It's been 10 years since my first* cross-country race

At the start of my first cross-country race. I'm the one on the far left, in the shadow of that tall kid.

10 years ago today, an awkward, skinny, 14-year-old kid with ridiculous hair put on his running shorts backwards and headed to the starting line of his first high school cross country race, the Brian Plasman Invitational at Fairfield's Harbin Park. Despite a few summer months of training, and some other running experience, he didn't really know what he was doing. So he was a bit surprised, a half-mile or so into the two-mile freshman race, to find himself locked in a battle of wills for first place. But he turned his surprise into determination, hung with the other runner vying for victory, and, in the final stretch, out-kicked his competitor and won his first high school cross country race. (Somewhere, there is a picture of the moment I crossed the line, but I cannot find it.)

In the middle of my first race (I'm on the left). 

If you haven't figured it out by now, yes, I was that kid. And today is the tenth anniversary of that race, which I consider the official start of my running career. Memory can be an arbitrary thing; we can recall, years after the fact, useless random information or pointless details about our lives, while our best moments become only foggy recollections. But I'll always remember August 25, 2007, the day I became a runner.

Team prayer before the race. I'm the guy kneeling down to tie his shoes, of course.

I have a lot of reasons to remember a day like that. Starting my running career off with a win was certainly nice. But I think it's more important for the pattern it set. Because, for the subsequent decade of my life, running has been my life; I've been living the life between runs that inspired the name of this blog. I lived it at St. Xavier High School, working my way up from novice freshman to confused sophomore to confident upperclassmen, with some of my best friends and favorite coaches by my side. I was fortunate enough to live it at Hillsdale College, running with, against, and coached by others who also lived lives between runs, and being humbled by the sheer array of talent I had to face. And I do it as a college graduate, content, for the most part, to run all my miles in solitude, to serve as the only teammate and coach that I have. I did many other things during these years, but I was almost always also running, or thinking about running.

And I've done a lot of running in these past ten years. According to my currently (and likely perpetually) incomplete running2win running log, I have run about 20,000 miles (a figure that does not include any running I did before June 2009--or not yet, anyway**). I've also run 92 races (again, not counting pre-June 2009), at the following distances: 400 meters, 800 meters, 1500 meters, 1600 meters, 1 mile, 3000 meters, 3200 meters, 4000 meters, 5k (by far the most represented distance), 4 miles, 8k, 5 miles, 10k, and, last May, 13.1 miles. I have run in four countries (USA, Jamaica, Italy, and Greece), and 12 states (Ohio, South Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia, North Carolina, California, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., with races in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C.). The ~20,000 miles I've run would have taken me across the United States a bit less than 8 times, though I'm still 4,000 miles short of making the full ~24,000-mile circumference of the Earth.

It's basically impossible for me, at this point, to recount all of my memories from a decade of running, though some races (high school XC District championships 2009, college conference championships 2013) stand out. But I can begin to list some of the things I love so much about it. The smell and feel of being at a cross country course in the fall. The pre-race jitters. The thrill of actually winning a race. The feeling you get after a race or a workout. The way cold winter air makes your lungs hurt. When it's raining so much outside that you stop caring how wet or muddy you're getting. The guilt-free excuse excessive running provides to eat as much as you want and still be skinny. The cheerful camaraderie of runs with others. The bracing solitude of runs alone. Charlie horses. Ice baths. Post-race Gatorade. A successfully-executed race-ending kick. I could go on forever.

Pictured: Me, really enjoying running. 

But it would be dishonest to deny that running always goes well, for me or for anyone else. For every race I've run well, there is at least one that I've blown, or at least not done what I wanted to do. For every workout that I meet my standards, there is at least one (or more) in which I fall short. For every period where I feel indestructible and practically immortal, there has been a period when injury, exhaustion, or a mental funk has laid me low. Running is not always pleasant, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or doesn't do it enough.

Indeed, at many times throughout my now decade-long running career, it's been rough enough for me that I've thought about hanging up my shoes for good. (I have literally bled for the sport.) It happened in high school, when it seemed like my early promise was fading away. It happened in college, when it seemed like I just couldn't figure out how to fit running into my life. And it's happened in my post-collegiate running life, when injury, disappointment, or sheer exhaustion have made me wonder if my lone wolf runner lifestyle is really worth the effort I put into it. In my darkest moments, sometimes I've wondered whether I should just move on, make running a casual hobby, something I do every once in a while when I feel like it, instead of trying to maintain the same level of commitment to it that I've had for all of these years. In these moments, the simple yet piercing question presents itself: Why?

Me, bleeding for the sport.

