One day, you’re watching a five-minute video about how to warm up before a short run. The next, you’re watching someone run 100 miles through the mountains—and feeling inspired to do the same.

Either way, I love this corner of the internet. The sport may not get the coverage it deserves on ESPN, but YouTube offers endless stories of ordinary people and professional athletes attempting some of the most adventurous races in the world.

I’m so here for it.

Here are my top three running videos on YouTube. These are the ones I think about often, and occasionally rewatch when I need a little inspiration or a kick out the door.

1.) Kara and Nate: Leadville 100

The Leadville 100 starts at 4 am. The streets are dark and icy. 30 hours of running through the mountains lie ahead. Most of the runners out there have spent years training for this. Nate came to the start line loosely trained, having run exactly one marathon in his life.

That’s the setup for one of my favorite running videos. I’m not sure “running video” is the right category. It’s really about a young couple trying something really, really hard. Nate actually called it a 50/50 challenge because he wasn’t sure he could even complete it.

My girlfriend Dani and I are superfans of Kara and Nate’s YouTube Channel.

They’re travel YouTubers who saved up money and credit card points, quit their jobs, and traveled the world on a budget.

They actually started before travel YouTube content was a viable career. They’re known for producing authentic travel vlogs that focus less on the glamour of travel and instead take you along for the journey, even when things are uncomfortable.

Dani and I never miss an episode, and we were surprised when a few years ago Nate became hooked on endurance running and signed up for the Leadville 100.

The Leadville 100 is one of the most famous ultras in the world. Ultra runners are going as fast as they can on rugged old mining trails at very high altitudes—10,000 feet plus through most of the course. The two-part YouTube video follows the whole experience through the lens of Kara and Nate. From the 4 am start in the dark with headlamps on the streets of Leadville to the emotional high of reaching Hope Pass, the parties at aid stations, and the emotional lows when fatigue and energy kick you in the gut.

You’re about to watch a real endurance adventure, filmed by a travel blogger — a real fish out of water story.

The video highlights the legacy of the race and the history of Leadville. That’s what really sold it for me. While places like Aspen and Telluride converted old mining infrastructure into ski resorts or western-themed tourist attractions, Leadville never made that transition. It’s still a working mining town.

Founded during the 19th-century gold and silver rushes, sitting at 10,000 feet (the highest incorporated city in the US), it looks and feels like a place where real history didn’t get polished away.

Anyway, I’ve always felt that this race exists because of that character.

2.) The Finisher: Jasmin Paris and the Barkley Marathons

I often watch inspirational ultrarunning videos and think, I’d love to do that one day.

I feel that way about most races I find on YouTube... save one.

I’m never, ever running the Barkley Marathons…

If you haven’t heard of this race, it’s arguably the hardest ultramarathon in the world. How can it claim that title? Because some of the best runners in the world compete in this race. UTMB winners. Leadville winners. Western States champions. A few world-class mountaineers partake.

And usually, these running giants, these GOATS of the sport… don’t even finish.

Historically, around 99% of Barkley starters have failed to complete the race.

Some years (like this year), nobody finishes.

So, what makes it so difficult?

Well, it’s an ultramarathon, but it’s also kind of a scavenger hunt.

The Barkley is approximately 100 miles through a particularly rugged section of the Smoky Mountains near Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park. Runners complete five loops and have 60 hours to finish.

The catch is, there’s no marked course or trail. No signs. No ribbons. No GPS allowed. You’re given a map and compass and sent into the woods to find books hidden throughout the course.

Trust me, this is a weird race. Its founder, Lazarus Lake, seems to take pleasure in watching runners struggle against his Frankenstein-monster-type creation. The race doesn’t even start normally. Instead of a gun or horn, Laz lights a cigarette. When a runner gives up or is eliminated, a bugler plays “Taps” for the fallen.

Even the race’s origin story is bizarre. The idea was partly inspired by James Earl Ray, the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who escaped from a nearby prison in 1977 and fled into these same mountains. After more than two days on the run, Ray had only made it eight miles before he was captured. Laz apparently looked at that and thought: I could go a lot farther than that.

Anyway.

This video is really about Jasmin Paris.

In 2024, the Scottish ultrarunner became the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathons. And the more I learn about this race, the more I think what Jasmin accomplished belongs among the greatest achievements in ultrarunning… maybe in running.

What makes her even more interesting is how unassuming she is.

She’s quiet and thoughtful, and she makes it clear that running isn’t her entire life. It’s just one part of it. She’s a mother of two, a wife, a veterinarian and a researcher. She isn’t portrayed as someone who spends every waking hour obsessing over training.

Instead, she methodically and slowly tackles the problem of becoming the first woman to beat this course.

And it took years.

Jasmin attempted Barkley multiple times and failed. But each time, she learned. She observed. She got a little better. She studied the terrain. She improved her navigation. She learned how to deal with the cold, exhaustion and sleep deprivation that slowly eat away at runners over the course of 60 hours.

She didn’t treat those failures as something to mourn. She simple took short steps towards her goal.

Then, in 2024, it all came together.

After nearly 60 hours in the mountains, Jasmin came running toward the famous yellow gate and collapsed on the ground after finishing with just 99 seconds to spare.

She had become the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathons.

The World Race with Michelle Khare:

I Ran 7 Marathons in 7 Days on 7 Continents

Michelle Khare creates content for a living. A bona fide YouTuber, and one of the most popular out there. Similar to Kara and Nate, she comes to ultrarunning as an outsider and signs herself up for what has to be one of the most adventurous races imaginable.

The World Race.

All you have to do is run seven marathons on seven continents in seven days.

As many of you already know, one marathon has a knack for breaking people down. But here’s the nice thing about a normal marathon: when it’s over, it’s over. We collect our medal, head to the pub for Guinness, limp around for a day, and clock back into work on Monday.

You never get that feeling in this race.

She starts in the subzero temperatures of Antarctica, tears freezing to her cheeks as she pushes through the final miles. She finishes the marathon, but there’s hardly time to celebrate. There’s a plane to catch and another marathon to run in Australia tomorrow.

One marathon takes discipline. Seven in seven days takes something else. I think it takes what Ted Lasso eloquently describes as… belief. Your reason for doing something this ridiculous has to be real, because eventually your body is going to give you plenty of reasons to stop.

Last year, I ran the TransRockies Run in Colorado—about 120 miles over six days. Around Day 3, I nearly had a panic attack because of one nagging thought: What if I don’t finish this?

That’s the strange thing about multi-day racing. You cross the finish line exhausted, knowing that tomorrow morning you have to voluntarily start suffering all over again.

That’s what makes this one of my favorite running videos. Many of the people Michelle meets aren’t professional runners. They’re ordinary people with extraordinary reasons for being there.

One runner completes every marathon in a full black tuxedo to raise money and awareness for men’s mental health. Anthony Simonetti, a 32-year-old from New Jersey, runs for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital after his sister battled childhood cancer. Then there’s 84-year-old Dan Little, the oldest person in the race, whose story alone is worth watching for.

Watching an excellent storyteller like Michelle wrestle with that same fear, and persevere alongside a group of people, each with their own reasons for being there, makes this an inspirational and entertaining watch for any runner.

Running videos won’t make you faster, but the right one, at the right moment, can remind you why you lace up in the first place.

If you’ve got a favorite running video I missed, drop it in the comments. I’m always looking for the next one to watch at midnight.

Harry Styles interviewed for Runner’s World magazine recently.

Yes, that Harry Styles.

The international pop star who dates models and smells like an alpine lake mixed with French cologne (probably) is also a runner.

A really good runner.

Last year, Harry shocked everyone by running a 2:58 marathon in Berlin.

Since then, a meme has developed among my male running peers. “Check this out, he’s handsome, famous, rich... and he’s also faster than you.”

I originally read the interview because one of my favorite novelists, Haruki Murakami, conducted it.

I figured it would be interesting.

I didn’t expect it to completely shift how I think about running.

He Reminded Me What Running Could Be

The perfect run doesn’t really exist, but last week I had something close.

Twelve miles on the Donner Rim Trail – basically running on top of Donner Lake in Northern California. Sixty degrees, soft dirt trails, morning light sparkling off the water like a disco ball. Sky so clear that not even streaks from overpassing airplanes could be seen.

What I think made this run great was that I had no agenda and no training to accomplish. No race on the horizon. This was just me running through the woods for a few hours.

That’s when Harry’s words hit me.

“Running Is the Only Time I Feel I Can Be Myself”

In the interview, he called running a “conversation with himself.”

A moment of calm in a rather chaotic entertainment industry.

Think about his life for a second — music producers telling him what to sing, agents scheduling tours, designers dressing him, critics dissecting every creative choice.

Then imagine the constant observation. Every outfit analyzed. Every relationship is scrutinized. Conservative pundits losing their minds because he wore a dress that one time.

“The thing that appealed to me about running was how much I could actually control it,” he says.

Harry figured out what I’d forgotten: running isn’t supposed to be another source of pressure. It’s supposed to be our escape from it. Our place of stillness in the middle of a hurricane of a life.

He puts it perfectly: “When you’re an artist, you go from the observer to being constantly observed. However, when you’re running, you become the observer once again.”

That’s the truest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about running.

What We Accidentally Turn Running Into

There’s a viral video going around. A woman gives a PowerPoint presentation to her husband:

“Things I Don’t Want to Hear After Your Round of Golf.”

She uses a pointer to keep her husband’s attention.

“I don’t want to hear:”

“I’m tired, and I need to lie down for a while.”

“I’m so mad, and I suck at golf.”

She continues the presentation. “This is your hobby that’s supposed to lift you up and relieve stress from your life. Instead, it’s making you grouchier and tired.”

Could you say the same thing about running, don’t you think?

I remember last year, I got depressed because I got sick and couldn’t train for a week.

“If I can’t train, this will set me back, and I will miss the time I want, and I’ll be a loser again.”

“I’m so mad, and I suck at running.”

Somewhere along the way, I stopped treating running like a hobby and started treating it like a performance review. Like my… job.

Here’s what I think happens:

We see influencers treat running like professionals training for the Olympics, so we develop the story that we must do the same.

Use this article to remind yourself: What you see on socials is not the whole story; also, it is their job!

For the rest of us, it’s there to help us live a more fulfilled life.

How to Run Like Harry

I’m sure there are a lot of runners jealous of Harry Styles.

I know I used to be.

I mean, he gets to travel the world without worrying about money. And yeah, he’s a lot faster than me.

