The Rich Life: Running

Kareena (my son Devin's wife) asked me last night what I was going to blog about today, and I truthfully responded that I had no idea. I have several draft posts that only have a title and usually will look them over and pick one that I feel inspired to right about. But this morning, the following Facebook memory popped up for me:

With that prompt, I decided to write about something that has become quite a big part of my life for the past fourteen or so years (I'm finding it difficult to remember exactly when I started running consistently, but my best guess is that it was 2010).

As I've written about in this space, I was always somewhat athletic growing up, but I was also a very big eater. When I was young, my activity level and metabolism allowed me to basically eat what I wanted without ever becoming overly heavy, but as I got older and my activity level decreased and my metabolism slowed, that ceased being the case.

I would go through spurts where I'd try to go to the gym consistently, but despite my varying efforts, I would say I was overweight from about 2004 to 2010.

One memory I have of an attempt to lose weight during that time was when I was traveling to Dallas every week. The apartment where I lived in Dallas had a fitness center and I would go and run on the treadmill every morning. Every morning I would go, there would be another guy there, who as I recall was a trainer for someone else, and if I had gotten there first he would always ask if he could turn the TV to JAG, which was on USA or something at that time. For whatever reason, I always found that funny. This guy really like his JAG.

Another memory for that time period, was reading about "the Shangri-La Diet" in the second Freakonomics book or something and deciding to give it a try. I bought a book on it and it was based on tricking your metabolism to think that you were not eating anything with flavor by swallowing a tablespoon of canola oil 2-3 times per day. Supposedly if the body thought there was no flavor, it would take that to mean there was a scarcity of food and that would curb your appetite or something. It didn't work for me.

(I'm now pretty skeptical of all diets other than consuming fewer calories than you burn. Obviously, there are different ways to achieve that, but at the end of the day, that has to happen if you're going to lose weight).

Sometime in 2010, I saw my brother-in-law, Cam, and noticed that he had lost a significant amount of weight. When I asked what he had been doing, he told me he had been running. I decided to give it a go.

I had never really done any kind of distance running. When I played football in high school, one of the years we ran from the dam above Grantsville down to the high school for a fundraiser (we would solicit donations per mile). But as I recall, those of us who didn't stash bikes along the route and ride them for a significant distance, simply walked the route, or at least mostly walked it.

When I was a freshman and had opted not to play football, I briefly considered running cross-country. I even remember George and I going for a run with Peter Chatwin, who I believe did run cross-country, to see what it was about. That one run was enough for both of us. We opted against running cross-country.

I don't remember exactly how I got started, but it seems like at Cam's recommendation, the first week I ran a mile each day, then on Saturday I ran two miles, then the next week I ran two miles every day, and the then three miles on Saturday. I don't recall how long I did that, but eventually I found some training plans for a 5K, 10K, Half Marathon, and Marathon on a site called coolrunning.com (now gone) and started following those.

I remember the first time I ran nine miles I gave Cam a call (he served as a running mentor for me in those early days) and told him I felt like I never wanted to run that distance ever again. He told me I would recover, and that the desire to run would come back. He was right, and running has been an integral part of my life ever since.

I ran my first marathon (Ogden) in 2012 (I had actually done a marathon training plan and run the full marathon distance in 2011, on a treadmill (yes, I am insane), but the Ogden was my first "real" marathon). Jeanell had joined me in this new hobby and she also ran that Ogden Marathon (I don't know that running was high on the list of things that Jeanell really wanted to do, but she adopted it so that it was something we could do together. She's always been my biggest supporter when it comes to running. I've always appreciated that).

Since taking up running, we have each participated in five Ragnars (two-day relay races). I have run eight half marathons and eight full marathons, most recently St. George in 2022. Jeanell has run eight half marathons and four full marathons, most recently Morgan in 2019.

But beyond that, running has just become what I do in a way I never thought it would. While I'm not as motivated to sign up for races recently, I still run five days a week, 48 weeks a year (I typically have four rest weeks throughout the year) and I still follow those training plans I pulled off of coolrunning.com years ago. I recently finished a half marathon training plan and have now started a 10K training plan to finish out the year.

In the early days, I ran a lot on the treadmill at the Fitness Quarter gym in Brigham City. I would go there during my lunch hour and run however many miles the plan called for that day (running instead of eating lunch seemed to accelerate the weight-loss process). Nowadays I prefer to run outside, but am somewhat of a baby about the weather. I don't like running outside when it's too cold, or too rainy, or too windy. When that happens, I'll still fall back to the treadmill (now at Anytime Fitness in Grantsville).

But when the temperature is just right, and there's minimal wind, and the sun is just coming up, there's just something about a run that is good for the soul. As I run the streets of Grantsville, I try to make a point to wave at every car that I pass. I guess partly I do that to be friendly, partly to think about something other than each step, and partly to try to engage with the drivers to make sure they see me. I try to give each car its own wave as well, so even if one car is following pretty closely behind another, I will briefly take my hand down and then bring it back up so that it's a separate wave. My wave is also more of a peace sign, with my index and middle fingers raised, which my brother Brent told me is the equivalent of flipping the bird in Great Britain. Hopefully I don't pass too many British drivers. (Editor's note: Brent corrected me that raising two fingers is only a British insult if the hand is faced outward. The peace sign is fine).

I remember some of the runners I would see running around town when I was young, like Roger Cowan, Bart Hamatake, Garry Bolinder, and Brad Sutton. It feels great to be carrying on that tradition.

I'm sure this has been incredibly boring, but I wanted to share some of the stats over the past years and the routes I run in Grantsville. I basically have a route for every distance and if my training plan calls for that distance, that is the route I run. So if you see me out running, depending on where you see me and what direction I'm headed at the time, you might be able to guess how far I'm running that day (for example, if you see me headed east on Nygreen, I'm either running four or five miles. I told Tony Clark that if I was running past his house, I was running eight miles, but then realized I could also be running only six, so I had to let him know).

But first the stats (which I've tracked using the RunKeeper app, but especially in the early days, I didn't track all of my runs).

I tracked my first run on July 25, 2011. Since then, I have tracked 2,864 runs, that have taken a total of 91 days to run (that didn't seem like a lot to me, but I did the math, and that comes out to an average of 45 minutes per run) and covered a total of 14,913 miles. My high mileage year (at least that I tracked) was 2019 with 1,675 miles. So far this year, I have run 906 miles. (I believe I should surpass 1,000 miles this year, which would also take me over 15,000 total miles).

My Grantsville routes:

(Once I get beyond 15 miles, I usually do out-and-backs, either west on 138, south on the Mormon Trail, or east on 138 and Erda Way).

I might eventually wear out my knees and hips, but for now, I love being able to slip on my favorite running shoes (Nike Air Zoom Pegasus, extra wide), and head out on the road for another run. I'll see you around town. Please don't hit me.