Three years ago, my wife Megan asked me a simple question: "What's your next big challenge?"
I didn't have an answer. And that bothered me more than I expected.
Here's the thing about being a runner: it never fully leaves you. I was a very good runner in high school: multiple state records, Gatorade Athlete of the Year. I was highly recruited to college, which truthfully helped me get accepted to schools I had no business getting into. I ran track at Dartmouth. I was supposed to have this long competitive career, but injuries derailed almost my entire time in college. I never got to find out how good I could be. I graduated, moved on, built a career, started a family. Running became the thing I used to do. For over twenty years, I was a recreational runner at best. A few races here and there, nothing that would remind you I once had real speed.
But Megan's question unlocked something I'd been carrying quietly for a long time: I never got my answer. Not at 20. Not at 25. Not at 30. Somewhere in there I just stopped asking the question.
By then I was 44, helping raise two young kids, and at a strange point in my career. I'd spent years running marketing for companies and was fortunate enough to have had real exits, an IPO and an acquisition. After that I'd moved into advising and consulting, and it was going well. But I was unfulfilled. The work was good. I just wasn't sure it was the answer.
So I stopped. Stepped away from all of it and dedicated a full year to training. Not jogging. Not "staying in shape." Training like I was trying to make a team again. The goal was specific: become a US Masters National Champion.
I wanted to know what was still there.
What training actually looks like
I think people hear "elite training" and picture some kind of highlight reel. It's not that.
It's training every day. Two speed sessions a week, every week, for a year straight. Intervals on the track in July heat and on shitty days through January snow and wind. Tempo runs that hurt from the first step. Megan and I are both runners, so Sunday mornings meant figuring out help with the kids so we could both get our long runs in.
It's also everything between the runs. The stretching and strength work (which let's be real, I struggled to complete), the sleep you protect because you know tomorrow's session depends on it. The constant, low-level math of managing fatigue and fitness at the same time.
And then there are the injuries. At 45, your body doesn't just absorb the work the way it used to. A minor tweak at 22 is a multi-week setback at 45. I dealt with injuries that required real rehab. Not just rest, but the slow, frustrating process of rebuilding back to full strength while watching your fitness slip. And then doing it again. The discipline isn't in the hard workouts. It's in the patience to come back from the ones that break you.
I also did all of this without a training partner. No one to meet at the track, no one to push me through a tempo. I relied on Chris and a few other friends virtually, texting workouts, sharing splits, keeping each other honest from different time zones.
The hardest part, though, wasn't physical. It was the daily negotiation between being a present dad and asking my body to do things it hadn't done in two decades. There's a low-grade guilt that comes with any obsessive pursuit when you have a family. You manage it. You don't eliminate it.
What happened
I'll just let the numbers sit here.
A lifetime PR in the 5k, 15:39 (and a course record). At 45.
4:35 in the mile.
Two-time Masters All-American.
And the race that still lives in my head: the 2024 USATF Masters Outdoor Championships, the 1,500 meters (basically a mile for you non-runners). I finished second, less than a second behind the Masters World Record holder. More than twenty years after the last time I raced at Dartmouth, on a national championship track, that close to a title.
If you'd told the version of me from five years ago, the one fitting in 30-minute runs between conference calls, that he'd be on that line, I don't think he'd believe you.
What it taught me
The results are real, and I'm proud of them. But what stays with me is less about times and more about what the process revealed.
I learned that the gap between "I used to be fast" and "I'm still fast" is narrower than it feels. But closing it is expensive. It costs early mornings and sore legs and the social events you skip and the guilt you carry when you choose a workout over something else. You pay for it every day, in small ways, for a long time, before you see any return.
I learned that running through real adversity, not the motivational poster kind, but the kind where your body fails and you have to rebuild from a place that feels like zero, changes how you approach every other hard thing. It doesn't make you tougher in some abstract way. It just makes you more honest about what things actually cost.
I learned that the people around you matter more than any training plan. Megan gave me the space to chase this, and I don't take that for granted. My kids, who have no idea what a 4:35 mile means but who I hope will someday understand that their dad believed in something enough to go after it. And my (virtual) training partners. Especially Chris, who I'd be swapping workouts with at all hours, debating paces, breaking down what went right or wrong after every hard session. That kind of accountability is rare.
I'm not done
I want to be clear about this: this isn't a wrap-up post. I'm not putting a bow on the story.
I'm still training. Still dealing with injuries (coming back from one right now), still juggling a full-time job again, kids, friends, all of it. It's not easier now. It's just that I know it's worth it.
I came within a second of a national title. That goal isn't complete. I've learned the point is that the goal should never be complete.