But after reading that interview, I honestly just came away grateful.

Grateful that someone living under that level of pressure still found the same thing in running that the rest of us do:

A place to hear yourself think again.

A place where nobody is asking anything from you. Just you moving through the woods for a few hours.

Or as Harry Styles says,

“You have something where you can trust yourself to do exactly what you say you're going to do.”

So cut the bad attitude!

Back with more book recs!

This newsletter started with book reviews. I still believe there’s a demand for them. People want to read, but like picking out a restaurant in a new city, sometimes it’s hard to know where to go.

These are books that I have read over the past few months. Books I believe you’ll enjoy.

You will also notice that the comment section is open. Feel free to write your recommendations in the comment section. We want to hear from you!

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Book by John U. Bacon

I grew up on the Great Lakes. More than that, I learned how to stand, spit, and run in Toledo, Ohio—one of the most important port towns on the Lakes.

Even so, I never fully understood the economic engine humming in my own backyard.

The auto industry built its inventory in Detroit, Toledo, and Cleveland. The steel for your Jeeps, Fords, Chryslers, and Buicks was smelted from iron mined in Minnesota and Wisconsin, then shipped across the Lakes like clockwork. Today, we think of Silicon Valley as the heartbeat of the American economy. But from 1930 to 1980, the Great Lakes were our Silicon Valley.

I hope that framing doesn’t turn you off from this book, because this isn’t an economics lesson. First and foremost, John U. Bacon tells a story about a maritime disaster. A haunting wreck forever ingrained in American lore.

In 1975, a massive Great Lakes freighter called the Edmund Fitzgerald set off from Minnesota carrying 26,000 tons of low-grade iron pellets on what would be its final run of the season. The destination: ports in Toledo, Ohio.

It never made it.

A violent storm tore through Lake Superior during the voyage—what Gordon Lightfoot famously called the “Witch of November”—and sent the 729-foot freighter, along with all 29 men on board, to the bottom of the lake.

What Bacon does so well is make you feel the scale of it, not just the ship, not just the storm, but the entire system surrounding it. The industry. The stakes. The lives tied to something as simple (and dangerous) as moving iron across water.

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation

Book by Andrew Ross Sorkin

I’ve been following Andrew Ross Sorkin’s press tour since the release of his new book, a historical reflection on the 1929 Wall Street crash. Everyone—from Ryan Holiday to Stephen Colbert—keeps asking him the same question: “Do you think we’re in a bubble today?”

His response is always the same: “I don’t know, do you think we’re in a bubble?”

It’s his way of saying that predicting these things is still incredibly complicated. That said, he’ll admit there are plenty of similarities between the 1929 stock market bubble and what feels like the AI bubble of 2026—speculation in the unknown, unchecked optimism, and a largely laissez-faire government hesitant to regulate emerging technology.

In 1929, Sorkin tells the story of Wall Street less like an economics textbook and more like a courtroom drama. Because when you sift through the wreckage of any crash, what you find isn’t just numbers—it’s people. All the emotion, ego, and fear.

At the center of this one is the rise of buying on margin (purchasing stocks on credit). A relatively new financial tool at the time, popularized by National City Bank and, in particular, Charles Mitchell.

Why did it catch on so quickly? And why were people so eager to believe in it? Those questions feel just as relevant in 2026 as they did in 1929.

My biggest takeaway: the crash itself wasn’t the world-altering event we often think it was. The stock market actually recovered relatively quickly. It was the depression that followed—the loss of confidence—that changed everything.

Before 1929, America had seen crashes before. You could argue the Panic of 1907 was just as severe. But 1929 shattered something deeper. There was a belief that stocks only went up, that new technology would inevitably improve lives. Once that narrative broke, everything else unraveled.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Book by Stephen Graham Jones

Three months into the year, and I’ve already finished a novel. A new version of me is emerging.

This one was an easy pick up for me. A historical Western horror about a Blackfeet man who becomes a vampire—and instead of stalking women like Dracula, he uses his powers to take revenge on the buffalo hunters driving his people and their way of life to extinction.

That’s a beach read.

Stephen Graham Jones is up there with Stephen King. Not just because he’s terrifying, but because he’s willing to go places most writers won’t. There’s no hesitation—he pushes all the way into the uncomfortable parts of human nature.

What makes this book especially good is the uncertainty. The entire time, you’re not quite sure if you’re reading myth or reality. That tension holds all the way to the end.

It’s a masterclass in horror.

Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World

Book by Irene Vallejo

I’ve honestly been a little nervous to write about Papyrus because there’s so much packed into it. It’s dense—in the best way.

If you asked me what it’s about, I’m not sure I could give you a clean answer.

On the surface, Vallejo writes about the history of paper—how a plant growing along the Nile was transformed into something portable, something that could carry human thought across time. She walks through the process of turning papyrus into scrolls, and even the painstaking craft of preparing animal skin into parchment for royal decrees and plays.

But that’s not really what the book is about.

It’s about why we care.

Why did Alexander the Great sleep with a copy of The Iliad under his pillow? Why does the Pope carry a pocket Bible? Why did Alexander build a library with the goal of collecting everything ever written?

And why, thousands of years later, are we still obsessed with books? Even if they’re beach reads and hockey romance novels?

I don’t think this is a book you summarize. I think it’s one you wrestle with.

In the words of Michael Scott—one of the world’s great paper salesmen:
“We can’t overestimate the value of computers. They’re great for games and forwarding funny emails, but real business is done on paper.”

To know me is to know I’m not a particularly spiritual person.

There’s a reason I replaced church with a 2,000-year-old stoic philosophy that some might call… well secular. I suppose I appreciated how Marcus Aurelius mostly said what he felt instead of speaking in riddles like, “It is easier to pass through the eye of a needle…”

Anyway, that’s not what this article is about.

I want to tell you about a running adventure where I did feel something spiritual—a buzz, a breakthrough. Not in a “I found religion” way. More like I felt deeply connected—to the earth, to nature, to myself. Maybe that’s spirituality? Maybe it’s like that senator trying to describe pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

Here’s what happened.

I Got Completely Obsessed with Bears

This took place on the final day of a six-day, 120-mile trail race along the Colorado Trail, cutting through historic mining towns like Buena Vista and Leadville and ski resorts like Vail and Beaver Creek. Some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country—maybe North America.

During the road trip on the way to the race, I picked up Night of the Grizzlies at a bookstore in Durango, Colorado. I wanted something short and topical to read in my tent each night during the race.

I didn’t expect this book to rip my face off, and oh boy did it!

The book recounts the worst bear attack in U.S. history, which occurred in the 1960s at Glacier NP. Park staff had been feeding grizzlies garbage behind a chalet to entertain guests. The bears grew accustomed to human food. Then to humans. Then, a little too accustomed to humans.

Reading it felt like watching Jaws for the first time—where you’re suddenly afraid of every body of water, even swimming pools. Except this was Jaws on land, and I was about to run through the bear’s home for six days.

So yes, bears were on my mind all week as we camped and ran across the Rockies.

A Panic Attack Almost Had Me Quit A Race

On day 3 of the race, I panicked. No, not from a fear of bears.

About 45 minutes before a 24-mile trail run from Leadville to a campsite on the other side of the mountains called Nova Guides, I felt a deep shortness of breath – the type of shortness of breath where your oxygen feels trapped, deep in your bones. Then anxiety set. I actually filmed myself with my action cam. Watching it back recently, my face just reads: “Hey bud, you doing ok there?”

I wanted to duck under the corral rope, rip off the bib, and quit.

Why?

For the first time in my short running life, I wasn’t 100% convinced I could finish this race. I had never run this far before (for multiple days in a row). I didn’t know how my body would react.

How did I overcome it? I wish I had a manosphere-type inspirational monologue to give: “10 Hacks to Overcome Performance Anxiety and Date Your Dream Girl.” But I’m not sure life actually works that way.

I started running – that’s it. Step by step I proved to myself I could do it.

Eventually, the body resigns itself to the fact: Oh. This is what we do now – you’re a long-distance runner.

My Spiritual Awakening

Running exploded after 2020. It’s social. It’s accessible. As the novelist Haruki Murakami put it, all you need is a decent pair of shoes and a road. That’s how my “millennial generation” found running anyway.

But stick with it long enough, and running offers something else.

The final day was a 20-mile trek from Vail over the mountains toward Beaver Creek. We climbed ski slopes at sunrise through white pine forests. The light split through the trees like a cathedral. No more panic, just so grateful to be out there.

Toward the end of the race, I found myself alone (trail races thin out like that) and started reflecting.

I considered how far I’ve come not just in running, but in life.

Four years ago, I’m not sure I owned a pair of running shoes. I thought marathoners were for the birds. Running long distances wasn’t something I, Cal Axe, would ever do. I signed up for a half-marathon originally just to distract myself from a breakup, loneliness, and maybe get out of my apartment for a few hours.

Then I started enjoying it.

Then it became routine.

Then an identity.

After that first half-marathon, I moved from Ohio to Austin and built community through run clubs. Eventually, I met my girlfriend, Dani.

Why am I trauma dumping right now? Because running didn’t just change my fitness. It changed… everything.

I think that’s the unsung joy in these races. Somewhere in the final stretch, we reflect. We remember the training, the sacrifice, the early mornings. We picture the arc—from who we were to who we’ve become.

The Stoics had a word for this: aretē—excellence of character. Not so much seeking perfection in the outcome, but building yourself along the way.

I felt proud. Capable. Dare I say, spiritual.

And then I heard something in the brush about 25 feet ahead.

My Close Encounter with a Big Bear

A deer? I’d seen plenty that week.

The noise grew louder. Bigger.

I stopped. Heart pounding.

A mature black bear stood up on all fours, looked at me, then sprinted across the trail and up the mountain. I couldn’t contain my excitement at first. I’d been reading about bears all week—and now I’d seen one in the wild. I’m pretty sure I laughed.

Then fear hit.

This was a large, wild animal. I’d just startled it. “Hey bear! Hey bear!” I yelled, because that’s what you’re supposed to do—even though I never imagined I’d actually use that technique. I waited for the next runner to warn him, which felt like the right thing to do. He stopped. I told the story. He gave me a high five. We both yelled down the trail to warn others and continued climbing.

I finished shortly after near a hotel in Beaver Creek. I shook the race director’s hand. He gave me a hug and expected me to tell him something about the difficulty of the race.

I didn’t say that at all. The first thing I said:

“I saw a bear!”