The biting nature of that simple question has forced me to come up with an answer several times; see here and here, for example. As with many questions of this nature, I may never get a true answer. I can always point to tertiary benefits: staying in shape (though I could capture most of the fitness benefits of cardio at about a third of the running I do), relief of boredom, etc. But the best I've come up with so far is something like this. By now, running is so thoroughly a part of my life that I don't think I could stop even if I tried (and I actually have!). Beyond that, though, there's a part of me that never wants to stop. A part of me that sees all of the disappointments, all of the times I've fallen short, and takes them only as further motivation. Because of that, so long as I never get exactly what I want out of running--and believe me, I still haven't--I will never want to stop. And I think that's because I will never truly be happy with myself until I've seen how good I can be. I am fortunate enough to have this gift, and I would not be using it rightly if I did not test its true extent, all the while honing these virtues--discipline, self-reliance, persistence--that make me not only a better runner but also a better person. Plus, the way I see it, I have at least another solid decade of running at my physical peak in me before time finally starts catching up. That's plenty of time left to see what I am capable of.

Starting the last lap of my last college race. I could have stopped here forever, but I didn't.

So what's next for me? I have no idea what the next 10 years of running will bring. But I can tell you about the next 10 weeks. Right now, I am in the midst of running my first-ever 100-mile week, a feat I came within less than a mile of achieving in college, a falling-short that has bothered me ever since. It is going well, though we'll see how I feel after my 22-mile run on Sunday. And why am I being even more of a masochist than usual? Because on October 22, I will run my first marathon: the Marine Corps Marathon of Washington, D.C. It should be...interesting.

Oh, one more thing. On September 10, a couple of Washington, D.C. grade school kids will line up at the start of their first race of the cross-country season; for some of them, their first race ever. They may or may not know what they're doing; they may or may not win. Regardless, starting next Wednesday, I will be there for them as their coach. Running has given me a lot over the years, and it's time I started giving back. And so, in 10 years, I have moved from runner to coach. I'm excited to see what the next decade of running brings. But whatever happens, I'll always remember that it all started with a skinny, awkward, 14-year-old kid with ridiculous hair at Harbin Park.

Even though I have come a long way since then. Now, my beard is ridiculous instead of my hair.

*Okay,  I ran cross country as an 8th grader, but I was playing football at the same time, so I don't really count it. High school XC was my real first.
**Because I have a dangerous, almost debilitating obsession with the past, I'm currently engaged in an extended project to update my running log for as much of the running I have ever done as possible.

RIP Red Hot, 2001-2017 (My car, 2010-2017)

I'm in love with my car. 

If you spend a lot of time driving growing up, then you never forget your first car. The car in which you learned that everyone else on the road is a bad driver--except for you, of course. The car that gave you the freedom of the open road. And the car in which you maybe learned the consequences of that freedom, improperly exercised: speeding tickets, car accidents, breakdowns because of bad maintenance (you can't ignore those flashing indicators forever). Although America's car culture has waned in recent years, and some would like to get rid of human-driven cars, America is still the most car-centric country in the world. And for many teenagers, a license and a car open up an entire world.

And so I could not help but to feel sad yesterday, when an era ended at the Butler household, as my first car made its last journey from our driveway on a flatbed truck to be donated. Red Hot, as so christened by my sister Annie, had served our family well for the past 10 years. She drove the 2002 Red Ford Escape from 2007 to 2010, after the unfortunate demise of another vehicle. And starting in February 2010, about a month after I finally got my license (on New Year's Eve 2009), Red Hot was mine.

Mine, all mine. 

It's weird, what you remember about something. I can remember the first time I drove Red Hot to my high school. It was a typical gross Cincinnati February day, cold enough to be unpleasant but not cold enough actually to snow, so we got rain instead. The song "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells (whose frontman is a Dayton, Ohio native), played on the radio. I can remember when Red Hot's odometer hit 100,000, in the spring of my senior year of high school. I can remember most (though not all) of the incredible assortment of passengers who, at one point or another, occupied my car with me at the wheel. I can remember getting lost in various places throughout the state of Ohio, and having to intuit my way back in an age before smartphones (or before I had a smartphone, anyway). I can remember summer evenings on highways with the windows cracked and the radio playing "Hotel California" (sans colitas) or "Running On Empty," and nights with the eerie backing of Pink Floyd, "In the Air Tonight," or Coast to Coast AM. It's possible I'll have similar experiences again in a different vehicle, perhaps, but never the same ones.

Red Hot's final odometer read out under our ownership.

