By elevating fitness to one of my highest priorities, I assured a daily dose of endorphins to my brain. As long as I remained healthy and avoided injury, this appeared a viable path to permanent sobriety. No matter what my work schedule looked like, I carved out time for exercise and would leap out the door to get to the gym. Soon I realized that the gym had some similarities to a civic organization because the same members showed up day after day. After seeing the same people for a few months, the interactions of sharing weights and spotting one another led to acquaintance and eventually casual friendships. This was a thin connection, since only the pursuit of our own self image bound us together, but there was the common interest. When someone asked me what I was working on today, with the expected answer being “legs” or “back” I would joke, “Mostly my insecurities.”
More truth than a joke, the pursuit of fitness did have elements of vanity laced within it, such as desiring to feel good and be attractive increased confidence in my personal life. The personal progress of fitness asserts a notion of accomplishment and a strange kind of righteousness. One good habit leads to another, and soon I was snacking on celery and reading motivational books. Interestingly, being in shape alone holds no moral value, but somehow the positivity that I felt seemed to make me believe I was increasing in morality. However, I found more vanity seeping into my appearance, such as selecting tighter t-shirts to wear. Once again feeling the same yearn that drives all social media: “Look at me! Notice me!” Fitness easily slips toward lust and envy if any allowance is made for those feelings, since the gym is akin to an emporium for showing off. But I know that my reasons for fitness remained solid, since quitting drinking remained paramount and I was literally replacing the urge to drink with the urge to work out.
Within a short time, I could not go a single day without exercise just as I had so often required a beer at the end of a workday before my commitment to sobriety. A flip had occurred in my brain regarding how and when I received my happy chemicals. The boost from alcohol came with a follow-up nadir of depression, whereas the runner’s high only came with fatigue and a solid night of sleep. If anything, the only negative side-effect of running was an increase in appetite.
I mentioned that snacking on celery became a regular thing, but so did unexpected food binges as my body sought to maintain a certain caloric intake, and going from no exercise to regular exercise proved difficult for me in balancing my diet. If I succeeded for two days with a good diet, I crashed on the third and engorged myself on carbs to an embarrassing degree. This pattern continues to this day where I can eat well for a while and then the day of reckoning comes when sugar and starch becomes under attack in my kitchen.
When I realized I could run 13 miles, the next goal became the full marathon and I signed up and began to train. Once I committed to the plan and started logging more miles, I became more hungry and it seemed that every time I did a run and hour or two, the remainder of the time I spent thinking about Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. As the miles used up the glucose and sugar in my body, my mind turned to food and specifically the most sugary cereals I could find. At some point I had to stop buying it because if I had Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the house, a shameless devouring would ensue until the box was gone. Once again, the tendency toward excess ruled me. Even with the fitness and running, I pursued it excessively, just as I had drank alcohol. And apparently I had this same vice breaking out into the world of breakfast cereals as well. I was a carb monster.
The effect of all the exercise did improve my family and marriage relationships as I had a purpose and they saw this change happening. Without question, replacing alcohol with exercise created a rising tide in the house that lifted all boats. Like other people at the gym, I concurred that getting my daily exercise meant sanity could win the day, and I was a better citizen of the world with exercise than without it. Over the last thirty years, the “good” of exercise seems to have become a platitude among many Americans, as if there really is something inherently correct in the habit or act of body movement. But I suspect this is a Western or American idea mostly, since we love to celebrate goals and the will to succeed. I recall my grandmother asking me why I was running and exercising so much and it dawned on me that no one of the old farming generations would have bothered to run or lift anything, because their entire lives were a struggle of lifting and moving from sunrise to sunset. I recall her weeding a massive garden every day, carrying pails to feed animals, picking and peeling apples, canning, jarring, cleaning, feeding. My job in a software company required almost no movement, no effort other than thinking. Then I realized that the only people I interacted with at the gym were those with sedentary jobs, who lacked movement. Carpenters or construction workers did not need to burn some extra calories after a day of labor. The gym then almost seemed a kind of privileged place just like in ancient Greece, where the rich and aristocratic could wile away the day.
As I approached my first marathon, I injured my calf, pulling my soleus muscle, bad enough that I had to rest for a few weeks. Likewise, I began to feel stronger with weights and heaved my shoulder into an injury by grabbing larger weights than necessary. When these downtimes occurred, I realized that in replacing alcohol with exercise, if my body failed due to injury, I would be once again back to square one and searching for a hobby or purpose to fill the void. Rather than dwell on that awful idea, of emptiness underneath the muscle, I planned to be more careful in my exercise and not let my aging body suffer the vanity of my mind. I would stifle the urge to run too fast or lift too much weight, since that could destroy my ability to exercise and steal my joy away.
I ran through snow, sun, and rain. I didn’t miss days, avoided excuses, and pushed onward. The book Born to Run had a large impact on me as I realized that endurance sports held a spiritual secret that I wanted to unlock. This quote struck me as profound and it powered me through some long runs on the trail.
“We've got a motto here-you're tougher than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can.”
This kept me believing that my old knees could carry be through that first marathon. When the day arrived, I had done a 20 mile test run in preparation and had cramped terribly through the last two miles. The day of the race started with perfect weather. My soleus muscle appeared healed. I was ready.
In the third mile of that race I pulled my soleus muscle again and I started limping and walking, but the pain was tolerable and I had already decided that I would finish that race even if I destroyed my body in the process. This marathon marked a rite of passage from drunken slob to tempered strength. This was a victory of the will and I pushed past the pain for the rest of the morning.
Someone said that a marathon starts at mile 20 and I discovered the reason. In the last six miles, the muscles start to misfire. I could see my calves vibrating, bubbling like the blood was boiling inside, or aliens were about to emerge from my skin. Every step becomes painful as the shortage of salt and water punishes the nerves and muscle fibers. I found a fellow suffering runner to cajole along with me who could barely move his thighs while I bemoaned by calves and hamstrings. Eventually he told me to go ahead without him as he needed to walk, so I departed from him and continued. My family popped out at various points and cheered, making me grateful to the point of watery eyes, as I didn’t deserve their love for simply running a race that I needed to prove to myself was possible. My kids carried signs with funny sayings and banged the cowbells.
In the last few miles the crowd thinned and I was alone for a stretch where I could review my year. The date of the race was one year after my arrest. I had remained sober for a year and changed my body and mind. The suffering of the last miles in the first marathon was a graduation from the past year, from a past life, as if I had turned the page on the chapter of life known as young adulthood, or the drinking years.
As I saw the finish line and heard the music, I began to get emotional in realizing what this meant to me and I thanked God for that policeman who pulled me over and arrested me. This was the journey of life and hope and faith. I was nowhere near the end of the journey but this marked a milestone, just as running across the Golden Gate bridge had struck me as a priceless moment. There was something to endurance. To keep going, always, always keep going - this would carry me through the marathon and my marriage. I could endure. With God’s help, who was always with me, for that strength and direction that I needed and could never muster by myself. My kids ran with me to the finish line. While I was not perfect, I was improving. I finished the race in just under four hours.