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

By that final climb, I had already proven to myself that I could do hard things. I had run through exhaustion. I managed a really bad anxiety spell. I had moved forward when quitting would’ve been easier.

And then—almost absurdly—a black bear crossed my path. The thing that had been top of mind since the beginning of the trip.

It felt like punctuation. Whatever gods may be whispering, “you’re on the right track.” Something otherworldly had spoken to me, had made contact. I can never prove it; you will just have to exercise some faith here.

The bear confirmed to me that I belong.

Maybe that’s spiritual enough.

Steve Magness. Got the name?

He’s one of the leading sports psychologists in the universe right now. The guy you hire when your $25 million left-handed reliever suddenly can’t find the strike zone.

The other day he published his 25 top insights on peak performance. A subjective list of wisdom he’s acquired working with over 100 professional athletes.

What was #1 on the list?

#1 Do things in the real world with real people. Your nervous system knows what’s fake.

He didn’t go much into detail on this point, but his signed prescription is self-explanatory—

Get off your damn phone.

I Had a Doomscrolling Problem in 2025

I don’t know what the American average is for time spent doomscrolling or what would constitute a harmful amount. I’m sure the jury is still out as we continue to gather data. I’m going to go ahead and diagnose myself:

I’m addicted to my phone.

Mostly scrolling during times when my attention would have been better spent elsewhere. An endless loop of sports commentary, comedy podcasts, cute animals, hot girls — the stuff that gets the attention of most dudes. But mostly what got me was the negativity and political division. A world in mania and panic reminding us how far we’ve fallen from Plato’s Republic.

There were so many days I’d finish work and my brain would hurt. A comedown from overstimulation. Work stress layered with reels. The dopamine/stress cocktail wrecked me. I imagine it’s the same tug and pull high-strung 1920s stock traders felt watching fortunes disappear and reappear every five minutes.

Why I Changed My Tune on Social Media

Stats I recently learned that changed how I see things:

• 30% of online activity is bots. Some estimates say it could be as high as 50%.
• 5% of creators receive 80% of the attention. Guess who those people are? The grifters. The conspiracy peddlers. The ones who have to say crazier and crazier things because it’s the only way to get views.

What does all this mean?

What you’re seeing isn’t real. It’s more like watching WWE big time wrestling. It might be real — but it’s not the whole truth.

And you’re selling more than your attention.

You’re buying sham products. Fake online courses. Supplements promising productivity and focus.

I know because I fell for it too.

I’m reminded of the time I invested in NFTs during 2020. All the cool influencers I followed were pushing digital collectibles and earning insane amounts of money. It feels silly now, but there was a time when a digital photo of a “Bored Ape” was worth $25 million.

Influencers made it their business to peddle a completely untested financial marketplace. Posting about how easy it was. Showing you how much they made. The get-rich-quick formula.

The issue is, their obligation to influence ends at telling you what you want to hear. There’s no incentive to tell you the other side of the story.

For example, I never heard from any NFT influencer:

– Could this be a pump-and-dump scheme?
– Shouldn’t we discuss whether $25 million is too much for a digital photo?
– Maybe this is just a fad while people are bored at home during a pandemic?

Of course it was a fad. As soon as people felt confident moving outside again, the Bored Ape craze crashed. “Mankind are, in all ages, caught by the same baits,” wrote Hume. “The same tricks, played over and over again, still ensnare them.”

Long story short. I’m just not seeing the value in being exposed to influencers for hours a day.

What I Started Doing About My Phone Addiction

I read every productivity book in my twenties. At least three of them use the story of Odysseus from Homer’s The Odyssey — the part where he ties himself to the mast of his ship.

If you don’t know the story: Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, is sailing home from the Trojan War when he approaches the Siren islands. Sirens are bad news - they tempt sailors with their song until they steer their ships into the rocks. What does Odysseus do? He orders his men to plug their ears with clay and tie him to the mast so he can’t steer toward the sound.

In my twenties, I took this to mean putting your phone in another room. Out of sight, out of mind.

It never worked.

Clearly the Sirens’ call was stronger.

That’s the point.

The Sirens represent anything that tempts you with what you want to hear. Is that not exactly what social media is? A device specifically engineered to capture your attention like a Vegas slot machine.

It amazes me that a 3,000-year-old story — one Alexander the Great reportedly carried with him and kept under his bed— still explains how to curb our addiction to Instagram reels.

The moral?

Willpower isn’t enough.

We evolved for a world that no longer exists. The hole in our biology isn’t our fault — but it is our responsibility.

Like Odysseus 3,000 years ago, the only way to rein in our habits is to cut them off at the source.

I planned to limit screen time in 2026.

The problem was I’d pick up my phone and immediately itch toward Instagram or TikTok. Thirty minutes later I’d wake up from a doomscroll loop.

I realized something uncomfortable:

I’m not going to win this game.

The chips are stacked for the house. Just like Odysseus and the Sirens, there’s no resisting without tying yourself to a mast of your own making.

Trust me, I tried all sorts of masts:

I tried calculating screen time. (Maybe we can’t all have the discipline of a four-star general like Eisenhower quitting cold turkey.) I tried locking my phone in a drawer. Didn’t work — I always needed it for work or personal reasons. I tried apps that cut off Wi-Fi to social feeds. Too easy to override.

Of all the hacks, the only one that’s worked is the Brick.

For $59 plus shipping, you get a small gray cube that sticks to your refrigerator. To use it, you select the apps you want disabled and tap your phone to the Brick — like Apple Pay at a grocery store.

I’ve used it for a month and averaged 15 hours of blocked time per day. I brick first thing in the morning to read and write. I brick through the workday so I can focus without distractions.

The first few days were rough. I’d reach for my phone twenty times a morning—phantom limb syndrome for the digital age. But by day five, something shifted. I’d pick up my phone, see it was bricked, and just… put it back down. The urge started losing its grip.

Here’s the irony:

The Brick doesn’t actually do that much.

There’s nothing stopping me from walking 15 feet to the fridge and unblocking everything. But adding one physical step — one small layer of friction — has been enough to interrupt the habit.

And that interruption has been everything.

How I Feel After One Month Using Brick

Humanities professors call The Odyssey an “oral encyclopedia” — inherited wisdom passed down generation to generation. Perpetual wisdom. That’s why the story still holds up. Why Christopher Nolen is reviving it with a blockbuster film.

The Sirens were never just mythical creatures.

They were snake oil salesmen. Scam artist. Conspiracy theorist. Demagogues. Tyrants. Whatever tells you exactly what you want to hear.

Today, maybe it’s Jake Paul selling crypto.

Either way, it’s not healthy to listen to talking heads all day.

After a month of bricking, I can focus longer. I’m more present. The constant urge to check the feed while working or lifting weights has started to loosen its grip.

You won’t feel different in week one. But the micro-interruptions — the quick feed checks — slowly disappear. The time comes back to you. And it compounds. In January I read four books and became a top seller at my company. Coincidence? Maybe.

What about the news? Don’t I miss things?

Not really.

Most of us consume far more news than we can metabolize. I still know what’s happening. I subscribe to The Economist, which reports a week late — and that’s perfect. That delay allows for context. For journalism instead of adrenaline.

My head feels lighter at the end of the day. I fall asleep easier.

Magness said your nervous system knows what’s fake.

I think that’s true.

It knows the difference between scrolling a highlight reel and running with your friends. It knows the difference between arguing in comments and having a real conversation over a beer. It knows the difference between watching the world burn on a screen and actually living in it.

The Sirens will continue to sing their song.

Algorithms will continue to improve.

But Odysseus didn’t beat the Sirens by becoming stronger than them. He beat them by admitting he wasn’t.

So I bought a $59 gray cube and stuck it to my fridge.

Every December, Spotify tells us who we were that year.

What we played on repeat. What we couldn’t let go of. What we discovered.

The Spotify Wrapped feels a little like time travel. Don’t you think?

As far as I know, Goodreads doesn’t do a “wrapped” for books—so I made my own.

These are the books that followed me through 2025. I read them on long flights, on top of mountains during an ultra marathon, and on safari in Africa. Mostly, I read them on my couch, in the early morning, before the sun comes up, with a cup of coffee.

This isn’t a list of the best books I've read. It’s a playlist of the ones that stuck—the ones I still think about and recommend. They’re my quake books of 2025 – the ones that shook me to the core.

Welcome to my 2025 Book Wrapped. Share your own in the comments.

Night of the Grizzlies

by Jack Olsen

A true story about a grizzly attack that literally ripped my face off! (Ok, not literally).

I ran a multi-day ultramarathon in Colorado over the summer and wanted something nature-y to read between runs. I found this gem at a bookstore in Durango. I’d never heard of this crazy event before (or the book), but I think it’s the best thing I read in 2025.

Seriously – it reads like you’re inside a Jaws movie, with jump scares and carnage that left me unable to sleep for weeks.

Quick summary: During the summer 1967, park staff at Glacier National Park allowed a heavily trafficked chalet to feed garbage to bears because it “made a good show.” If you’ve spent any time in mountain towns, you already know why trash bins are locked down tight—we don’t want bears getting comfortable around people.

That’s exactly what happened at Glacier. And it led to the worst grizzly bear accident in U.S. history. To this day, nothing has surpassed it.

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of The Donner Party

By Daniel James Brown

A few things surprised me about the Donner Party ordeal. First of all, I assumed maybe one or two people were consumed. Nope, most of the perished ended up in the survival food bank. Second—and this really stuck with me—the heroism of many of the emigrants, especially the women, was nothing short of extraordinary and has been overlooked for far too long.

What shocked me most, though, is how few people today have even heard of the incident. The majority of my friends didn’t know the story. The rest only know it through cannibalism jokes. “Well, I hope we don’t get lost and end up like the Donner Party on this hiking trail.”

In the fall and winter of 1846–1847, roughly 90 emigrants traveling from the Midwest to California in search of better land and better prospects found themselves trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains. They had followed a so-called shortcut promoted by a famous frontiersman and entrepreneur, Lansford Hastings. Here’s the rub: the shortcut didn’t exist. Well—it technically did, but no one, Hastings included, had ever tested it. The route was essentially conjured to funnel more settlers into California, where Hastings had invested heavily in real estate. Today, this would be like someone convincing you to buy cryptocurrency when they’ve never made a dime from it themselves.

The Donner Party became a deeply troubling American story. A group of people driven by the promise of the American Dream, following a path designed purely out of greed. Add in grit, sacrifice, and flashes of unbelievable heroism, and you get something uniquely American—both inspiring and devastating.

