Don't scream into the void, run into it.
Some reflections on running and who I am because of it.
Before this year, I had no history of exercise. I never played organized sports, barring a year of rec center basketball in elementary school. Apparently I was very good at dribbling and ball handling but the average elementary schooler sucks at those things anyway. I had a 24 Hour Fitness membership throughout high school and college, mostly paid for by my mom. (Sorry, mom!) I would go with my brother or my girlfriend but I never had a plan or regiment; I think I was hoping that doing random bicep curls or angled leg presses would do something to my body. During lockdown in 2020, my girlfriend facilitated yoga at home but it stuck for her more than it did me. So, it makes perfect sense that at 28, after having no motivation to exercise or generally use my body for anything, I’m running my first marathon. Whenever I tell people that I’m running the LA Marathon this year, it surprises me more than anybody else.
The question “What do you write?” feels loaded, not necessarily malicious, but definitely strange in a way that isn’t consistent with other fields. Asking someone in medical school what type of medicine they intend to practice or someone in law school what type of law they want to practice doesn’t feel as convoluted as asking a – in big air quotes – writer what they write.
People have known me as a writer for as long as I can remember. I can’t say what kind, of what class, just that I write. I’m not sure people know what that means anymore — myself included — but my college years garnered a healthy amount of “What do you write?” and “How’s the writing going?” type conversations at parties.
It became my identity for a time. Like other poor souls in the early-to-mid decade, I threw myself at unpaid internships, worked in content mills, and reviewed stuff I didn’t care about so that I could write. Some of it felt tedious and even meaningless, but it felt good to see anything with my name on it. The pivot to video and events like the grand opening, grand closing of MTV News’ editorial damaged my psyche. Just as I thought I was doing “the right thing” and putting in the work, as I thought my chance to get a foot in the door would come, the industry took a step back. Those events set the foundation for the massive layoffs and shuttering of magazines and publications over the past two years. While financially detached from editorial and writing as work, it is still incredibly saddening to watch friends struggle and to watch creative outlets die slow deaths. Still, I wrote and now still, I write. It’s just how I am.
The only run I can remember vividly from before this calendar year happened in late 2019. At some point that year, my girlfriend and I bought running shoes. It was casual, almost instinctive. We walked into a Nike outlet, saw some shoes on sale – girl math before the phrase was invented – and walked out with them. I got a pair of Vomero 14s, the deep purple ones with the gray and neon swoosh. I think at the time I thought buying shoes would force me to work out or make some effort to be physically healthy.
I have a long history of retail therapy. I’ve gone down way too many rabbit holes that have zapped up a few dollars for some temporary happiness – video games, CS:GO skins, DSLR cameras, mechanical keyboards, to name a few. It made sense to my brain that spending money on something would lead to further exploration. It’s basic math! It didn’t happen but the shoes are cool. I still have them and they’ve held up well.
I know it was late 2019 because, at that time, I was working for another coffee shop when my weekends were split between a random day during the week and a day on the weekend. I also know because I distinctly remember running with a Champions League fixture playing on my phone. Inter was playing. It was their first year with Romelu Lukaku and Lautaro Martinez together when they dropped into the Europa League after finishing third in the Champions League group stage, ultimately finishing second in Serie A. I would guess they were playing Dortmund because, in 2019, I was a soccer nerd and that’s exactly the type of match a nerd is making time for.
I also vividly remember being excited for a Europa League group stage match between Saint-Etienne and Wolfsburg. Influenced by both unnecessary amounts of FIFA and generally eating up all soccer, I loved Wolfsburg being full of incredibly Solid Guys™ and I thought Josip Brekalo could make the jump to the Premier League or La Liga. (He now plays on loan at Hajduk Split.) I also loved Jerome Roussillon at left back for Wolfsburg. I still think Roussillon never got a fair shot at the French national team, especially considering Lucas Digne and Layvin Kurzawa were constantly in rotation.
I don’t remember anything about the run itself. I ran from my apartment just outside of downtown, the first place I moved out of my family home for and the first place I shared with my girlfriend, to Tactile Coffee, a coffee shop just outside of Filipinotown that closed early in 2021. This was even before the giant HISTORIC FILIPINOTOWN arch was installed. I remember getting one of their specialties, a cortado with dark chocolate ganache finished with sea salt. They served it on a small tray with a single Teddy Graham.
