How I Accidentally Fell Back in Love with RUNNING Again

I ran a lot when I was in my 20s. A short run was 3-5 miles, and my longer, once-a-week run was 8+ miles. The longest run I completed back then was 12 miles. I never joined a running club or went on a “group run” or ran any races. I never ran an organized 5K, half-marathon, or marathon. I never trained for an event. I ran to run, mostly because I hated the feeling of being out of breath. Running is the cure for that.

I had a very physically demanding job back then. It was, for the most part, a fully autonomous job. There were no bosses breathing down my neck, urging me to work ever faster. Even when the boss or bosses were at a job site, they worked alongside us, and everyone worked at their own pace.

It didn’t matter if we got done at 5PM or 10PM, the important part was the job got done.

Overtime during the summer months made it worth it in monetary terms, but the real reason I loved that job was it felt like working out for 10-12 hours a day and getting paid for it. 2 birds, 1 stone. The work wasn’t repetitive. Every job we did was different in its own way, and the work required movement against resistance in ways that varied from day to day. The work was hard, but it wasn’t back breaking. The work was neither soul-crushing nor emotionally or mentally draining. I never felt like I was working for sadists.

The cardio I did in my off time and the strength training I did at work gave me muscles, to quote an ex-girlfriend, she “didn’t know people could have.” My body looked like it was carved out of a block of wood. My muscles weren’t big, but they were everywhere, in places most gym bros would never think to work and develop. I ran up flights of stairs without getting winded. I walked around all day long in strange cities without getting tired. I lifted and carried heavy objects long distances using my fingertips. I rode my bicycle 75+ miles at a time on the weekends. One time, some lights mounted on a pole 20′ up needed to be adjusted, but we didn’t have a ladder that tall, so, instead of taking the pole down, I shimmied up the pole, held myself in place with my legs, and had one of my coworkers throw me a crescent wrench and adjusted them in less time than it took you to read this paragraph.

Eventually I graduated from college, started working in management, and then in offices, and I was no longer surrounded by what I would describe as good people anymore. I came to realize how lucky I was at that old college job where we worked hard and fucked around and nothing mattered as long as the job got done. Instead I found myself surrounded by slobs who didn’t see any point in self-improvement, who didn’t understand the value of hard work, who redefined both talent and hard work as a person’s ability to withstand drudgery in exchange for money, all of it directed and managed by bosses I would come to describe as everyday sadists.

I started drinking alcohol more and more to cope. I stopped running. I was no longer working out at work, so I didn’t work out at all. I’ve never been the type to enjoy paying for gym memberships and sweating under fluorescent lights when I could, you know, actually work.

I was an alcoholic by the time I decided to say fuck all of that and started working on scooters and motorcycles, a lifelong hobby I decided to turn into a profession based on nothing more than maybe I wouldn’t be so miserable if I was developing my skills, mechanical skills I actually valued, and surrounded by machines I loved because I had come to realize that people were often terrible.

Motorcycles made me happy, and I wanted to be around them all the time.

Switching careers in my late 20s was not enough for me to realize I had a problem with alcohol and quit on my own, which is why you’ll never hear some corny shit like “motorcycles saved my life” come out of my mouth. It would take another 6 or 7 years before I truly realized I had a drinking problem, and I found it was impossible for me to quit on my own.

The doctors at the ER saved my life, and a 3-day trip to detox followed by 2 months at a sober house finally made it stick, at least for a time. During my most recent relapse, I got into the habits of drinking and playing video games and drinking and riding my bicycle. I built a road bike from the frame up all the way back in 2009, and it’s been a constant in my life ever since. Drunk or sober, broke or with money, friends or no friends, car or no car, motorcycle or no motorcycle, I’ve always had my bicycle when all else failed.

I used my bicycle to commute 14 miles one way back and forth to one of my first mechanic jobs in Denver working on scooters and motorcycles. At the end of the day, on my way home, I’d buy 4 airplane bottles of whiskey from one of the dozens of liquor stores lined up on my route and drain them on the South Platte River Trail. Before I stopped drinking again, about 90 days ago, I’d drink 4 shots of whiskey on my days off and rip around my neighborhood on that same bicycle.

I’ve learned, over the years, that my mind and body crave physical suffering. If I don’t suffer in healthy ways, I default to suffering in unhealthy ways like drinking alcohol to excess, often early in the morning like a total degenerate. I kept riding my bicycle after getting sober because I crave the exercise, the physical exertion, the pain of telling my legs to shut up as I turn the pedals over. Riding my bicycle doesn’t make my mind go blank like racing a fast motorcycle does. It doesn’t give me the same sense of accomplishment as finishing well in a motorcycle race. There are only 2 things on earth that make my mind go blank like that: racing motorcycles and drinking alcohol.

Drinking alcohol will kill me. Long before it does its worst, drinking kills my interest in and enjoyment of everything that isn’t drinking. I isolate myself when I drink. Racing might kill me, but it probably won’t. Racing gives me plenty of room to enjoy the rest of my life, too.

As much as I try to isolate myself from other people when I’m at the race track because I’m a misanthrope, I wind up talking to the people there anyway, regardless. My fellow racers are some of the last people on Earth I genuinely like being around, even when they’re assholes, even when I’m an asshole. For the record, I also enjoy being around my customers, most of whom are interesting, thoughtful people. But I can’t race every weekend, every week of the year. There’s not that many races. I need something else to fill my time, something that makes me hurt in ways that are good for me. Riding my bicycle does that for me.