Should you read this book? Yes. There are horrifying scenes, no doubt. But there’s also hope. The author—who also wrote The Boys in the Boat—tells the saga largely through the eyes of a young woman named Sarah Graves. Honestly, she might be the bravest person I’ve ever read about. As far as I can tell, her story has never really been told, which makes this perspective feel fresh and deeply human. In the end, it’s not just a story about survival—it’s a story about hope.

Last of The Wine

By Mary Renault

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t read much fiction—a condition I vow to break in 2026. I read exactly two novels in 2025: The Road by Cormac McCarthy (coincidentally, also about cannibalism) and The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault—a mostly forgotten novel from the 1950s.

I discovered The Last of the Wine at Ryan Holiday’s bookstore in Bastrop and picked it up mostly because the cover art grabbed me. That, and I’ve recently fallen down a full-blown Ancient Greece rabbit hole. Who needs dragon fantasies when the Greeks basically lived in one? I’ve loved learning about the battles between the Spartans and Athenians, and the philosophers knocking about—Plato, Diogenes, and of course Socrates.

The Last of the Wine takes place during the final phase of the Peloponnesian War, a time when Socrates bummed around Athens, educating (some would say corrupting) the city’s troubled youth. That’s the backdrop—but at its core, this is a coming-of-age story. It follows a young man named Alexias as he tries to live up to an accomplished father, dodge annoying and intolerable suitors, fall in love, train in sports, and go to war.

It’s one of the most beautiful novels I’ve ever read, and I genuinely couldn’t put it down. Why do I think this book is relatively unknown? My guess is that it was simply ahead of its time. The “suitors” are other boys in Alexias’s neighborhood who are trying to sleep with him, while he’s quietly falling in love with his friend Lysis. I can’t imagine that was exactly a crowd-pleaser in 1956.

I’m here to tell you it’s a perfect novel. And if it were released today, I’m convinced it would be a bestseller.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

By Patrick Radeen Keefe

Maybe it’s because I’m Catholic, but reading about The Troubles always feels visceral. The book is about an unspeakably violent act committed in the name of political leverage and control – it’s about probably the worst crime during the height of the Troubles. Here’s what really scared me about this conflict. Northern Ireland turned into a divided society rife with political dysfunction, extreme nationalism, and religious fundamentalism. Sound familiar? I believe The Troubles are the red herring for the US, which is why everyone should read this book… or you can watch Derry Girls on Netflix, which is also great. Also, I’m pretty sure the author solves a cold case murder while writing this book which I don’t think happens very often in the true crime genre.

Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation

By John Carlin

I’m not sure this is the best-written book I read in 2025, but few people inspired me more this year than Nelson Mandela. One of the greatest thrills of my life was traveling to South Africa last March and walking Robben Island—standing beside the prison cell where Mandela spent 18 years. It was there that he studied Shakespeare, Martin Luther King Jr., and Maya Angelou, and emerged with an almost inhuman capacity for empathy and forgiveness.

Playing the Enemy follows Mandela’s journey from incarceration to saving the soul of a nation—partly by leaning on the Springboks, South Africa’s national rugby team, to help bring the country together. In many ways, he’s a modern Lincoln.

Read this book—and Long Walk to Freedom—if you’re interested.

Other books I really enjoyed this year include:

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi. Not enough people know the story of Emmett Till. If you don’t, please read The Barn.

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant. Vaillant might be the best narrative nonfiction writer alive. While not as good as The Tiger, it’s still a great read.

Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King. If there’s one thing I took away from this, it’s that Shakespeare and Timothée Chalamet got Henry totally wrong—but who cares.

Influencer-Proof Travel

Most travel influencers annoy me.

Beautiful mountain scenery, three-star Michelin restaurants, the coolest Airbnb in the area. What was the name of the mountain? Irrelevant. What’s the history of the place? Can’t photograph that. Who lives in the community? Will they subscribe to my channel?

That’s probably why my favorite travel memories tend to come from places you won’t see in curated grid posts. Like Yoho National Park in Alberta. Or Boquillas, Mexico. And now: Leadville, Colorado. Population: 2,600. Elevation: 10,200 feet.

Next week, Dani and I are racing 120 miles through the Rockies in a race series called TransRockies. We live in Austin—basically sea level—so we’re here in Leadville for a week to let our lungs catch up before six days of fun (some may call hell).

It’s not the kind of trip influencers dream about. Which makes it exactly my kind of trip.

The Road to Leadville

We split the drive from Austin into three parts. Lubbock was a blur. We loved Durango, Colorado, which surprised us with its blend of mountain charm and fun T-shirt shops.

From Durango, we drove four hours through the most stunning highway I’ve ever experienced—US 285. I’ve driven the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and the coastal roads in the Pacific Northwest, and this may top them. National forests rolled past: Rio Grande, Gunnison, and Ute lands untouched by strip malls or “next exit” gas stations. The sunset casts mountain shadows on the blue grass in the valleys. Cruise control, no semis, no stoplights. A rare kind of silence.

Arrival: Dizzy in Leadville

We pulled into Leadville around 8 PM, rolling along the Arkansas River. Most restaurants close early, so we quickly found Treeline on Harrison Ave. I was desperate for something green and light after three days of junk food. I ordered a beet and walnut salad with blackened cod. It tasted like a reboot.

The altitude hit fast. Dani felt dizzy; I felt like my skull had unzipped. I drank half a beer and learned the hard truth of high elevation drinking: 1 beer = 3 beers.

Running Sucks (Until It Doesn’t)

The next morning, I went for a simple recovery run on the Mineral Belt Trail—a 12-mile loop around town lined with the scars of their mining past - old mining shafts, kilns, and smelters.

It was so cool; however, the run felt terrible. Four miles never felt so hard. My lungs were screaming, my legs filled with cement. I walked more than I ran. I told myself not to panic. Acclimating means taking it slow, even if your Strava looks like a death march.

On Day 2, I found my rhythm on a trail around Turquoise Lake. It’s an alpine lake a few miles outside of town, known for its striking color from mineral-rich glacial runoff. I slowed my pace by two full minutes per mile. That’s what it took. But it worked. My lungs started to catch up.

Day 3: Speed training. I was nervous—two days ago I was crawling. But this time, I flew. Eight miles on the Mineral Belt with pick-ups in the middle. I crushed it. Zero notes. Confidence restored.

Leadville - My New Favorite Town in the USA

What pulled me to Leadville wasn’t just the elevation—it was the town itself.

The boom-and-bust legacy of American mining lives everywhere here, and unlike other boomtowns, Leadville hasn’t rebranded or repressed its past. Like a western-style Christmas Carol, the residents of Leadville keep mining in the past, present, and future - unabashedly.

Other towns try to turn their mining history into a novelty. Leadville wears it like a coat. Same buildings, same plumbing, same character. The old brick opera houses and Victorian homes built by silver barons still line the streets, now with coffee shops and trail runners inside. But mining is still here, still employing hundreds—including mining engineers you’d mistake for consultants in Austin.

It’s a ghost town that refused to die.

Ready for a week of mountain hell

It’s hard to say if a week in Leadville will be enough to prepare for TransRockies.

My lungs are adjusting, sure. But this place has already given me something more important than strong legs.

It reminded me that the best trips are the ones that aren’t optimized for likes or aesthetics or easy summaries. The best ones make you work for them.

And I’ve got 120 miles of work ahead of me.

🐛 Welcome to Run Bug

Here’s a weird thing about running:

When I think back on my happiest memories from the sport — the ones that inspired me to start this newsletter — it’s not the time I crossed my first marathon finish line. It’s not PRs, medals, or the Strava uploads.

It’s the little moments.

The ones that had almost nothing to do with running itself.

Like a group run in the freezing cold of Columbus, Ohio. We were out on a snowy trail with the local Fleet Feet and at one point had to crawl — on our hands and knees — across a frozen bridge too slick to walk on. We linked arms like protestors, shuffled across the ice, and laughed the whole time.

Back then, I ran with a friend. We started running to get outside our comfort zones, to sweat, to see what was out there. We’d settle into a pace and ask each other two questions:

1. What’s worrying you?

2. What are you grateful for?

That was our ritual. Our therapy. Our way of journaling out loud.

Connection and changing perspective—that’s running gold right there.

🏃‍♂️ Who I Am

I’m Cal Axe — A guy who came to running late and now can’t imagine life without it. I’m not an elite athlete. I’m not chasing Olympic Trials or BQs. I played college golf, where the most cardio I got was walking a loop around an indoor track with a bag strapped to my back.

But I caught the running bug about four years ago, and I’ve run everywhere since:
Lady Bird Lake in Austin, the Thames in London, Queen Victoria Road in Cape Town, the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend, Leadville’s peaks, Chicago’s Lakeshore, the Rio into Mexico, and dozens of city blocks in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Southern California, Philly, and back home in Columbus.

I’ve run three marathons. I’m training for another.
These days, running isn’t a hobby — it’s a part of my daily routine, like eating, writing, or showering. Even when I’m not running, I’m resting so I can.

🧠 Why I Started ‘Run Bug’

I follow a lot of running influencers. I like their stuff. I really do. The prestige races. The brand partnerships. If you're a guy, the message tends to be: train harder, look tougher, act like you're prepping for the 101st Airborne.

It’s entertaining. It’s inspiring. But to me, it’s not quite running — it’s content.

What I want to explore here is something deeper:

• The quiet, personal ritual of the daily run

• The way running helps us work through life

• The mental, emotional, and even spiritual sides of endurance

• The stories and places running takes us — and the insights we bring back

In other words, Run Bug is less about performance and more about perspective.

📬 If that sounds like something you’d want in your inbox, subscribe here. I send out essays, race stories, and reflections.

Subscribe now

🧘‍♂️ Who This Is For

This newsletter is for the mindful athlete.

Not the fastest. Not the most ripped. Not the one chasing PRs for validation. But the one who runs (or bikes, or swims, or hikes) because it opens something up inside. Because it makes life feel more intentional, more embodied, more real.

You won’t find training plans here. No nutritional science or zone 2 spreadsheets. Just one runner thinking out loud about the practice of doing something hard, every day, with no guaranteed reward other than the doing.

🎯 The Real Marathon

I once read that “the real marathon isn’t the race — it’s life.” That stuck with me. Because the goal isn’t a BQ or a perfect Strava graph (though those are fun). The goal is to keep going. To make this thing sustainable, joyful, and meaningful — for as long as you can.

