Intro to Gratitude

There are moments in our lives where we have been working hard for something, or we desire something with everything in our heart, and for some reason it doesn’t work out. We often question ourselves and adopt the “Why me?” mentality, which I’m guilty of. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate chaos because it throws everything off and challenges you to adapt. As crazy as this may seem, I’ve developed a sense of gratitude for those moments. I played football in high school and started college with the itch to compete. For years, I was staying in shape by lifting weights, but it never satisfied me. I missed the preparation for a competition, the build-up to gameday, and the feeling after of playing good competition. I had seen marathon runners and triathletes compete in their respective races, but thought that I was never good enough to do that. It wasn’t until my first year in grad school where I was talking to my friend about wanting to do competitive races and starting out with a 5k, and he just told “Screw it, just run the full marathon. It’s going to suck anyways.” And I thought, “Yeah, it is going to suck. But I have nothing to lose.” That night, I signed up for my first marathon (LA Marathon), ordered my running shoes, and started training the next day. I didn’t follow any diet or training plan, I just went out and ran every day. All the runners who know what they’re doing are probably rolling their eyes or just thinking to themselves, “Poor guy has no idea what he got himself into”.

Fast forward to race day, March 8, 2020. I got lucky because it was the last major event before COVID shut everything down. I drove to the Los Angeles Convention Center to pick up my bib, and I remember seeing all the runners and feeling so intimidated. I thought, ”These guys look so prepared and I don’t have any idea what I am doing.” I go to my hotel, get my outfit ready, and the next morning I head over to Dodger Stadium to start the race. I’m nervous but excited at the same time to be back in a competitive stage, and I kept telling myself to do your best and you’ll only get better. I don’t know how I finished, but I willed myself across the finish line. My final time was 6 hours and 9 minutes, and my entire body was in so much pain. But I was overwhelmed with emotion, because I proved to myself that I could run a marathon and I didn’t quit. After I recovered, I couldn’t wait to get back out there and do it again.

As we know, COVID shut the world down and I stopped running. I have no explanation as to why, I just wasn’t in the mood to run. In hindsight, I would’ve loved to have taken that time to train and get my body in actual running shape but instead I just sat on the couch and gained weight. As the next two years go on, I don’t go on a single run. For some reason, I was nervous to run again. I didn’t want to feel pain in my legs, I didn’t want to feel slow on my run, I didn’t want to feel judged while I was out on the road. A lot of negative thoughts clouded my mind and I decided to keep pushing it back. As a result, I started to gain a lot of weight and lost a lot of conditioning. Although I was scared to run again, I still loved it. I wasn’t going to not run again, I was just in a weird mental state and needed to overcome it. Fast forward to July 2nd, 2022 and I’m at a 4th of July party with close friends and we’re discussing health and fitness and the topic of running comes up. I talked about how great it is, the benefits it brings, and how although it is difficult at times, the reward is so much greater than the suffering. One of my friends and I kept talking more about marathons, and we agreed to do a half marathon to get back into running. I was so excited because I finally got the motivation to run again and somebody was going to be training with me and hold me accountable. I go home that night, find the next race that will give us adequate training time, order new running shoes, and find a training plan to follow. Our next race was going to be the Malibu Half Marathon on Nov. 6th, 2022.

I started training using a running plan from Nike and it started out rough. I started training at about 260 pounds and my Garmin Watch would intimidate me because it would show my heart rate being so high and it was easy to get discouraged. Luckily, I have a great group of friends who kept motivating and encouraging me. The weeks go by and I am doing well. Pace is improving, my weight is dropping weight, I ran 10 miles in training and felt that it was getting easier. First weekend of October, about a month out from the race, I wake up with a terrible stomach ache. I was sick for about two days with a fever, vomiting, body aches, and overall fatigue. To me, it’s just a stomach bug that will go away in a couple of days and I’ll be back to normal. At this point, I was hyper focused on training that all I cared about was getting back on track. Well, the stomach bug turned into a stomach infection, and it didn’t go away. I kept feeling weak for about a couple of weeks and decided to go to the doctor to get it checked out. Doctor gave me some antibiotics and I thought I was going to be fine. But the next day, I woke up and my hand was in so much pain. I was mostly frustrated because I’m thinking, “What now?”. My hand is swollen, but the stomach pain went away and I took a painkiller and forgot about my hand. I went to bed and woke up the next morning with my left knee extremely swollen and I couldn’t put any pressure on it. I was really scared because now I have no idea what’s going on with my body. I head to the ER feeling nervous and afraid. I’m in the ER for about 10 hours while they run tests on me and trying to determine what I have. An orthopedic surgeon comes in around 10 pm and drains about 80 ounces of fluid from my knee. It was the most excruciating pain I’ve ever felt. The nurses hook me up to an IV to give me antibiotics, my fever is going crazy, and next thing I know, I spend the next 4 days in the hospital. The doctor diagnosed me with Reactive Arthritis, a direct result from the stomach infection. Any idea of doing a half marathon in a couple weeks was out the door. I was very upset and cried so much in the hospital bed because I had worked so hard for this race and I wasn’t going to get an opportunity to showcase the work I had done. The second night in the hospital, I couldn’t really sleep because my mind was racing. It was painful to even move my leg on the bed. I couldn’t walk to go to the bathroom, and I always needed assistance to get out of bed or to even move. It was a very humbling experience to say the least because I had spend the last three months training and now I can’t even move my leg without pain. At that point, I was just grateful to be alive and have the nurses and doctors there to take care of me. When I was discharged from the hospital, I had already accepted that I wasn’t going to compete in the race and was focused on getting better. It was hard to accept, but I knew that better things were coming. As I’m recovering, I decide that I’m still going to the race to support my friends (I got others to sign up) and offer advice on race day. Although I had accepted I wasn’t racing, I still felt sad that I wasn’t able to compete.

I went to Malibu for the race and headed to the expo to pick up my runner’s packet even though I wasn’t racing. Some people may think it’s weird, but I wanted to do it to get the feel for the environment and more than anything, get motivation. I picked up my bib and shirt and headed back to my car. I looked at the Malibu beach and teared up a little bit to let out last minute frustrations. As I left the area, I kept telling myself “I’ll come back to run this race next year, better than ever. I will overcome this challenge and be an inspiration to others”. I head back to the hotel to hang with my friends who are running, have dinner, and the next morning we head down to the beach for the start of the race. I watched my friends cross the start line and felt a sense of gratitude. Gratitude because I’m walking on my own two feet where two weeks ago I couldn’t even move my leg. Gratitude because my other friends are healthy and ready to complete. But I felt the most gratitude because I was alive and surrounded by good people that I care about. My friends finished the race and I was very proud of them. They did so well, and it felt nice to be surrounded by the running community. I left the race motivated to recover and get back out on the road as soon as possible. When I left Malibu and headed home, I felt the overwhelming sense of gratitude. We don’t know why things don’t work our way. For me, it hit me hard that I wasn’t able to race. But as the days went on, I felt more at peace with the situation and was just grateful to be alive. I know this isn’t the last time adversity will affect me. I know some crazy thing will happen again in the future that may mess up my plans, but the difference is that I won’t lose my sense of gratitude. The gratitude I feel to wake up and have another opportunity to get 1% better and the end of the day, that’s all you can ask for, is the opportunity.