My bicycle developed a flat rear tire a few weeks into early sobriety, and I didn’t have a spare tube on hand, and I couldn’t wait for one to get here to get my daily dose, my fix of pain and suffering. It was too late in the day to beg one off of a local bicycle shop. I started eyeballing a pair of Salomon sneakers I’d been wearing casually and a thought popped into my head. Could I still run? Was running even an option anymore? Could I even make it a mile on my feet? I didn’t know, but it was worth a shot. I needed that pain in my legs. I needed to breathe hard and get my heart rate up. It had been a long time. I’d forgotten what it felt like to run.

I put on my Salomons and drove to a local park wearing the clothes I’d worn to work that day, a stained T-shirt and a stained pair of knee-length canvas shorts. I also wore a baseball cap and the same pair of black Oakley sunglasses I’ve been wearing every day for years. I stretched before I left, the same stretches I remember doing before my runs when I was in my 20s. I had no idea how long the loop I was about to run was. I guessed a mile, maybe a little more. I left my cell phone at home. I was breathing hard within 200 feet of starting. I remembered I used to breathe in through my mouth and out through my nose, so I did that. The last time I was running a lot, 10+ years ago at this point, I could run 5 miles without breathing through my mouth at all. I made a mental note to try more nasal breathing when I was up for it, assuming I decided to do this running thing again after I fixed my bicycle.

What surprised me most was it wasn’t my breathing or my heart holding me back and slowing me down. I wasn’t breathing that hard at all, all things considered. Although my pace was slow during that first run, I wasn’t even close to feeling my heart jumping out of my chest. I wasn’t running out of breath. When I first started running, way back when, I couldn’t make it around the block without stopping to walk. One time early on, I doubled over on the corner, less than a half mile away, sputtering snot from my nose and puking on the sidewalk when someone passing in a car stopped to ask if I was OK. I told them I was fine. That’s how I got started running many, many years ago. Although I hadn’t run in many years, this recent “restart” felt different. It felt easier. It felt like I could actually do it, like I could make it around the loop without dying, doubling over, walking, puking, or alarming any passersby.

What held me back, big time, were my legs. My legs burned, they burned bad. I told them to shut the fuck up and kept putting one foot in front of the other until I got all the way back to my car. The entire ordeal took about 10 minutes, and my legs were smoked at the end of it. My legs were shaking as I unlocked my car door. They were still shaking when I walked through my front door at home. Riding my bicycle doesn’t do that to me. Sure it’s fun to fly through the air at 20+ miles an hour, cut corners close, and lean the bike over. It’s fun to get the skinny tires loose and let the bars go when I ride over deep gravel. But it takes so much longer on the bike to get what I got out of running. There’s always the option of sitting down and coasting on a bicycle. I can’t go all out on a bicycle for an extended period of time and stay safe doing it. When I’m running, my choices are to keep running or slow down and walk. I think of going from running to walking as a type of failure in my mind. Fuck walking. If I’m running, I’m not stopping until I’m done with my run, come hell or high water, I just don’t care. I’ll push past the pain.

Cycling forces stops, stops at stop signs unless I want to ride like a hooligan, which I often do, and stops for unpredictable cars and pedestrians, stops for stop lights. Drivers see cyclists as inherently less human and drive accordingly, often passing too close or not at all while they grow more and more pissed off about the shoulders width of space cyclists take up when riding. They yell curses at me. Sometimes they even throw shit at me. In short, many drivers are stupid and inconsiderate. Some of them are outright cruel. I’d rather not share space with them at all, let alone while I’m operating a vehicle that weighs less than 20 pounds and goes 35 miles an hour tops and only if I give it everything I have.

Running on a trail around a park feels way safer than riding my bicycle. I can’t remember anyone ever yelling at me, honking at me, or throwing shit at me while I was running. So-called people have done all of the above, and more, to me while I was riding my bicycle. Many people are absolute shit bags who have very little consideration for other people who are different from them, who do things they don’t do. Me personally, I’ve never understood that impulse. Live and let live. Pay attention. I’m not the only person on Earth, and other people matter. Even if they’re different or doing something different, even when they’re doing things I have no interest in doing, things that annoy me, things I dislike, things I think are stupid and corny. The way I see it, the world’s a wild, colorful place full of wild and free people. I guess some people just don’t see it like that at all. They demand conformity. They demand sameness. They hate us for our freedom, yet they call themselves Americans. Many Americans don’t know the half of what it means to be free anymore. I think that’s largely by design.

And it’s a damned crying assed shame in my opinion. We maybe used to be a proper country. I’m not so sure anymore. We used to be citizens, but I think many if not most of us nowadays think of ourselves as consumers first and foremost. All that matters now is how much money a person has and what they can buy with it.

I love the simplicity of running. All a person needs to start running is a pair of shoes that don’t hurt their feet and some clothes fit for the weather outside; canvas shorts and a stained t-shirt work fine. Cycling signals status by default because bicycles are expensive. Running? A person can turn it into a status symbol, but it doesn’t default to that at all.

I love the brutality of running. I love the pain and suffering running causes me. I love watching my abs take shape as my body gets leaner, meaner, and stronger. I love never getting winded, never losing my breath when I’m carrying something heavy. I love how cardiovascular fitness makes the rest of my muscles stronger without making them any bigger. I’ve since fixed my bicycle, and I still enjoy riding it, but I’m running a hell of a lot more now than I have in a really long time. And who knows, I’m thinking hard about finding a club to run with, maybe a local 5K to show up for this fall. I might meet some like minded people who can help me restore my faith in humanity. I’m more optimistic than I’ve been in a long time, and that’s really something.

As always, thanks for reading! If you want to get $15/hr off on diagnostic and flat rate time, ask me about the last time I went for a run when you call, text, or book online!