Run Bug is my way of staying in the race.

🎽 If you’re in the race too — or want to be — hit subscribe below and join me on the run.
I’d love to have you here.

– Cal

Long distance runner, what you standin there for? Get up, get out, get out of the door.”

- Fire on the Mountain, Grateful Dead

When golfers reference Augusta National or baseball fans mention Fenway Park, they’re not name-dropping sports venues—they’re talking about cathedrals.

The very soil where legends played and history hangs in the air. The sportswriter Wright Thompson calls these places “holy grounds.”

Leadville, Colorado, carries a similar weight.

Maybe it doesn’t mean much to the weekend golfer, but in the world of ultrarunning, it’s special. Ancient woods, technical trails, and high elevation. The kind of place runners dream about, suffer through, and come back to anyway.

I first heard about Leadville two years ago when reading Born to Run. One storyline follows an eccentric Leadville resident in the 1980s who, after the town’s mining industry collapsed and left the town in both economic and environmental ruin, believed running could be their salvation.

Crazy – almost as crazy as actually running in those mountains.

The craziest part about the strategy? That it worked.

How Running Actually Saved a Small American Town

He created the Leadville 100, a punishing 100-mile ultramarathon that began drawing elite runners from around the world. Some of them moved to Leadville full-time, drawn in by the beautiful trails and small-town vibe.

Leadville keeps popping up in my life. Travel influencers that I follow, Kara and Nate, posted a few episodes about it on YouTube. Instagram reels keep calling it the “most underrated mountain town in the U.S.” Austin runners I know go there for races.

Still, I know very little about the place and, to be honest, the videos on YouTube and Instagram never got past talking about the mountains or the cozy coffee shops.

But that’s all about to change.

By chance, I met the race director for another epic Leadville-area event: the TransRockies Run.

And, now, I’m the one doing something crazy…

So… I’m doing a 120-mile trail race near Leadville

Last fall, I went to a running event in Austin. It was cold, so I wore my Ohio State sweater.

A guy booed me. He was a Michigan fan. We laughed, got to talking, and bonded over football and hockey. It turns out he was the race director of a massive ultramarathon in Colorado.

“You manage a race in Leadville?” I asked. Yup—he directs The TransRockies Run, a six-day, 120-mile trail race that covers 20,000 feet of vertical gain through places like Buena Vista, Twin Lakes, Vail, and, of course, Leadville.

It felt like fate.

I signed up the next day.

Training for TransRockies (and Chicago?)

I’m writing this with four weeks to go until the race. We’re deep in training now—I say “we” because Dani and a few other Austin runners are doing it with me.

I’m training for this a little differently than most because I’m also signed up for the Chicago Marathon in October. I’ve been distance running for about four years now, but I’ll be honest—I have no clue how to train for a six-day ultra in the mountains and a road marathon a few weeks apart.

So, I got a running coach.

Our strategy? Train like we’re preparing for Chicago—long runs, speed workouts, weekly mileage—but with added hill work and strength training to avoid crumpling halfway up a mountain. All pretty familiar stuff.

The big difference this time around? Recovery.

Every other day, I’m running only 3–4 miles at a true shuffle pace. I’m also taking full rest days, something I didn’t do much last year. I used to think the only way to get faster was to run fast every day. Maybe that works for some people. But for me? It ended with a stress fracture.

Now, I’m playing the long game. I ran 10 miles this morning and felt like I could’ve kept going forever. My body’s never felt better. Sure, I haven’t been training at 10,000 feet, but I feel confident.

What I Hope to Get Out of This

I’ve got two goals for this race—one’s a little hippy, and the other’s more grounded.

Goal one: reconnect with nature. I really believe in “forest bathing”—getting out into the woods not just to exercise but to unplug. It’s a way to clear your mind and remind yourself that you’re not as important as your inbox wants you to think. Mountains have a funny way of humbling you.

Goal two: learn something—and share it.

Look, I love a good Instagram reel of alpine lakes and cabin vibes as much as anyone. Travel influencers do a great job capturing the beauty of a place. But too often, they skip the context: the stories, people, and history that make a place matter.

That’s what I want to share from Leadville. What’s the story behind these trails? What happened to this town after the mines shut down? Why would someone willingly suffer through 20,000 feet of climbing here?

I want to know why this could be running’s “holy ground.”I want to find that out—on foot.

The internet loves a good morning routine.

The latest YouTube clip I found is from a guy named Ashton Hall. He wakes up at 4 a.m. to plunge his face into a bowl of ice water—not from the tap, of course, but from a $15 bottle of luxury filtered glacier essence or something.

Manosphere routines are like masturbation: they keep your hands busy, maybe they feel good for a few minutes, but ultimately get you nowhere.

And the biggest thing they’re missing? (These routines, I mean.)

Joy.

No wonder they’re impossible to stick with.

Running has stuck with me—not because it optimizes my day—but because it offers small, human-scale joys. Not viral, not hackable. Just tiny wins that quietly make life better every time I step outside.

Here are 11 of them:

• Those early morning miles are one of the few places your social media doom scroll machine can’t reach you. Most people want to look at their phone less, but the answer isn’t to hide your phone away; it’s to do things that distract you from looking at your phone in the first place – running is a great activity for that.

• Working from home can get lonely. Some weeks I’d go days without seeing anyone. Joining a morning run club—shoutout Fleet Feet Austin—gave me a guaranteed dose of human contact. Whenever I start feeling off, I know I can show up and reset.

• Toni Morrison had the right idea. She was a morning writer. “I get up before the light,” she said. That early window—before the noise of work and family—was sacred to her. Running gives you that same quiet. It’s the best version of the day, untouched.

• Nature goes full show-off mode in the AM. In Ohio, I’d hear the leaves bristle and branches groan in the fall. In Texas, the sun splinters through the oaks like it’s trying to impress you. Everything’s more vivid in the morning. There’s less noise, less traffic, fewer distractions. Nature gets the stage to itself. In the morning, you get all this without everything getting drowned out by cars and conversations.

• Running in the morning helps unlock your inner voice. It clears the static—phone, work, obligations—and makes space for whatever’s left. For me, it’s a dress rehearsal for writing. A lot of times, I don’t even know what I’m thinking until I’ve logged a few miles.

• You can say, “I went outside today.” Sounds simple. But talk to your friends—some of them go days without stepping outside. Running fixes that first thing in the morning. Honestly, it’s underrated.

• No judgment, no crowd, no pressure. Running in the morning is the most unselfconscious version of running. No traffic, no eyes on you. No one cares what you look like. It might be the most free you feel all day.

• It’s your coffee break from the hard stuff. Writing is the hardest thing humans have ever invented. Sometimes you need to step away before you burn it down. Running is that break. Not for inspiration—just breathing room.

• My girlfriend Dani says that all the miles you clock before the sun comes up are free. I’m still figuring out exactly what that means, but I think it’s this: those miles are lighter, cooler, easier. They don’t feel like work. Dani, sound off in the comments if I’m getting that wrong.

• Running is meditation for the impatient. Even if you don’t have the patience to sit still and breathe into your belly for 10 minutes, running gets you to the same place. Eventually, your mind shuts up.

• Running those early miles takes you places —literally and otherwise. My favorite run ever was on the Minute Man Trail near Boston. I was there to watch Dani run the Boston Marathon. The day before her race, I woke up early and ran from downtown Boston to Lexington, tracing Paul Revere’s exact route—the one he took to warn the countryside that the “British were coming.”

  Twelve miles, and suddenly I was standing on the site of the first battle of the Revolutionary War. The trail was once a railway, and before that, it was a horse path. Writers like Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson, and Henry David Thoreau probably took it to get into town.

  Look, running gives you the obvious stuff—cardio, strength, mental clarity. But sometimes, if you’re lucky, it gives you a whole new lens on the world. One minute you’re running out your own front door, and the next, you’re running with ghosts.

You won’t find that at the bottom of an ice bowl. Leaving your house will get you there.

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I hit a wall around mile 20 of the marathon—the toughest part of any race. I did not prepare for the undulating hills of the course or the mugginess of the day.

My left hamstring seized, and I crouched on the sideline in agony. A cramp — a runner’s worst nightmare.

"Stick out your hand!" a woman shouted as she ran by. Confused but desperate, I extended my palm. Without breaking stride, she poured salt into it, turned back, and licked her hand—signaling me to do the same.

The relief was instant. My muscles relaxed, and I found the energy to finish.

I never knew her name. We were strangers bound only by the same race, yet she sacrificed precious seconds of her final time to help me finish mine.

That's when I understood what running communities truly are—not just social clubs or dating platforms, but people who recognize the struggle in each other, who respect the mere idea of others trying to better themselves.

Now I always carry extra salt packets or energy gels just in case I see other runners struggling.

I haven’t had to use them yet, but I’ll be ready.

Communities are built one small gesture at a time.

“Writing is like a growing glacier. One eternal grind.” – John Muir

Swap in “running” for “writing” and the quote still holds.

That’s no coincidence. Writing and running share something deep — a rhythm, a discipline, a strange devotion to discomfort. They are, in many ways, each other’s kin.

Some of the best writers I know are runners too: Haruki Murakami, Joyce Carol Oates, Ryan Holiday. I’m not saying you need to run to write well, but I am saying that it probably helps.

I’ve found that running hasn’t just made me more focused or more fit — it’s made me a better writer. Not in some poetic, glacier-melting way, but in very real, repeatable ways.

Here are three that show up again and again.

1. Develop Your Inner Voice

I recently went back and read an old article I published on Medium. Brutal. I spent 2,000 words regurgitating productivity clichés, trying to sound like a motivational writer with life experience I didn’t actually have.

It didn’t sound like me. It sounded like someone imitating someone else.

Writing is ultimately just a conversation with your inner voice. And to do that well, you have to hear that voice — clearly, honestly, without the noise.

Running helps with that.

By mile three, everything else fades out. No Slack messages. No group chats. No doom scrolling. It’s just you and your mind, looping. It’s quiet — but not empty. You’re alone with your thoughts long enough to finally listen.

That’s the feeling I chase in writing, too. In a way, running is the dress rehearsal for writing — just without the autocorrect.

2. Running Expands Your World

I’ll keep this one short.

I’ve never uncovered an interesting story while sitting on my couch watching Netflix.

