April-Anne asks “Why did you start running?”
My folks ran when I was a kid, and would drag my brother and I along (often quite literally kicking and screaming). But that doesn’t quite count as when I started running.
I ran a lot in OCS, but at first that was mainly due to the Marines chasing me. But somewhere along the route, something snapped. It was probably when I could actually keep up and shout at the same time without gasping for breath.
I would run occasionally during my time in the nuke power pipeline and while assigned to a submarine, but that was more giving into the “flight” part of the “fight or flight” response hardwired into us.
I started running while my lovely wife and I were training for the 2000 Disney marathon. I hit a point where I could do 5 miles without blinking, and I was hooked. We didn’t make it to the marathon – we decided to stop trying not to have kids, and almost immediately we were expecting, so I slacked off training in late October when the weather got nasty.
I’ve had a couple more stops/starts since then, but overall I’ve kept up with it, or at least with an intense desire to be out there.