The Shamrock

1:49:59

I made the decision before January 2nd. That’s the part that matters and the part most people get wrong. They think you need to feel ready. You don’t. You pick the program, you commit to it, and then January 2nd is just the day you start executing. The question of whether to go never comes up again because you already answered it.

So on January 2nd, 2012, I laced up and ran about a mile. It was hard. It was slow. My wife Erin was five months pregnant with our daughter Fiona. I had never run a half marathon in my life and wasn’t completely sure I could.

But Craig was running it.

Craig is my oldest friend. We met when I was eleven, the summer of 1987, the summer I moved in with my stepdad. Thirty-nine years later we’re still trying to beat each other at everything. We’d done the Nissan Xterra off-road triathlon together: swimming in the James River, mountain biking the trails, then running. I was a serious mountain biker. Fantastic on the bike, terrible in the water, worse runner. Craig and I always found our way to roughly even in whatever we were doing, which made competing with him both infuriating and addictive.

When I found out he was running the Shamrock Half Marathon, the decision was basically already made. If I was going to do it, I was going to beat him. And to beat him, I needed a plan. So I found a training program and decided to follow it. No guesswork. No improvising. Pick the program, execute the program, see what happens.

Five or six days a week. Short runs, hill work, variable pace, and long slow runs on weekends that built from three miles to four, four to five. There’s an office park in Richmond with lakes and trails I knew well. I worked there, so I’d run at lunch, then longer on weekends. One Saturday I ran ten miles in the snow, flakes sticking to me while I moved, which sounds miserable and kind of was and kind of wasn’t. Another Saturday I hit seven miles for the first time and something shifted. I can actually do this.

Mornings I didn’t want to go? That question wasn’t really on the table. I’d already made the decision. You don’t negotiate with a decision you’ve already made. You just go.

About six weeks in, I finished a long run and pulled out my phone. Thirty-six missed calls. Erin, five months pregnant, had driven to Maddie’s school because Maddie had taken a fall and broken her arm. The school had been trying to reach me. She’d been trying to reach me. I’d been in my little running pouch, phone vibrating against my hip for an hour, completely unreachable. By the time I looked at the screen they’d already handled it. Maddie was fine. Erin had gone.

I don’t carry guilt about that. Everything got handled. But when people ask me what it actually looks like to follow a system, thirty-six missed calls is part of the answer. You’re either in or you’re not. I was in.

Two weeks before race day the wheels almost came off.

What I thought were shin splints hit both legs. Bad enough that I wasn’t sure I’d make the starting line. Ten weeks of work, every run logged, every Saturday long run completed. And now this. I sat with it for a day or two and I was a mess. Not frustrated. Distraught. There’s a difference.

I didn’t let it sit. I went looking for solutions and found something called The Stick, a roller tool, basically a toothbrush for your muscles. I worked it deep into my calves. Turns out they’d gotten so tight they were pulling on the front of my shins, mimicking shin splints. A few days of that and the pain was gone.

I’ve told everyone with unexplained pain to try it since. Don’t let a setback make the decision for you. The solution might exist. Go find it.

Race day. Virginia Beach. March 2012.

I lost Craig at the start and assumed he was ahead of me. I have a weird way of pacing. Go hard early, find a rhythm, recover, hold it. I spent the first twelve miles believing I was chasing someone who was actually behind me the whole time. Which, looking back, was the best thing that could have happened.

Mile 7. Running through what I think was a Marine base, the turnaround point of the course. A wave of energy started at my toes and moved up through my entire body like a ring of light, from the ground straight through my head. I felt weightless. I felt like I could run forever. I literally jumped, pumped my fist, shouted something I don’t even remember. Every turbo light in my body came on at once. That’s the runner’s high people talk about. I’d never felt it before. I’ve chased it since.

Around mile 12 I ran past our wives on the sideline, Erin five months pregnant, cheering. I shouted over my shoulder: “Where’s Craig?”

“He’s behind you.”

I didn’t have time to process it. Just kept running.

The finish is on the boardwalk in Virginia Beach. Long, flat, deceptively far. You see the end and think you can sprint it. The boardwalk has other ideas. That last half mile was the most painful part of the race. I crossed the line not feeling great, legs gone, the finish-line wobble setting in immediately. Fifteen minutes later I felt incredible.

The clock said 1:49:59.

That later got rounded to 1:50 in the official results and it still bothers me. 1:49 looks different than 1:50. I’m not going to lie about it. The record says 1:50. But I know what I ran.

Craig came in around 1:56. Six minutes back.

A few weeks later we ran the Monument Avenue 10K. My goal was sub-50. I ran 49:28. Craig ran just over 50. I hold both records between us.

There’s a 5K story I’ll tell another time. The one where he spits over his shoulder mid-race, turns around, sees me right there on his heels, and says “son of a bitch.” We both nearly threw up at the finish. He beat me by half a step. That friendship deserves its own issue. The seven Tough Mudders we did together deserve one too. That’s a whole other story.

After the 10K I stopped running.

Not dramatically. Not consciously. The goal was done, the next race was done, and I went back to normal life. The runs stopped. The conditioning I’d spent four months building quietly unraveled. The activity level that had become a daily habit just wasn’t there anymore. No single moment when it ended. Just a gradual return to before.

The training was real. The results were real. The system worked.

But it was built around a finish line. And once I crossed it, the system had no reason to keep running.

Phoenix Rising is different. That’s what I call the system I’ve been running for the past three years. No race to register for. No rival to beat by a specific date. The goal is to run the system. Not accomplish the goal. Get better today than yesterday. When something breaks, adjust. Keep going.

The Shamrock taught me I could do hard things when I followed a plan. It took another ten years to learn that the plan has to be the point.

Look at whatever you’re doing right now to take care of yourself. Is there a finish line built into it? A race, a deadline, a number to hit? That’s not a system. That’s a countdown.

And find someone who makes you run faster just by existing. Not a coach. Not an accountability partner. A friend who’d be genuinely annoyed if you beat them. That’s a different thing entirely. Not everyone gets one. If you have one, you know exactly what I mean.

A finite goal gets you to the finish line. An infinite system gets you somewhere worth staying.

The race ends. The system doesn’t.

Uncomplicated systems. Uncommon results.