I Was Running…
February 13, 2025Last Sunday, I ran a half marathon. That wasn’t my intention when I set out to run, I really just knew I needed to do one thing: Get out of my head.
As someone who spends a lot of time searching through my catalogue of memories for inspiration, I often get swept out into a current of memories that is less than pleasant. The easiest lifeline out of this is to doom scroll and distract. Let the lottery of social media feed some dopamine that will mask the pain for a short time with reels of peoples own sorrows and memes of frogs. What’s harder is actually sitting with my own brain and confronting the waves of memories with grace and curiosity. I don’t know about you, but this is not really a state of mind that I can “flip the switch” and immediately find myself inside of. It usually takes me a great deal of time and some sort of physical distraction. That’s where running comes in.
I wrote this back back on November 14th, 2023 after being in one of these mental spots. And I think it sums up how I needed up running a half marathon. So I hope you enjoy this poem. If you want to hear a reading I have done of it myself, I’ll link it here.
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November 14th, 2023
To get out of your head
Yesterday,
I ran not for the joy of running
but to get away, from the one thing I can never get away from
The one thing you carry with you onto every plane wishing they would tell you it’s oversized
So that when you are told it’ll be another $30 dollars to bring it with you
Scratch that $45 dollars, you missed the check in deadline
You can laugh looking into your wallet knowing that those $45 dollars:
1) Are better spent on the finer joys in life, ya know junior mints and sour patch kids, and that one croissant you buy to pretend your life is a movie even though you’ve never been to France
2) Could be donated to a charity you love, they say in all those commercials that $1 is 7 lbs of food so it looks like i got 315 lbs of food. That’s 2.5 times the weight of scrawny ole 5 foot 10 me. nature’s ideal form of skin and bones. But truly and this is number
3) That money doesn’t exist so please just let me leave it behind in Dallas, maybe someone else can get better use of it than me
Anyway,
I was running. Again Not for the joy of it.
Finding that runners high is a 1 in 10 roll of the dice that to even get a spot at the table you have to go at least 3 miles
Many modern “shamans” have coached me saying that really all i need to do is breathe
simple as that
Just
Breathe
put yourself in a box and count to
one… two… three… (hold)
Out.. two.. three…
do this enough and sure enough
Your newly oxygenated brain will be higher than the kites of the children on the beach
Allowing you to land the helicopter of your mind
gently back into your body
Where now being present, once again
you can find the gratitude to move on with life
What a grand idea this is, all pomp and no circumstance
This box breathing does no more than gift me a brief respite from the always flushing toilet bowl of shit in my brain
Pretending to me heal me like a 4 year old offering me nothing more than a bandaid on an arterial bleed of my sanity
so I ran. Once again not for “fun” but because when you run
you have no choice but to breathe. So maybe they were right.
I jokingly texted my friend Claire “lets see how many miles it takes”
“ah what a fun game” she replied
I told her “I’ll place the over under line at 3.1 miles.” Any takers in the audience?
*proceed to play bookie taking bets*
Well it turns out all you need is 1.5 miles
of only uphill
that’ll get the job done
So Congrats ladies and gentleman
the under has hit. Please collect your winnings on the way out but again for now
I was running
I was so inside my body that with each breath that entered
I could feel the engine of my heart and lungs heat it up
before dispelling it into the aching muscles of my legs
unaware they were the ones to be called upon to carry the weight
of my soul
Unaware that just because the first 1.5 miles is uphill
doesn’t mean the back half of the loop will all be downhill
No no it could never be so easy
especially when the eyes distracted by the word “lookout”
Lead you down before the summit
hoping they can find some wonderful scene to feast upon
because the grove of madrones and manzanitas apparently is merely an appetizer
to the mountains we were promised at the outset
Ha ha no no it could never be so easy.
And why should it be
We are, after all, running. running “away” for that matter.
Who ever in the history of running away from something has had it easy
Who wasn’t stalked and chased down,
hunted
having to keep an eye open even as they rest
upon that table placed here by the lousiest eagle scout project i know.
Benches and tables.
Yuck,
as a member of this esteemed rank I thought “What was the improvement to the community? Who really labored to put this here?
And why here, this lookout doesn’t even have a far spanning vista?”
What a ridiculous project I thought as I rested upon it
gazing above me into the web of golden ruby mittens of the trees that surrounded me
their branches intertwined the way I believe memories do in my mind.
And it was these same trees that listened as I replayed voice memos of my past.
my terrible singing and unrepeatable improvs
arrogant musings on life.
My feet walking over sand and under waterfalls
the sound of my car as it rushed down the highway.
And the quotes of strangers and celebrities and loved ones laughing at those celebrities because “sometimes i get nervous on airplanes”
These trees didn’t judge
they didn’t they didn’t pick up a phone distracted,
They loved.
Swaying side to side in the wind as if with each memory they wanted me to see them saying
“yes. I understood this moment’s significance as deeply as well”
As if they were rooted around me this entire time.
Watching me, protecting me.
And maybe they were
But with the sun fading fast I had to go, I still needed groceries for the week.
I said goodbye for now thankful for their steadfast community and simple rejuvenation
I still had 3 miles to go. So with a wave of their branch I was off again.
Running.
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If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about this piece and would love to hear about the ways you set yourself up so you can greet your mind with love and curiosity. You can text me, send me a DM or just drop me a message here. <—— click that to write to Dan he would love to hear from you :)
Running will forever be apart of my tool kit to calm my mind. (Is it crazy that I have dreams of running the Leadville 100? Maybe haha)
Til next time, I hope you find the calm’s you’re looking for.
Always running,
Dan <3