What would remain
A question from a thousand miles of loops.
I have this little stretch of gravel and dirt that surrounds a small lake nearby. It’s nothing much. Maybe six miles worth if you hit every part of it. In the winter, this place gets frigid. In the summer, there’s no shade to block the scorching sun. I’ve seen deer, dragonflies, rabbits, cottonmouths, bald eagles, and otters there. It also has more biting flies than anywhere else on the planet!
Since moving to the area a few years ago, I’ve logged over a thousand miles here. And it’s on all of those loops that I’ve thought about so much. Work. Family. Who I’m becoming. Who I’m not. The repetition of those loops does something to my brain. Same trail, different thoughts. Or sometimes the same thoughts, finally making sense.
On a recent outing, a thought surfaced that I haven’t been able to fully get through. I’m not sure why it popped up. Maybe the cold air. Maybe the fact that I’m nine months out from attempting a hundred miles. Maybe turning forty this year. But the question landed and it stayed with me the whole run.
What would remain of who you are if you stopped choosing hard things?
I’ve been thinking about the scaffolding of my life lately. The structure I’ve built around who I am. The miles. The sobriety. The routines and rituals I’ve put in place that keep me pointed in the right direction.
My first instinct with that question was to deflect. To say something like “that’s not going to happen” and just move on. But the whole point of writing here is to sit in the discomfort long enough to learn something. So I stayed with it…
I think it’s because the hard things are loud and visible. They’re the parts of me that feel most earned.
When someone asks what I’ve been up to and I mention I’m training for an ultramarathon, there’s a reaction. When I tell people I haven’t had a drink in three years, there’s a reaction. These things announce themselves. They carry weight in a conversation.
But when I really look at what fills my days with meaning, it’s much quieter than all that.
Dakota doesn’t care that I’m training for Javelina. She just turned one. She doesn’t know what an ultramarathon is. What she knows is whether I’m on the floor playing with toys with her or not. Whether I’m present or checked out, staring down at my phone. Whether my energy says “I’m here” or “I’m somewhere else.”
Payton is fourteen. She knows exactly what a hundred miles means. She was there when I crossed the finish line at Burning River back in 2024, fifty miles through the Ohio heat. She saw what that looked like. The exhaustion. The emotion in the final miles. The whatever-that-was on my face when it was finally done. But the thing I keep coming back to is I don’t think what stuck with her was the finish line itself… At her age, she’s not just watching what I do. She’s almost certainly watching why I do it. She’s forming her own ideas about what discipline looks like, what presence looks like, what kind of person she wants to become. And whether she’d ever say it out loud or not, she’s taking notes.
Two daughters at completely different stages. One needs me on the floor. The other needs me to be someone worth paying attention to. Neither of them cares about my mile splits.
Felicia didn’t marry me because I can suffer well. She married me because of something else entirely. Something I honestly still don’t fully understand (I’m a lot to handle!), but I know it has nothing to do with streak counts or finish lines.
The people I love aren’t keeping score of my discipline.
So what would actually remain if I couldn’t run another step? If I woke up tomorrow and the hard things were off the table?
I think the curiosity would still be there. That restless need to understand why things work the way they do. Why people make the choices they make. Why some systems work so well and others fall apart.
The writing would still be there. I've been journaling privately for a few years now. It's how I process. How I work through the stuff that doesn't have anywhere else to go. This blog is newer, and I'm still figuring out what it wants to be. But the underlying habit isn't about building an audience or proving I have something important to say. It's simpler than that. Someday I'll be gone, and in the rare event that my kids or their kids ever want a deeper look into who I actually was, it'll be there. A regular guy just trying to make sense of things in real time.
And the part of me that wants to be a good father and husband... that would still be there. That’s not something I’m doing because it’s difficult. It’s something I’m doing because it’s the whole point.
And so I think where I keep getting stuck thinking through it all is that I’m not sure I’d have access to those softer things without the structure the hard things provide.
Quitting drinking wasn’t just a challenge I took on to prove something. It was the prerequisite for being present at all. Before I stopped drinking, I wasn’t on the floor with Dakota because Dakota didn’t exist yet. But more than that, I wasn’t really on the floor with anyone. I was there, but I wasn’t there if that makes sense. The absence of alcohol didn’t just remove something. It made room for everything else.
The training isn’t about proving I’m tough. It’s about creating the container that keeps everything else from spilling out. The early mornings and long runs give me a structure that holds the rest of my life in place. Without it, I’m not sure I’d be as patient, as grounded, or as available for the people who need me.
So maybe the hard things aren’t the point. But maybe they’re also not separate from the point either. Maybe they’re the trunk that the softer, quieter, more meaningful stuff grows on.
I’m going to turn forty later this year. And I think the question that found me out on that gravel loop is actually the question of this next chapter approaching.
Not “what hard thing should I do next” but more of a “what kind of person do I want to be when the hard things are eventually done?”
Because they will be done eventually. The body will eventually slow down (hopefully not anytime soon though!). The races will end. The Strava streaks will stop. I won’t be running these trails forever.
And what I want to remain is not just the memory of someone who could suffer. I want what remains to be the presence I brought to my days with my family. The way I made people around me feel. The words I left behind that maybe helped someone else sit in their own discomfort long enough to learn something.
I don’t know who I am without the hard things.
But I’m becoming more and more certain that the hard things aren’t the point.