I just signed up for the Austin Marathon. Assuming I cross the finish line (crawling counts), Austin will be marathon #9 and the seventh state in my quest to run a marathon in all 50. I object to having to run one in Delaware since it is the size of the electronics department at Target, but well, at the very least, I can pick up a Blu-Ray while I’m in town for the race.

I wrote about why I run, but really, that is a more general explanation for why I gravitate towards the activity itself. Watching my dad as a child knock out the miles certainly convinced me to run, and it certainly convinced me I had to run a marathon before I died, but still, all this talk begs another question:

Why do I continue to run marathons?

Yes, I want to run one in each state, but that is lipstick. Let me explain.

If I can do it, great, it’s an accomplishment that adds to me and helps make me shine in the eyes of those who love me. Like lipstick. It will make me pretty, especially in memory.

“You know, your great grandfather ran a race in every state.”

“Even in Delaware?”

“Even in Delaware.”

But that doesn’t fuel me. And it won’t matter until the last state is crossed off.

What matters is why I wake up at 6 a.m. for three months in a row to take on a part-time job (training) for a race that will see me bargain with God, temporarily destroy my body, possibly make me vomit, definitely make me cry, and leave me with nothing more than a shitty t-shirt I can’t wear in public, a banana and a bagel, and the sensation that my body is on fire four to five days after the race.

Did I mention I have to pay for all this? $110 for Austin. That’s pricey for a bagel. I might as well pay a hooker to spoon me while I’m at it.

Why do I do it?

Because it makes me uncomfortable.

Comfortable scares the absolute shit out of me. I think that’s a term that should be reserved for recliners. I also think white picket fences are scarier than clowns, especially that one on the tricycle in “Saw,” and “how it’s usually done” is quite possibly the most frightening four words you can string together.

I don’t want to be comfortable. It’s why I have lived in six cities and four different states, why I took a job that I was probably 75% qualified to do, and why I run marathons.

When I line up to run a marathon in that 50th state, I will still think to myself, “I don’t know if I can do this.” At mile 10, I will convince myself I can. At mile 20, I will convince myself I can’t. Then I will spend the next 6.2 miles wondering how it’s possible to feel more alive than ever before despite the fact that I feel like I am dying.

The point is that not knowing keeps me wide-eyed in life, and really, not knowing is the definition of being uncomfortable. Not knowing keeps me aware; keeps me searching; keeps me wondering.

It keeps me running long distances in shorts that are too bright and too small to wear anytime or anywhere else in life.

Read Part 1 here

It didn’t.

He bought a treadmill, started running, and for a few weeks, his body held – like a beach home against a wretched wind and mounting floodwater.

He was running three miles every few days; then four, then five. I hung up the phone one day and thought to myself, “I should sign up for the half and run it with him. Or more appropriately, for him.”

A few days later, he called and broke the news:

“I’m done. For good.”

“With what?” I asked, knowing full well he was talking about running.

“With running. I’ve been in so much pain lately that I went to the doctor recently. He ordered me to stop running.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “Why?”

In true understated Minnesotan fashion, he replied, “Because I need a knee replacement.” If we would have been dining together, he may have added, “Pass the salt.”

I knew his knee would make or break his attempt to run the half. Twenty or so years earlier, he had major surgery on it and the cartilage was completely removed. Now, at 65, the bones in that knee were knocking into one another like bumper cars driven by teenagers who drank too much peppermint schnapps on prom night.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry dad.”

“Me too,” he responded.

He didn’t sound sad. Or disappointed. But I knew he was and is both. He keeps a lot to himself. He would never, ever cry over not being able to run again one last time. But he would and will reflect on it.

He will reflect on the fact that we never got the chance to run a marathon together. Not that we never ran a race. As a child, he would enter me into fun runs here and there. I remember crossing the finish line of a one-miler in my bright orange Sunkist t-shirt and white tube socks, gasping for breath, and falling into his arms.

Still, I think at different points in our lives, my father and I pictured us crossing the finish line of a marathon hand in hand, and that never happened. This is something I regret, and I am comfortable saying that. I don’t trust people who don’t like dogs; I don’t trust people who don’t admit failure, and I don’t trust people who say that they have no regrets.

But regret is also largely useless and wasteful. It’s one of those things that may be important to experience, but dangerous to hold onto. Call it a beautiful cactus under the setting sun.

I choose instead to hold onto my father, a brilliant man who no longer runs but will always be a runner – a father who I misunderstood for too long, liked for years, and started to love at 28.

I picture him untying his running shoes for the last time, placing them in box, and casually storing them next to a box full of Christmas ornaments and a bin of VHS tapes. To do anything more would be far too celebratory for a man who deserves a statue but who, under the dark of the night, would melt it down and use the metal for bath fixtures within the addition he is putting in at so-and-so’s house.

When my own wheels fall off 30 years from now, I will do the same. And when the time is right, I will open up both boxes, and jog down memory lane.

Months ago, I wrote about why I run. With that thought in mind, I started training for the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati, hoping to finish a marathon in less than 4 hours for the first time and knock Ohio off my list.

I finally crossed the finish line. I remember scrambling to find the bag pick-up location so I could pull my cell phone out of my back pack and call my father.

“I did it,” I said. “I made it. 3:51.”

