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.
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…