Adventure is outside. Stories are outside. Writing thrives on observation, and running takes you out into the world — neighborhoods you’ve never seen, trails you didn’t know existed, strangers you might someday turn into characters.

So yeah, go outside. That’s where the material is.

3. Running is My Break From Writing

I’m about to stop writing this and head out for an eight-mile run.

It’s 100 degrees in Austin. I’ll be doing intervals at the track — short sprints with long recoveries, until I hit eight miles total. It’s going to suck. And I can’t wait.

Why? Because writing is one of the hardest things humans have ever invented. It demands total mental focus, and you still fail most of the time (that’s what editing is for). My brain needs a break from it now and then.

Running is my reset button. It’s meditation that moves. It gets me away from the screen, gives my thoughts space to breathe, and — without fail — I come back sharper and full of new ideas.

So, in a backward way, I run to escape my writing. But then, I write to escape everything else in life.

Somehow, it all works for me.

If you like this article, Please like, comment, and share with friends. It helps a lot!

Last August, I was training for the Chicago Marathon when my right shin started barking. At first, I tried to ignore it. But the pain got so bad, just getting out of bed hurt. I finally saw a physical therapist.

She did a few tests and said, “You’re not running the marathon. In fact, you’re not running at all for a while.”

That was a gut punch. But it also became the start of something new.

I asked if there was anything I could do to stay in shape.

“Bike and swim,” she said. “That should be fine.”

I rolled my eyes – the same way I used to roll my eyes at middle school teachers who told me to practice my multiplication tables. I hadn’t ridden a bike since middle school. And I didn’t know how to swim—like, at all.

But I’d been rereading Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way. A beautifully written book built around the idea that we don’t control what happens to us, but we always control how we respond. Holiday quotes Marcus Aurelius:

“The impediment to action advances action.”

“What stands in the way becomes the way.”

So I took that advice to heart. I stopped pouting and decided to try something new.

The Most Humbling Start

First up: biking. Specifically, biking with clip-in pedals. I fell. A lot. I’ve still got scars on my calves to prove it.

Then came swimming. My first attempt? I jumped in the lap pool at the Y and barely made it 25 meters before sputtering out, gasping for air. It was embarrassing. I genuinely don’t know why I didn’t quit that day.

But I didn’t. I realized I needed help.

So I signed up for adult beginner swim lessons at the YMCA. Picture a group of grown adults learning how to float, while the high school swim team blazes by in the next lane. It was like starring in a Geico commercial for “how not to become your parents.”

Still, I stuck with it. My form slowly improved. Some weeks were two steps back. Others, I made big breakthroughs. My instructor said that’s normal. Swimming is weird like that.

Eventually, I graduated to the intermediate class. Why stop now?

Then I did something bold: I signed up for the CapTex Sprint Triathlon. A 750m swim, followed by a 12-mile bike and a 3-mile run. Totally insane, but it gave me a goal.

The Swim: My Personal Boss Battle

Even after months of training, I wasn’t confident I could swim 750 meters without stopping. I could manage 100m here and there, but it was still hard. Still, I kept showing up—three times a week, sometimes more. Eventually, I found myself daydreaming during swims, which was a great sign. You don’t daydream when you’re focused on not drowning.

Race day came. My nerves were buzzing. I’d trained hard, but I still wasn’t sure I could do the swim.

And just to make things more exciting, I left my race bib and tracker in my girlfriend’s car and had to sprint around looking for her before the start. So much for pre-race meditation.

When they called my age group, we walked to the dock. The swim course was a rectangle along Town Lake—simple enough. But I purposely didn’t look at the full route. I knew it would mess with my head.

I jumped in. The first 150 meters felt great—smooth strokes, slow breathing. I even had the thought, I might’ve overtrained for this.

Then I veered off course, caught a splash to the face, and swallowed a big gulp of lake water. When I looked up and saw how far I still had to go, panic hit — a sudden loss of cabin pressure. It looked like 10 miles—even though it was probably just the length of a football field.

Negative thoughts rushed in: You’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

But I’d panicked before during training. I knew the first rule was to calm down. That’s a great rule for life, when something smacks you in the face, remember the Taylor Swift song - “You need to calm down, you’re being too loud.”

I found a race assistant in a kayak (they let you grab on if needed) and took a breather.

Next to me, another guy was losing it: “I’m going to come in last. Everyone’s going to laugh.”

“No one cares,” I told him. “You’re doing great. Just focus on the next buoy.”

I didn’t expect to coach someone out of a panic while trying to calm myself.

The Rest Was Dessert

After that, the rest of the swim went smoothly. I stopped once more—not out of panic, just fatigue. I even noticed fish swimming below me, which felt like a small win. The moment you can look around and appreciate the scenery mid-swim, you’re doing okay.

I’d told myself: if I can finish the swim, the rest of the race will be dessert.

And it was.

The bike course was pure fun—like an F1 street circuit through downtown Austin. Fast straightaways, tight corners. I zoomed.

The run was only three miles, and I’ve run marathons before—but after the swim and bike, my legs felt like jelly. That’s when I thought of my friend who’s done multiple Ironmans and qualified for Kona. How the hell do you run a full marathon after all that?

Lessons from My First Triathlon

Crossing that finish line, I felt something deep and true: Endurance sports aren’t about medals or qualifications. They’re about becoming the kind of person who keeps showing up.

Six months ago, I couldn’t swim 100 meters without stopping.

Now, I’ve completed a triathlon.

The swim was messy. I swallowed half the lake. But I did it.

As adults, we rarely get to be beginners. We rarely get to suck at something and get a little better each day. That’s what made this journey worth it—not just the race, but everything it took to get to the starting line.

One final thought.

The Obstacle is the Way should come with a warning label. There is nothing sexy about turning challenges into destiny. I learned that during training. Never at any point did I look or feel like David Goggins or Rocky Balboa – gritty and heroic.

Nope, the whole thing resembled a Monty Python episode – silly and nonsensical. Most days I was just me on a bike or in a pool looking like a total noob in public.

But in the end? I learned how to do something hard.

And that’s enough.

However, I do have photos to share. This is from the CapTex Tri in Austin on Memorial Day. I signed up for the Sprint Triathlon — A 750-meter swim, a 12-mile bike ride, and a 5 K run. I learned how to swim about six months ago after signing up for beginner-level swim classes at the YMCA. I was stoked that I even finished the swim portion.

I’m still new to running.

I started taking it seriously in the winter of 2022, building it into a daily habit. I ran my first marathon that fall.

Honestly, it’s hard to remember when I was running and not training for a big race.

But that time does exist.

An early group run in Columbus, Ohio, on a trail covered in snow and slush. I was with the local Fleet Feet. At one point, we had to crawl— on our hands and knees—across a frozen bridge. It was too slick to walk, let alone run. We linked arms, helped each other across, and laughed the entire time. It was absurd—and unforgettable.

I used to run those with my friend Jonathon. We had a little routine back then. We’d ask each other two questions:

1. What’s worrying you?

2. What are you grateful for?

Those questions became our journal. They helped us untangle problems festering in our heads and refocus on what really mattered.

That’s what running does. It gives you space to sort things out.

In the years since, running has become a central part of my life. Not a day goes by without it being injected into my schedule. Even on the days I don’t run, I consciously rest and recover so I’m fresh for future runs.

Running has followed me everywhere:
Lady Bird Lake in Austin, the Thames in London, Queen Victoria Road in Cape Town, the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend, Chicago’s Lakeshore Drive, across the Rio into Mexico, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Central Park in Manhattan, and countless miles in Toledo, Southern California, Philly, and Columbus.

Most recently, I ran 12 miles from downtown Boston to Lexington, following the Minutemen Trail, the trail Paul Revere used to warn the countryside that the British were coming.

And yes—I’ve run marathons.
Three so far. Training for my fourth.

Of all the running experiences, the marathon has a way of taking over.

When you’re deep in marathon training, the runs stop feeling like a journal. You don’t get asked the deeper questions anymore.

Instead, people ask:

1. When’s your next race?

2. What time are you trying to hit?

I’m reminded of a line from Haruki Murakami’s memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running—which I read last year. (Still haven’t read his novels.) He calls running both an exercise and a metaphor.

There’s something to that. When we focus too much on arbitrary goals—like checking off a bucket-list marathon, hitting a PR, or qualifying for Boston—the goalpost keeps moving. Psychologists call it the Hedonic Treadmill.

In running and in life, chasing moving targets leads to burnout.

Look, I’m guilty of this, too.

I care way too much about races. I’m always signing up for them without really thinking about the consequences. I cared so much about a race last year that I ran myself into oblivion and got hurt— and then I burned out.

I’m not perfect, which is partly why I write about this stuff.

The most common thing you see is an individual sign up for a marathon, complete the race with a smile, and then… never run again.

All the good habits—going to bed earlier, eating right, drinking less, and daily exercise—that they built over the last four months fade back to the old ways.

Another runner-writer, Ryan Holiday, said the “real marathon isn’t the race—it’s life.”

It’s in the doing every day – that’s the real marathon.

In other words, the goal shouldn’t be a BQ; it should be to enjoy running enough to want to keep doing it.

Recently, I’ve tried to focus more on the process and less on the medal—sticking to the routine, fueling the body correctly with healthy organic foods, resting when I need it, and pushing myself when needed.

Race day is simply the test, the day when I show my work.

I try to keep it that way.

To quote the nature writer John Muir, “writing is like a growing glacier, one eternal grind.” The same is true for running. No wonder so many writers are runners. You could swap one word for the other and the meaning still holds.

Running, at its best, is meditation. A moment of work, away from “work.” A day to catch up with friends. An opportunity to get a little healthier.

You run to ask yourself: What’s worrying me?
You run to remember: What am I grateful for?

Long before I ever ran a marathon – or even knew what a mile split was - I went to my first Grateful Dead show.

Technically, it was Dead and Company, the newest version of the Grateful Dead featuring John Mayer as the lead guitarist and vocalist. I went with two of my college buddies, Cody and Phil.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect.

The band launched into these sweeping improvisational solos. The lyrics transported you to a bygone American fantasyland, as if you had stepped into a John Steinbeck novel. And the visuals? Floating graphics and kaleidoscope lights that turned the whole arena into a trippy cathedral.

I was hooked for life.

The music and the lights were cool, but what really got me was the people. Standing there with my friends, I felt like I was a part of something. It was the feeling my parents tried to describe when they talked about church—community, connection, belonging. But where they found it in pews and church potlucks, I found it swaying in a crowd singing “Ripple.”

