How Running Healed Me, and How You Helped Me Get Ready to Be a Dad

A letter to the little girl who taught me a little bit about being a dad.

René F. Najera, MPH, DrPH
6 min readSep 24, 2024

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Three men standing side by side at an outdoor event, smiling at the camera. The man on the left wears a blue and black striped sports jersey with a race number ‘1060,’ and the man on the right wears sunglasses and a white shirt with a race number ‘1025.’ The man in the center wears a white T-shirt with a hiking graphic and a ‘Grand Canyon’ hat.
From left to right: Me, Bob, and Steve, after completing the Frederick Festival 5K. My first 5 run ever. Bob and Steve were lifelong runners, and they encouraged me to run after a bad breakup.

The Breakup

When your mom and I broke up, I was (of course) broken up. I remember sleeping for days, but also not being able to sleep. It’s weird. I didn’t sleep more than an hour at a time, but I found myself not doing anything more than sleeping and going to work. I was glad I didn’t have classes to go to, because I don’t think I would have kept up with the demands of a master’s degree that semester.

This was a time when the university required me to get all A’s in my classes, as a condition of being in the public health program. My undergrad GPA was bad, but that is a story for another day.

How About Running?

A couple of friends at work suggested I tire myself out to get good sleep. There were no soccer games, and I didn’t feel like going to the gym. I wasn’t, or have been, a gym rat. And soccer was the main source of exercise for me those days.

They were both lifelong runners. Bob had run the original route from Marathon to Athens when he was in the Army. Steve had run seemingly forever, and his daughters followed suit. I agreed to their suggestion of starting a…

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René F. Najera, MPH, DrPH

DrPH in Epidemiology. Public Health Instructor. Father. Husband. "All around great guy." https://linktr.ee/rene.najera