What Running Still Means to Me
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- Embracing the Cold: Why Winter Running Can Be a Gift - October 7, 2025
- School’s Out, Summer’s In - July 7, 2025
Fall has always been my favorite season for running. I’ve written that here before, and I wasn’t exaggerating. The cool air, the smell of leaves after a little rain, the chance to get out before the rest of the world is fully awake. A run doesn’t need to be particularly fast or memorable to feel like exactly what you needed. Sometimes the ordinary miles are the ones you miss the most.
Fall still arrives every year, of course. The leaves change, the air gets that familiar edge, and I remember why I loved this time of year so much. What hasn’t returned is my ability to head out and run. That’s a harder sentence to write than it probably looks. I’ve written more about that feeling in The Beauty of Fall Running.
If you’ve been around Your Runner Dad for a while, none of this is breaking news. I’ve talked about my health challenges here before, including ME/CFS and fibromyalgia, and how they’ve changed what I can do. I wish I could tell you there’s been some dramatic turning point, complete with a triumphant finish-line photo and a lesson about how I never gave up. There hasn’t. And I don’t want to pretend otherwise.
For a long time, running wasn’t just exercise. It gave structure to the day, something to work toward, and a way to connect with people who understood the peculiar satisfaction of willingly doing something difficult. We runners can spend an absurd amount of time talking about shoes, weather, pacing, races, and what to eat afterward. From the outside, I realize that probably sounds ridiculous. From the inside, it feels like a community.
Losing the ability to participate in something you love is strange. You don’t simply stop caring about it. You still notice a perfect running morning. You still understand why someone is excited about a first 5K or disappointed by a race that didn’t go as planned. You still have the memories, the opinions, and, in my case, a website filled with evidence that you have never been short on either.
What changes is how you see your place in it all. For a while, I wasn’t sure what a running blog was supposed to be when the person behind it couldn’t really run. It felt a little like showing up to a party without the right invitation. Except, of course, I helped throw the party in the first place.
When I started blogging, I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out what to write, how to reach people, and whether anybody was actually reading. There were contests, giveaways, social media conversations, and plenty of experiments. Some worked. Some probably deserved to be forgotten. But the best part wasn’t a number on a screen. It was the people.
Over the years, I had the opportunity to interview remarkable runners, including Meb Keflezighi, Des Linden, Kara Goucher, Bart Yasso, and Dean Karnazes. I also heard from everyday runners with stories every bit as meaningful to them as a major race win. I wrote about those connections in an earlier post, and I still wonder how some of those people are doing. That part of this website has always mattered to me. You can read more in my reflection on eleven years of blogging.
And then there’s the Dad part of Your Runner Dad. Life with a family doesn’t operate on a training schedule. Children grow. Priorities change. Plans fall apart, occasionally in spectacular fashion. Running taught me a lot about effort and patience, but family life has a way of testing those lessons in places that don’t come with aid stations or a finish line.
I don’t want this blog to become a running obituary, though. Running is still happening, and there are people out there getting ready for their first mile, their next race, or a return after a long break. There is plenty worth discussing, from how to choose an event to the small things that make running more enjoyable. I still want this to be a useful place for them.
What I won’t do is write as though I completed a morning workout yesterday when I didn’t. If I’m sharing a memory, it should be a memory. If I’m offering practical information, it should be properly researched and current. And when something is simply my opinion, you’ll know it. Those seem like reasonable rules for a blog that has always had a little too much advice to offer.
I also want to make room for the rest of life. Parenthood, the outdoors, motivation, disappointment, and figuring out who you are when something that once defined you changes. The running community is filled with people doing exactly that in one way or another. Some are healthy and flying. Some are recovering from setbacks. Some are figuring out whether they’ll ever make it back to the start line. There’s room for all of them here.
In an earlier post, I asked if anybody was still out there. It was a fair question, considering how inconsistent I’ve been about publishing. The honest answer is that I miss the conversations. I miss hearing somebody else’s story and remembering that even a brief connection can stick with you for years.
So this is my attempt to show up again. Not with a promise of daily posts, not with a new training plan that my body isn’t ready for, and definitely not with a shiny reinvention of my personality. Just with a renewed interest in sharing things worth reading, paying attention to the people behind the miles, and occasionally making a joke at my own expense. Some traditions are too important to abandon.
If you’re out running right now, I hope you enjoy some of those ordinary miles for both of us. If running has become complicated for you, I hope you’ll stick around too. And if you originally found this website because of the parenting stories and the questionable advice, don’t worry. I haven’t suddenly become wiser.
The miles may look different from here. The reasons I loved them haven’t gone anywhere. Neither has Your Runner Dad.