“That’s great!” he exclaimed. “Wow!”

I thought of him, and what he would be doing at that exact moment we were talking, and I pictured him in his garage, cutting this part, or sawing this piece, or doing any one of 10 million things he is able to do with his hands. I pictured him building a toy train for my godson Aidan in that garage, or re-flooring his boat in the driveway, or moving dirt from here to there with his Bobcat in the yard.

People say the sky is the limit. My father would disagree, saying that a little scaffolding, a few power tools and some drill bits alone would allow him to build a hand-crafted wooden spiral staircase past them.

Raised in the brutally cold and unforgiving backwoods of Grand Rapids, MN, my father is the classic man’s man. Growing up, he hunted, fished, played every single sport imaginable and built big things out of little things or nothing at all with his hands. It’s not that he was always working; he was always doing. There’s a reason his number of surgeries is in the double digits.

People speak of the eye of the storm. For my father, that eye is his children. He is an old school worker bee modeled after a tornado that rarely rests.

But he rested when my sister Stephanie got married. He rested when my brother Lucas hugged him goodbye and moved to AZ, and when I called him from OH, moments after my run, I pictured him stopping, taking off his work gloves and picking up the phone.

“I love you so much,” he would say, ending the call after we had finished talking about the race.

“I love you too dad,” I responded. When I heard the click of him hanging up the phone, I said “I love you too dad,” a second time, knowing that I was sending that emotion off into nothingness, into space, into infinity.

“Really?” I asked. His slew of operations, injuries and accidents over a very physical lifetime came to mind. Then there was his slight limp, and the slower pace with which he was now getting out of a chair, or off the couch.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I want to do one more race. Just one.”

I didn’t doubt that he wanted to, or could. I just didn’t know if his body would hold up.

I’m not sure if Lucifer is an athlete, let alone a runner, but if he does run, I’d have to believe he doesn’t bother with the 5 and 10Ks. Not enough suffering. He’s definitely a marathon runner. Maybe even a ultra marathon runner. You know, when he’s not setting the underworld on fire and stuff.

Sometimes the party takes you places that you didn’t really plan on going.

That a line from Against’s Me!’s song “Thrash Unreal. A little editing turns that line into:

Sometimes your body takes you places that you didn’t really plan on going.

I remember singing up for my first marathon and thinking, “I just want to run one.” Then I ran it, signed up for my second, and thought, “I just want to run two.” Then I ran it, signed for my third, and thought, “I just want to run three.” And so on.

Seven later, and I am thinking, “I just want to run eight.” So today, I signed up for The Flying Pig Marathon in Cinncinnati May 3. After all, I like even numbers.

I’ve talked about why I run. That’s the psychological explanation behind it. 

There’s a another reason I continue to run. I’m a list crosser-offer. I like to spell out what I want to do in writing, and then check it off. I do it when I go grocery shopping (Get oranges, bananas, soy nuts and Diet Cherry Coke), and I do it when it comes to running.

My running list is titled “Run a marathon in each state by the time I turn 50.”

I’ve crossed off Minnesota, Arizona, Chicago, California and Vermont.

May 3, I hope to cross off Ohio.

I remember being 16 years old. My father has just completed another marathon in Duluth, MN. He was resting, and story-telling.

“Did I tell you about Iowa? No? I didn’t? Well, I once drove to Iowa to run a marathon. I don’t remember what number it was. I planned to sleep in my car in a park the night before the race, but around midnight, this cop tapped my window with his flashlight and I got kicked out a few minutes later.”

“Why didn’t you get a hotel?” I asked.

“It seemed like a waste of money,” he replied.

“So then what?” I asked.

“Well, after I got kicked out, I drove around for an hour looking for a place to park. I ended up just pulling my car into a cornfield, putting the driver’s seat back and falling asleep.”

“So what, you just slept a few hours in the car and then woke up and ran 26 miles?”

“Yeah.”

After that, I knew I would be a runner. I didn’t have a choice.

My father has run 30+ marathons. Today, he is not particularly old, but he is worn beyond the point where he wants to hurt himself to feel good.

That is sort of the point of a marathon. It is twisted, yet enthralling. Destructive, but reconstructive.

I have tried to stop running. Too many times to count. I’ve had surgery on both knees and continue to deal with a bad back that is as annoying as the barking dog next door, and as painful as a hot poker. Sometimes I swear I’m getting branded.

But I run.

I run because my father ran until he knew he was done. Until he knew his slower-paced son could run alongside him without breathing heavily.

“You go ahead,” he told me, several years ago when I was home for the holidays. We were out for a rare father-son run. One of only a handful we’ve enjoyed due to the distance between us.

That’s when I knew running had passed him by.

“No, I can slow down a little,” I replied.

“No, run ahead,” he insisted. Demanded, really. “I’m pretty slow these days.”

“It’s OK,” his eyes said. “Go.”

So I did. Because to slow down to run alongside him would have been an insult.

My dad has a bad back of his own. Maybe it’s from the running. Or maybe it’s from putting us three kids on it following my parents’ divorce.

When my own back hurts, I think of my father’s. I think of him. I think of all the miles he put on his running shoes, trying to put the pain of a failed marriage behind him. I think of all the tread he wore down trying to endure. For him, but mostly for his kids.

So I endure the pain. I run.

I run because I cannot stop running.