Before I started training for the marathon, I probably ran a maximum of three or four times in the years since I bought those shoes – that was until spring of last year. I wasn’t writing as much as I wanted to, so I thought running could be a new frontier for me. I did run a few miles in April, May, and June, but it was hard. I ran 15-30 minutes max and every time felt like a new death. The shortness of breath was new and unpleasant but it was the sweat that was crazy, enough to scare the Fremen to death. I didn’t drop running per se but I didn’t run at all during the summer.
In November, my girlfriend and I took a trip to New York City. We made loose plans, to hang out with one of her best friends, to see one of my aunts, but mostly, to gallivant around the city. We took the train and bounced around Lower Manhattan and up and down Brooklyn. (Scarr’s is fine. Reception Bar is worth the wait.) On our last full day in the city, by chance, we stumbled upon the New York Marathon. We were in Greenpoint, walking to the Nassau Ave station, when we heard the crowds began to cheer. The roads were empty so we assumed we would be looking at the elite runners, the fastest in the heat. Through the hundreds of people cheering, we witnessed a handful of people on wheelchairs and handcycles. My girlfriend started crying. I can’t blame her.
We went about our day, straying away from the beautiful noise of the marathon to East Williamsburg, enjoying lunch and coffee. Win Son Bakery, a new classic and a staple in this part of town. It was packed but it was our first time so we didn’t mind waiting. I never really got accustomed to the New York cold but the $3 cup of broth that came in a latte cup hit like a warm blanket. After coffee, we made it back to the city and wanted to make a customary trip to Central Park. The park wouldn’t close for the marathon, right? Technically speaking, sure.
I forgot what station we got off at but we got off a stop or two earlier than we should have, so we had a short walk. When we got to street level from the station, we were greeted by the marathon finishers. “Zombies,” my girlfriend said. There wasn’t any excitement or warmth like we experienced in Greenpoint, or at least that’s what it felt like. We were walking north on Central Park West but traveling up and down were dozens, hundreds of finishers wrapped in emergency blankets, bereft of air, drenched in sweat, looking for loved ones, for calories.
After walking a few blocks, we managed to finally cross the street into Central Park and make it to the section of the lake where people can ride on the classic swan boats. We waited close to an hour and almost got on a boat. We were the first people they declined. So, we walked around the park but we also got to see more of the marathon. Where we were in the park, we were situated somewhere between miles 23 and 24. So close, yet so far. It didn’t really hit me then but I had a feeling. I’ve always loved that feeling, of being amongst people. Here I was in New York City with the person I love the most watching hundreds of strangers cheer on hundreds of other strangers. I think the seeds for this weekend were planted then.
For me, writing has been spontaneous, expressive, frustrating, but above all, free. I’ve written about everything worth writing about for work – music, sports, food, whatever – and I’ve compiled various papers on several centuries of Greek, Roman, and American literature. (Don’t ask me about it, I don’t remember shit about academia.) Writing has functioned as self-expression and a way to untangle the various clusters in my brain. In that way, I was a terrible writer. I always went with the flow, never using rough drafts or outlines, always cutting it close with deadlines. Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it wasn’t. Above all, writing brought order to the chaos in my brain.
Running is a different animal, same beast. It’s also expressive and frustrating in its own way but it requires planning, intention, and consistency — three things I was bad at or oblivious to. After learning the discipline, it too became spontaneous and free. Unlike writing though, it’s physical chaos. Constant aches and pains, long or mundane distances, early mornings, cold mornings, hot afternoons. It’s a very quiet kind of chaos, a long drawn-out commitment to slow masochism. It’s funny because I’ve always said – and I still believe – I hate going to the gym. It’s boring, that’s it really, but theoretically it would make more sense that short workouts would be more enjoyable for someone like me instead of running for three hours. Go figure!