That night, I met Phil’s father. A real life “Deadhead” – the nickname given to loyal Grateful Dead fans.

“How many Grateful Dead shows have you seen?” I asked him.

“126,” he said, like it was no big deal.

How many did you see with Jerry Garcia?” I asked again.

“126! I don’t count the shows without Jerry.”

Phil’s Dad spent his collegiate summers trailing the Grateful Dead. He sold grilled cheese sandwiches in the parking lot before concerts to help pay for gas, food, and tickets. He traveled with others doing the same thing. They’d hang out, talk about Jerry, smoke weed, and stand together at the shows.

Community, connection, belonging.

Ideas that seemed to come easily to my parents with church and easy to Phil’s dad with grilled cheese sandwiches and The Dead.

So, what happened to us?

My generation (millennials and some Gen Z) has been called many things—entitled, lazy, soft. But more than anything, we've been labeled the lonely generation. I still remember the headlines the day the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness and isolation a public health epidemic.

And it is. About 30% of U.S. adults report feeling lonely at least once a week, with 10% saying they feel lonely every single day.

Young adults—especially young men—are hit the hardest. A 2024 report found that 30% of people in our age group experience loneliness on a weekly basis.

Why does this matter? Because, according to the Surgeon General, it's not just a mental health issue—it's life or death. Chronic loneliness has the same impact on your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

My Own Battle with Loneliness

I got to listen to Scott Galloway talk at a SXSW event in Austin a few months ago.

My shoulders tensed as I sat up and gripped the edge of my seat, listening to his views on the alarming decline of young men in America.

For those who may not know, Scott Galloway is a business professor at NYU, known for his candid opinions on the struggles young men face today—issues like loneliness, difficulty forming relationships, and the rise of misogynist influences like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and the MAGA movement.

Why did I get so tense during his talk?

I realized that there was a world where I could have found myself in that situation—feeling isolated and lost.

Things are much better now. I haven’t felt lonely in a long time. I attended the talk with my girlfriend, who I now live with, and I’m never short of social things to do. In fact, I often overextend myself and need to learn to say no to things.

But Scott reminded me of a time when I did feel like one of those lonely young men.

• Single and devoid of friends. A lot of it due to COVID but also because I didn’t have many prospects.

• Struggling to find purpose or people to admire.

• Physically unfit with bad habits.

So when Scott Galloway says the most dangerous person in the world is a lonely, single man with a computer, I get it.

It’s like watching a plane crash on the news—and realizing it’s one you were supposed to be on, if your Uber hadn’t been a few minutes late.

How Running Helped Me Find Community

I remember feeling especially lonely after a breakup.

In tough times, I’ve always turned to books—and this time was no different. I picked up Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams. It’s about a psychologist who goes through a divorce after her husband of 25 years leaves her for a younger woman. She documents not only the emotional fallout but the physical toll heartbreak takes on the body, drawing from her own experience and scientific research.

A light read, I know.

Anyway, in the book, she talks about a government agency in the UK created specifically to combat loneliness. No joke—it’s called the Loneliness Bureau, and it’s staffed by 12 ministers, including an actual Minister of Loneliness. It sounds like something out of a Harry Potter book, but it’s real.

One of their top initiatives is called Men’s Sheds. The program opens up public garages across the country where people—mostly men—can come together to work on projects. Think fixing up a car, building a deck, or even getting help studying for an exam. The idea is simple: bring a task and do it alongside others. Connection through shared work.

You might laugh, but not after you read the statistics: Surveys from and UK and Ireland show that 96% of Men’s Shed members reported feeling less lonely after joining.

It got me thinking: maybe I felt lonely because… I was spending too much time alone. Revolutionary, I know.

So I figured I needed to find my own version of a Men’s Shed.

That’s when I joined a run club. Why running? Well, running came naturally to me. I liked how it got me outside, provided fresh views of the city, and cleared my head. I loved running without headphones and enjoying the woods on a manicured trail. Running felt like a good place to look.

Believe it or not, there weren’t many run clubs in Columbus, Ohio, in the winter of 2022. The only one I could find was Fleet Feet – a national running brand available in most cities. I begged my friend Jonathon to join with me – kind of like begging a friend to go to a high school party because you don’t want to show up alone and awkward.

Like me, Jonathon likes a good challenge, so he didn’t take much convincing, and it wasn’t long before we signed up for our first marathon.

At the time, I wouldn’t have recommended Fleet Feet to any young men looking for a date. We were among the youngest people there—and we were 28. The only person younger than us was a 16-year-old cross-country kid who, judging by the look on his face, had definitely been forced to come because he was spending too much time smoking weed and gaming in his basement.

But the goal wasn’t to find a date; it was to find community.

We got close to our running family and learned their stories. One woman we met ran 12 straight Boston Marathons. She started running at age 50 after separating from her husband.

The point is, we didn’t have much in common besides running, but they were people we would see at the same time each week, without fail. They cared about you, and you cared about them.

That, in a nutshell, is community.

Even though I was single and reeling from heartbreak, the weekly run club helped me feel less lonely. I realized - so as long as I had this in my life - I was going to be just fine.

I guess that’s the main point of this article: If you’re feeling lonely, find your own Men’s Shed.

A run club isn't a bad place to start.

A Few Suggestions for Finding Community When You’re Feeling Lonely

1. Observe Yourself
The best community is one built around something you genuinely enjoy.
For me, that was running. Getting to do something I love with people who love it too? That’s hard to beat.

If you’re not sure what excites you, start paying attention to what you naturally gravitate toward when no one’s watching. Do you love to read? Watch Premier League matches? Play chess?

Make a list of the things you do when you’re off the clock—then see if there’s a local group or club around that interest. Odds are, there is.

2. Keep an Open Mind
Sometimes we show up to a group expecting too much—we want to find a best friend, a romantic partner, people our exact age, who think like us, vote like us, and listen to the same podcasts.

But when you log off social media and step into a real-life community, you’re going to meet real people. And real people are different.

There’s a run club in Austin with the motto: “All faces, all paces.” That stuck with me. It means everyone is welcome. When Jonathon and I joined Fleet Feet in Columbus, we were the youngest by far—but they still became like family.

Let go of the expectations. Come in curious. Stay open.

3. Step Outside Your Comfort Zone
Let’s be real—the first time you join a club, it’s going to feel like the first day of high school all over again.

When I moved to Austin, I had to walk up to a group of women chatting after a run and say: “Hi, I’m Cal. I just moved here.”
It was painfully awkward. But some of those women are now close friends.

You’re joining a space where people already know each other. That’s normal. You’ll probably have to introduce yourself and push through some discomfort.

But trust me—it’s not high school anymore. People aren’t judging you. They’re just glad you showed up.

The speaker wasn’t a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist.

He wasn’t an Olympic athlete.

Adam Poswolsky was like, well… us.

A twenty-something unhappy with his career, struggling to find purpose, and comparing himself to others he deemed more successful.

He said something that had been on my mind since my early twenties, but I couldn’t find the words for it.

“There was my friend going off to business school, and I’d think. Maybe I should get an MBA.”

“There was a friend going to teach at a charter school and I’d think. Maybe I should go work at a charter school.”

“There was a friend opening up a food truck. Maybe I should open a food truck even though I’m an awful driver and a really bad cook.”

The grass is always greener.

He also had a friend who graduated from law school and decided to switch careers to become a social studies teacher with 100k in student loan debt.

Maybe it’s not.

You can do anything, but you can’t do everything

My mom recently retired from a 30-plus-year career that she adored.

I remember all her fears and challenges leading up to retirement day.

What was she going to do?

Where did she want to go?

Who would she be?

We don’t think about it this way, but retirees face the same challenge twentysomethings face when entering the real world. We are each given the lovely bone that comes with freedom: Endless possibilities.

What would we do?

Where do we live?

Who do we want to be?

I had little advice to share with her because I was still trying to figure my shit out.

However, I did learn from her.

How did she figure out what she wanted to do?

She watched herself.

She observed what she did in her spare time all those years.

She enjoyed nature. Long hikes in Toledo’s metro parks. The critters. The growing things. She’s always been a huge birder. By the time she retired, she could identify more bird calls than Teddy Roosevelt and Steven Rinella combined. No joke.

So she started there.

Now she works for the Ohio Parks Department, happier than ever.

The secret wasn't finding something new. It was noticing what already brought her joy when nobody was watching.

Don’t place too much pressure on yourself.

Adam’s TED Talk changed the way I looked at my career because he eased the pressure to have everything figured out today.

He’s not saying you should quit your job tomorrow.

He’s not saying you should go work at a French charter school.

He’s not saying you should get an MBA tomorrow.

He’s saying that you should start.

Observe yourself and note what you do with your free time and make a little bet in that direction.

Start with a blog.

Start by volunteering.

Start by asking questions.

It took me years to figure out that I wanted to write. I started reading about writing. Then I wrote articles for my commercial real estate business. Then I wrote book reviews. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

But I started, and now it’s a career path.

Six months ago, I couldn't float without panicking. Now I'm training for a triathlon.

I started with a beginner swim class at the Austin YMCA. It took me three weeks to master what most kids learn before multiplication tables:

• Floating

• Kicking

• Treading water

The childlike basics.

After the course, I could swim 50 meters without flailing or gasping. I kept showing up, driving to the YMCA or Barton Springs three times a week.

Some days, I swallowed half the pool. Other days, I felt like Michael Phelps.

Now I can swim 200 meters without stopping. Progress.

I signed up for the CAPTEX Tri, a sprint triathlon with a 750-meter swim. For most people, that's a relaxing morning dip. For me, it might as well be crossing the English Channel.

But that's why I love doing hard things - it’s an opportunity to show myself what I’m capable of.

The race is Memorial Day weekend. I'll keep you posted.

Not this week.

My girlfriend Dani just surprised me with the best birthday gift ever: a book crawl through Austin.

Picture this: All the bookstores in the city team up for an event just for booklovers called the Austin Book Trail. You get a treasure map of bookstores and check them off as you visit. Each store offers prizes and special deals.

Dani’s birthday surprise? She let me pick out one book from each store on the Austin Book Trail – her treat.

It felt exactly like being a kid at Toys R Us, allowed to pick any Lego set because you cleaned mom's car.

Pure joy.

Here are all the books I got during our adventure.