Like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, Red Hot developed many quirks over the years. The AC was never great, but, eventually, it stopped working altogether (which is why I would have my windows open on highways on summer evenings), though the heat functioned fine. This served me well in Michigan, where Red Hot lived out most of the prime of his life. But the heat was never powerful enough to melt the arctic runoff ice off the windshield very quickly, especially in the middle of a Michigan winter. The CD player could hold multiple disks at the same time, but only worked when it felt like it, and there was no way to predict when it would. The options were usually burned years prior, by friends or family members, though one CD with the "Chariots of Fire" theme on it made for some fun serenades of runners. The interior upholstery of Red Hot began falling apart early; I kept it up with as much duct tape as needed. The brakes also weren't the greatest. They never hurt anyone, but using another car's brakes always surprised me; I realized that some brakes didn't require a life-or-death push. But, as with many things, the quirks soon became part of the car's appeal.

Nostalgia is a tricky thing, though. It's worth remembering that there is always good with the bad. Red Hot is no exception. He suffered two accidents, one of which was my fault, and the other of which I watched happen helplessly from outside of my car. Fortunately, he survived both. He also survived many random maintenance issues: a brake broken by winter weather, a battery killed from being too wet, stopping the car in the middle of a drive to school. And perhaps because he was red, and because I was a young adult male, Red Hot also attracted the attention of northwestern Ohio's finest on a couple of occasions on my way to and from college, the first of which was occurred while I was distracted and jamming out to "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin. I don't blame Red Hot for any of this, of course. For until we have self-driving cars, and unless we are caught in situations in which weather or physics deprive us of control, what we do with our cars merely reflects what we do with ourselves. That is always the essence of driving, the first real power-trip any of us have. At 16, the state deems us fit to control a machine that hurtles along the roads with thousands of pounds of momentum, alongside other machines moving in the same or different directions. It is an awesome power, and with awesome power comes awesome responsibility.

A selfie, taken in Red Hot on May 29, 2017, at the end of my last-ever time driving him.

I drove Red Hot in high school, went a few weeks in college without him and found it impossible. From then on, though I never took Red Hot on a true road trip, he dutifully ferried me back and forth between Hillsdale and Michigan on multiple occasions, the last of which was May 2015, a few days after I graduated. Alas, when I moved, car-less, to D.C. to become an urban coastal millennial, Red Hot's utility to the Butler family rapidly faded. With his capacious trunk space, he was great to have on hand for moving furniture, mulch, and dogs. And when all seven Butlers were home for special occasions--the holidays, a wedding, a funeral--he helped to ease tensions by allowing everyone to get around as needed. I was particularly pleased to return home and always find him there, waiting for me.

Red Hot, waiting patiently in our driveway, on his last day with the Butlers. 

The simple fact that he was there was comforting to me, a reminder that I could come home at any time and it would be like I had never left. This sense of returning was especially acute on the two occasions that I drove Red Hot to my high school as a college graduate: first, for my 5-year high school reunion (which probably wasn't long enough to be significant, if I could still drive my high school car to it); and again, for the last time, in May of 2017, to visit a high school teacher in the classroom just before his retirement. But most of the time, when my parents' now empty nest was at its emptiest, and there were no children around to drive him, Red Hot sat in the driveway unused, collecting rust and dust.

It is a struggle to pick just one experience to define my time with Red Hot, so I'll go with one of the more recent ones. On January 2, 2017, I started Red Hot just as "Champagne Supernova" by Oasis, one of my favorite songs, came on the radio. I was heading to downtown Loveland, for lunch with a friend. As I made the short drive, I rocked out to the song, turning up the volume at the moments when I knew the song kicked into its highest gear. I pulled into my parking spot at The Works, a fine brick-oven pizza restaurant in downtown Loveland, the moment the song ended, giving me a memorable experience and revealing to me how long it takes to drive to downtown Loveland. And on the way back, a few minutes before I returned home, "Time To Pretend" by MGMT, a song I richly associate with my high school years, came on the radio. I was hoping for as neat a return home as I'd enjoyed on the way out. As I approached my driveway, though, it didn't seem that I would get it. But when you have a car, you can just keep driving until the song is over. And so I did.

Red Hot's final moments in our driveway. 

These and many other memories and experiences and feelings mark my time with Red Hot, and have given him a steadfast place in my memory (and contributed to a love of driving that will make me resist self-driving cars when the government makes them mandatory sometime around 2050). But these objects for which we are nostalgic are not always themselves the real cause of the nostalgia. It's more the experiences they enabled, and the people we shared them with. That is what we're fond of. And that is why I will miss Red Hot.