibrant NYC, and taking ownership of my addiction (I am an alcoholic), I put the bottle down once and for all. I’m pretty proud to say that as of today, I’m ten years, one month, and twenty-two days sober and have zero plans on interrupting that life-decision.

So okay, I got sober. And suddenly, I realized…days are pretty long, aren’t they? And wow, getting up early before work means I actually have time to do some things. And holy crap - it stays light so much longer in the summer - what should we do!?

My partner and I began walking. We loved walking. Still do, actually.

And since we were living in NYC, we could spend the entire day aimlessly walking, never getting bored thanks to the ever-changing landscape that is the greatest city in the world. There would be times we’d walk in total silence for a few blocks and other times we’d be unable to stop talking…and okay, there were definitely some times I’d get the silent treatment for making us walk that extra block to make it to the subway station that was, unbeknownst to me, closed for the weekend for reasons only the metropolitan authorities could rationalize. But we were in-motion, and that was feeling good.

On weekends, we would grab bagels and coffee and head down to the park. From “our park bench” we’d watch people running by us, working out and jogging, some training, others joyfully strolling. While I, wiping cream cheese out of my beard, sat there and thought about how much better they were at taking care of themselves than me. “Maybe one day,” I’d think.

Finally, after many weekends on the bench and with a newfound exuberance for life, discovered as I continued to make my way out of the fog of alcohol, I decided that that one day could easily become today.

I grabbed the dusty running shoes I’d been keeping for that one day and laced them up, tossed on some sweats and…damn, this is hard.

It was as hard as I remembered. I had instant flashbacks of gym class excuses and all I really wanted to do was sit back down and eat that fluffy bagel and maybe give it a go again another day.

But I decided I wasn’t going to give myself an out like I’d done so many times before. I really wanted to try this.

iPhone apps had come a long way since I first got my phone and after some quick searching in the App Store, I found an app called Couch to 5k. It sounded up my alley so I downloaded it and gave it a try. Its purpose was to bring you from sitting on the couch…to running a 5k. (I love a clear mission and company name.) It had me running intervals - one minute jog, two minute walk. Another minute jogging, another two minutes walking, and so on. I paired it with music on my phone and hey, this isn’t so bad. I got through the first run and somehow didn’t want to die! Even better, I didn’t collapse!

But like anything - the adrenaline of starting something faded fast and on day five, I was huffing and puffing around the track again. But I made an agreement with myself, and I would not give up on this until I hit the 5k. So, hush negative thoughts! And keep going!

That reminder to myself seemed to work as I began going for a run every day.

I was even finding that I actually wanted to make time in the day to get back to the track. I really couldn’t wait to get out there - I was accomplishing something and this time it was good for me!

Before long, I did it - I ran my first 5k without stopping.

From there, what happened was exponential. (If you will, imagine a supercut montage with pumping drums and a triumphant guitar lick playing off of horn melodies and FIREWORKS!)

…You get the point. Time passed.

I began finishing a run on the track and thinking, hey, maybe I could run half way back home instead of walking. Soon after that, maybe I could run all the way home. Before I knew it, the track could no longer hold me and the distance I craved. I was widening my runs to include a jog from my apartment to the track, around the track, through the neighborhood and back home. Quickly I was learning how to lock in on runs - I was finding that sweet spot of stride and pace and breath and music and visuals and HOLY SHIT AM I MEDITATING?!

5k, which once was my goal, became my “slow day” - my baseline! Wow.

Now I was elevating to eight miles, ten miles, and wait a second…what’s a half marathon again? Well, hell yeah let’s keep going! I couldn’t believe my eyes as my watch logged 13.1 miles on a run.

Did I really just do that? Was I the same person who was putting away a pumpernickel-everything with vegetable cream cheese eighteen months ago?

This solo half marathon was unintentional- I really was just so locked in to the joy of it, that I just kept…going.

It seemed as though this story I told myself of not being something could potentially change. It didn’t have to stay “true”. Maybe it had never been true.

Because by all counts, I was a runner.

I started pushing myself to hit a sub-six minute mile - something I literally never thought I could or would do. Yet there I found myself on a rainy morning in Astoria, Queens - the soundtrack from Stranger Things pumping in my ears - flying down past the cars and cabs, watching buildings fly by, and I felt present with it all. Purely joyful.

I discovered the meditative aspect of running.

I was combining exercise and meditation in this blissful combination of mindful exercise. I was letting thought fall away and I was just being. I was running just for the fun of it.

My relationship with running continued to grow and remained an overall positive experience until I left NYC.

At the beginning of 2020 my partner and I packed up and moved to Austin.

We didn’t know a soul in Austin.

And we more or less picked a rental out of a hat in a neighborhood we hoped was good.

But we were on board for whatever came our way and were excited for a change.

A few months later, we found ourselves months into a global pandemic, trapped inside both for safety and because of the brutal, endless heat of an Austin summer.

Slowly, my running fell apart. I couldn’t get up early enough or stay up late enough to beat the heat. Neighborhood runs were different from city runs. The isolation of the pandemic was taking its toll.

And before I knew it, I went entire months without even lacing up my running shoes.

Truthfully, even writing about this part of the journey is difficult.

I struggled for a while to come to terms with the fact that I had lost something that I held so dearly to me. Something that was so unexpectedly wonderful. Something that made me feel so good and so in control of myself and my life. Just like that - it was gone.

And there I found myself again, mentally back on the park bench with a metaphorical bagel in my hand while I told myself again–like those years running in NYC had never even happened– “I am not a runner.”

Recently, my father came to visit and on a walk together, he was telling me how the process of recovering from a recent surgery has been.

He’s been a runner all his life, and we were reflecting on what it means to slow down - something neither of us are good at.

And while on our walk, he told me why he loves running: because you “can’t do anything else but be on the run.” I was a little dumbfounded at how simple that was. And when he said it, something clicked for me. I have been making ambient and meditative music as an artist called Six Missing for the past seven years and I never really thought about linking the meditation mindset to that of someone who has never knowingly meditated in their life… My Dad.

I told him he's actually been meditating his entire life and he didn’t even realize it. Because in meditation you can only really just be where you are.

We connected over our mutual love of that feeling, and it gave me a little burst of energy to perhaps try this running thing again. Because one of the biggest teachings of meditation is to “begin again.”

Maybe I could begin again.

So here it goes.

I’ve decided I’m going to start slow, give myself that foundation that I need in order to get back into the swing of it. I put together a playlist on Spotify that has some of my favorite meditative and ambient pieces from both myself and artists I admire to make for a meditative run. I thought it could be something to help me tune out the noise of my head and take in my surroundings.

We may never be able to go back in time to what once was. But we can move ahead with all those experiences in our pocket. So really, this is a love-letter to anyone who has started and stopped something in their life.

Even if I stopped running for a while, that doesn’t make me not a runner.

My story has changed a lot and I’m sure it will continue to evolve. But for now, I’m changing it once more.

I am a runner.

See you out there.