1. We started at Bookpeople, where I picked Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. Maybe it’s because I’m Catholic, but reading about The Troubles always feels visceral. The book is about an unspeakably violent act committed in the name of political leverage. That’s the scary part about this conflict. Northern Ireland turned into a divided society rife with political dysfunction, extreme nationalism, and religious fundamentalism. Sound familiar? I believe The Troubles are the red herring for the US, which is why everyone should read this book… or you can watch Derry Girls on Netflix, which is also great.

2. Next, we made our way to Alienated Majesty Books, where I got In Praise of Floods by James C Scott. A book about rivers and floodplains by an anarchist writer. My parents are probably reading this and thinking, “He’s gone full anarchist!” I get it, but to be fair, that bookstore is all about anarchism and Marxism, so I didn't have much choice. Scott's book about rivers caught my attention because I recently learned why the Rio Grande becomes so shallow around Big Bend National Park—it's due to human engineering like floodplain suppression and dams. I'm curious to see where Scott takes this topic.

3. I picked up Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg from First Light Books. His first book, "The Power of Habit," revolutionized the self-improvement genre by shifting the focus from strict time management to building simple habits that can make life better day by day. Duhigg walked so writers like James Clear and his book "Atomic Habits" could fly. Anyway, "Supercommunicators" is his latest work, and since I interact with a lot of people in my sales job and through my writing, this book feels particularly relevant to me.

4. At BookWoman, I discovered the author Juli Berwald. She’s a marine biologist from California who wrote Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and The Art of Growing a Backbone. I mean, just an amazing title! I love it when writers take a boring topic like Jellyfish and turn it into something interesting. I try to do that with running. Juli also wrote a book about coral reefs, which I will definitely read next.

5. After visiting BookWoman, we stopped by a small used bookstore called Livra, where I found a used copy of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I wanted at least one novel, and all my friends raved about this book, so we shall see.

6. We ended the day with a glass of wine at Vintage Books and Wine Bar in East Austin. While there, I chose The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson. During the Master's golf tournament, I had a fun time explaining to Dani why the tournament's narrator, talking about the spring azaleas and golf's holy ground, had also written a book about the murder of Emmett Till. Wright Thompson is from the Mississippi Delta; he grew up just a few farms away from where the murder took place. He is also considered one of the greatest sports writers of all time. In a way, it feels like he was destined to write about this subject.

That’s all I got! One of the best days of my life. What are you reading right now? Use the comment section to share with everyone.

A breakup actually led me to the Mexican border village of Boquillas.

I learned about the place while reading about Conor Knighton, a young journalist who hiked every National Park in America (all in one year) after his fiancée dumped him.

Naturally, my mom recommended his book Leave Only Footprints, hoping it would help heal my own heartache. His chapter about Big Bend and this lonely village across the Rio Grande leapt out of the pages and grabbed me by the collar.

Why?

At the time, Boquillas felt like an escape—a magical oasis far from everything and anyone I knew. A place where I could learn something about myself and maybe get over this girl. As if a sage sat across the Rio Grande waiting to hear all my problems.

When I visited this year, I learned I was wrong about Boquillas and misguided about my reasons for visiting.

A Journey Through Deserts and Borders

In February, a few friends and I drove from Austin to Big Bend for a trail run—a 17-mile trek up the Chisos Mountains.

Boquillas was our post-run celebration.

The road to Big Bend takes you through the rugged forests of Texas hill country and the big sky of the Texas plains. You can see where Big Bend gets its name if you open Google Maps. The park makes up the “bend” in southwest Texas formed by the Rio Grande twisting its way through the Chihuahuan desert. The Rio Grande is the natural border between the United States and Mexico. Tucked between a canyon and a sharp meander in the river on the park's southeast side sits the village of Boquillas.

We completed the run on Saturday, took some time to recover, and woke up early the following day to make our way into Mexico.

Big Bend’s US Customs and Border Protection office is open daily from 9 AM to 4 PM. If you miss that window, you’re spending the night in Mexico. Boquillas is inaccessible by car, so the only way to get into the village is to park at the Border Station, ferry across the Rio Grande, and hike.

We met a Border Patrol officer at the parking lot entrance. She stood there, preventing vehicles from entering the lot.

“Oh no!” I said, worried they closed the border for the day.

We rolled down our window, and she told us the lot was full.

“Go for a hike and come back in an hour, " she told us. “Spots will open up soon, and we can get you across.”

The parking lot was packed like a Sunday at Disneyland. Business was booming in Boquillas.

The Fight to Keep Boquillas Alive

Not long ago, fewer than 40 people a day crossed into Boquillas. The record is 427 — more than the population of the town. There’s always been a symbiotic relationship between Big Bend and Boquillas. Everything about West Texas culture derives from Mexican roots, and 25 years ago, there was no “official” way to tell the difference between where Big Bend ended and Boquillas began. No border office existed yet. Hikers would simply ferry across the Rio, grab a burrito from town, and be on their way.

Everything changed after 9/11 when the US shut off casual border crossings. If you wanted to visit Boquillas, you’d have to cross at an entry point 240 miles away and traverse the Boquillas Canyon through winding dirt roads.

In other words, you weren’t getting to Boquillas.

The village, which relied on hikers to support their two restaurants, one dive bar, and several shops, suffered. The families moved away, and a ghost town remained. Another relic to add to the list of old abandoned towns in West Texas.

In 2009, the Obama administration began and things got a little better.

President Obama worked with President Felipe Calderon to improve conservation efforts along the Rio Grande, including a proposal to open a border office within Big Bend National Park. A US Customs office opened in 2013, and Boquillas was back in business.

We Literally Ran To Mexico

After our hike through Boquillas Canyon, we headed back and found a parking spot. The customs office was small, maybe the size of a laundromat. Two women staffed the office. One agent noticed the size of our group and took us aside to go over ground rules.

“Border closes at 4 pm. I want you back here at 3:30.”

“Check in with Mexican immigration when you get into town.”

“Finally, do not, do not, do not, lose your passports.”

She looked at us like a middle school teacher staring down a restless classroom. We nodded, and the agent showed us the door.

It’s a short walk through some desert bush to the Rio Grande. In Conor Knighton’s book, he’s surprised to see a shallow, narrow stream instead of a mighty “Grande” river.

“Not what you were expecting?” A park ranger asked him.

We found the “Boquillas International Ferry Service” escorting a family across the river. The ferry service includes placing you and your party in a raft while a guy smoking a cigarette drags you across the river. We rolled up our pants and waded across into Mexico.

We still had about a half-mile hike to town. If you’re in a rush, the locals have a solution to this problem with a 5-dollar donkey service.

A donkey ride sounded fun, but this is a runner’s newsletter. We started running up the trail so that we could claim that we literally ran into Mexico.

Where to Find The Best Burrito in Big Bend

My friends and I were on a mission.

We only had about an hour and a half to explore and eat a burrito at Jose Falcon.

I read about Jose Falcon years ago, so seeing the restaurant in person was surreal.

During the free-flowing border years of the 1990s, a man named Jose Falcon owned the restaurant. Boquillas had no electricity or refrigeration then, so the menu consisted of non-perishable items like bean burritos. Jose died, and his daughter Lilia took over the business. After 9/11, Lilia moved her family to Kansas City to work in a meat processing plant and then to Atlanta to work in construction. When the Obama Administration opened a border crossing, Lilia and other families moved back to Boquillas.*

My friend Alejandro and I met Lilia at the restaurant (though we didn't know who she was at the time).

She was working at the restaurant's checkout counter. A restaurant which now has electricity, refrigeration, and a full menu stocked with Al Pastor burritos, goat tacos, and cold, salty margaritas.

We splurged on tacos and margaritas but ended up short on cash. That was a rookie mistake. She accepts USD, so there's no reason not to bring enough money.

We explained our predicament to Lilia. "Not to worry," she said. “The Wi-Fi password is outside. You can Venmo the rest.”

That’s how we learned that Jose Falcon now offers electricity, refrigeration, and wifi.

The Richest Life is Found Right Where You Stand

My friend Alejandro was born in Mexico. During lunch, I asked him about the land and its political landscape.

He told me he's a fan of the newly elected Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum. She's handled Trump's bully ball as well as anyone in the world. Some pundits admit that she may have gotten the better of Trump. When Trump initially threatened Mexico with tariffs, she sent 10,000 troops to the border to crack down on drug trafficking and illegal immigration.*

Trump delayed the tariffs in response. Here's the twist: the policy had already been enacted during the Biden Administration three years ago.

Nothing changed, but the tariffs got delayed, and Trump got to save face.

Sometimes, the best power move is letting someone else think they won.

“Mexico deserves a good president,” I told Alejando.

After lunch, I wandered into the dive bar for a beer. The bartender looked out his window at Texas, just across the Rio Grande.

"Have you ever been to the United States?" I asked him.

"No, no," he said. "I've always been here. Why would I go to the US?"

His small village of Boquillas was 160 miles from the nearest city. Yet he seemed content, happy in his corner of the world.

It made me question everything I thought about escaping to find happiness.

Sometimes the richest life is built right where you stand.

I checked my phone and nearly had a panic attack. It was 3:30. The border was closing in 30 minutes. I chugged my beer and met up with my friends who were anxiously waiting at the edge of town. We started our hike back to the border office.

As we passed the donkey transports, I felt guilty about running to Boquillas. I should have just paid the ferryman and gotten on a dang donkey—why do I have to run everywhere?

I spent as much money as I could. I bought two ponchos, one for me and one for my girlfriend Dani, a baseball that read “Boquillas International Ferry,” and over $100 worth of tacos, margaritas, and tequila shots at Jose Falcon.

I wish I could’ve spent more. This place was special, and I wanted to support it.

I Didn’t Find Self Actualization in Boquillas

While hiking back on the dusty trail, a wave of emotion hit me in the face like a west Texas wind.

I realized that Boquillas was not the oasis I dreamed it would be.

I didn’t have a moment of profound introspection, I didn’t find self-actualization, and I never thought about that girl who broke my heart.

Travel will not make you whole again.

Influencers and movies sell us this idea - Eat, Pray, Love your way out of depression. The truth is your woes, your debts, and your heartache follow you.

"Wherever you go, there you are," Yogi Berra said.

I learned this in Boquillas. I went there thinking I'd find healing after a breakup. Instead, I found something better:

I found Lilia and families fighting to keep their town alive. Border agents protecting the land's wild beauty. Friends sharing an unforgettable moment.

Sometimes the best discoveries aren't about us at all.

*Information about Lilia and Jose Falcon's history comes from Conor Knighton’s book Leave Only Footprints

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