I relapsed two weeks before Jersey City. I’ve been sober 7 years, with two relapses thrown in. My recovery journey hasn’t been perfect, but I’m a happier, better person when I’m sober. So I keep trying.

The hard part about Miami wasn’t the humidity. It was running out of money while unemployed, being kicked out of my apartment, and having my flight cancelled during a snowstorm the day I needed to be back to sign a lease….

God bless the cheerers. We’d be nowhere without them. And certainly god bless Coach Doc.

After years of telling my college sweetheart I’d come visit her, I finally realized there was a marathon in her backyard (literally, the start line is across the street from her husband’s parents’ house). And a race did what decades of love had not. It got me to buy a plane ticket.

Saturday night, everyone in the hotel is staying up late, kids are running up and down the hall, it's 3am, and Mal has barked loudly every 30-60 minutes. I was sure my marathon was toast.

We talked about my race plan, how I shouldn't have PR'ed my shakeout run, the importance of writing things down (or, I suppose, these days anyway, typing them out).

The rain isn't even raining. It's a permeating mist that just exists everywhere simultaneously in the predawn dark. Luckily we're already back inside with coffee.