Running has taught me to be better. Not just a better person, or better with my health, or better with people, though you can argue those things to a degree. At the end of the day, just better. Throughout most of my life, I compartmentalized my behavior and emotions into good and bad. It wrecked me for the longest time. I could never give myself grace, whether it was work or personal stuff. If I made a mistake at work, it was hard to move on because those mistakes didn’t just feel like an event, they felt like a reflection of who I was. This mindset precluded me from ever giving myself the lenience to make mistakes. I couldn’t try to be better, to be faster or slower, to be smarter or more intuitive, it just was what it was.
I started training for the LA Marathon in November. I knew about Koreatown Run Club for a long time before then. They posted about CAMP, short for Community Assisted Marathon Program, and I attended a large meeting with 200 other people explaining how the whole thing would go. Run this many miles, rest and recover, do it again, do that for 16 weeks, then run the marathon. I dove in head first, unsure what to expect, but I told myself to just do it.
The first long run I did with KRC is probably the hardest run I have ever been on. It was an 8-mile out-and-back starting at Silverlake Meadows with a turnaround on the LA River bike path. I found myself short of breath after two miles, unbeknownst to me at the time was I was running with the group of runners pacing at 8 minutes per mile. I had never run a mile faster than 8:30 in my life before then. I ached and wheezed down the bike path and made it back to the park. I don’t remember how I felt, just that I finished.
During one of our last long runs of the training season, I decided to throw in the towel early because of knee pain that has persisted throughout training. I may not have shown it but I was mad as fuck. It felt like one of those moments where I would’ve gone crazy if something like that happened to me a year before. To make it so far but not finish. A few people in KRC were considerate and reassuring. On one hand, yeah, I didn’t make it all the way. On the other, I walked away with a wonky knee instead of a potentially injured one. (It was also absolutely fucking pouring and I still made it 14 miles but not the planned 20. Boo hoo, I guess.)
“Binaries are for children.” I’m not sure where I heard this but it has resonated with me, one of those phrases you think about when you’re going about your day. I’ve learned to live in the gray instead of wanting things to be black or white. To be just good or bad, per se. You always hear people say stuff like “things aren’t black or white” but I don’t know how often we really practice what we preach when we say things like this. Maybe it’s one of those things where people hear words but aren’t listening to the message. 20 miles in the rain, pfft. Yeah, not finishing what you started sucks but being able to walk away is better. Take the good with the bad.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned from running is to put one foot in front of the other. Literally speaking, that’s good advice. I’m not thoroughly knowledgeable about the science of distance running (yet) but I know you need to keep going. For the longest time, both in work and personal life, it was the fear of failure that prevented me from ever putting one foot out in the first place. You can’t. Why bother putting that foot out when there’s nowhere to go? Only up from here, they say. I didn’t think so. When it comes to running, I guess it’s sufficient motivation when you’re several miles away from your car and you have no choice but to keep going.
Running to something and running from something can feel like the same thing. The majority of my life has been spent doing the latter. The weight of responsibility is heavy from a young age, the importance of schoolwork, of showing up for your family, of showing up for your friends, of being present in the now, but also building for the future. I think I’ve taken these things for granted for a long while now. You can run from one, or run to another, but you can’t keep running away.
This weekend, I’ll be running three miles with KRC and a few other run crews. I’m looking forward to celebrating our accomplishments, the hundreds of miles we have logged, and to one final run, one I will be doing with friends. Then, of course, I’ll be running the LA Marathon. Ironically, I’ve never seen the marathon in my home city in-person. There’s a first for everything though.
I just want to take a minute to thank all the people who have gotten me to this point.
Thank you to Anthony, Celeste, and Aram for pacing our long run group. Absolutely wouldn’t have made it here without y’all.
Thank you to Jamie and Alfeno for pushing me and believing in my development even when I thought I was behind the pace.
Thank you to Clement for almost getting me killed one time at track night. Running a 7 minute mile pace hurt but it was nice to know I could do it, even for a moment.
Thank you to Julian for selling me my first singlet. I used to think they were funny but now they make me feel super cool.
Thank you to the 9-10 and 10-11 minute pace group for all your support, all the good times, and all the challenges.
Thank you to anyone at track night that I may have startled by blurting out a “good job” in the middle of a run. They’re for me, too.
Thank you to anyone who has volunteered at any of the aid stations for the KRC long runs.
Thank you to my loving girlfriend Patricia who always believes in me, even when I have not believed in myself.