When will I be changed?

“I’ve been told I’ll find some truth down in my bones
But I don’t know
I know, know
I can’t even seem to find my own road home
And I hope there is some truth down in my bones.”
— When Will I Be Changed?

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I suppose it only took one entry to restart the spark—the writing one, at least—because here I am doing two in a week when I hadn’t done that in that many years.

Today, I spoke for the umpteenth time to University of Texas pre-medical students. It’s been over a decade since my first one, and I’ve actually had “kids” come up and say they heard me at running events or in random circumstances—including one who was in medical school. UT was the first place that invited me to speak shortly after winning a marathon pushing Kiana in a stroller—the first of many places that would have me all over. I did that first one off the cuff, and it became the basis for many of my later talks.

I still start and finish with the same jokes. My favorite one—about my Wada tests—gets fewer laughs each year: “I knew my groin and my brain were connected. It only takes a few seconds for them to communicate, and we know which one puts the other to sleep.” Is it me getting older, telling it to 18- and 19-year-olds? Or are they just more PC?

I updated the speech, glad to share that I’m still moving—sharing how, while I wasn’t supposed to make 40, I ran the TransRockies race with 8/8 landing on stage 5 of a 6-day event. In the cancer world, stages 1–4 are a big deal, so somehow it felt appropriate that “stage 5” for me was getting to miles 88 and 100 in mountains connected to the ones I was born in. Last week I took 3rd male in a 5K, and yesterday 1st in another.

But even as I updated, I realized it was a change of a note or two in a song that has mostly stayed the same. I’ve been running there since I was 8 years old, and I put off brain surgery to run a marathon—both things I still share in those talks. Yet in clearing out things that get applause, I realize that keeping moving has kept me alive and connected to the ground even as I fly off it.

However, I think it’s also gotten me into the infamous kind of trouble. My closest relationship right now is with the guy I run with all the time. Oddly enough, after running together for over a decade—and doing a few local races in competition and collaboration (he beat me at the 80’s 8K but I’m not bitter; he paced me to my only sub-3 marathon, but I’ve got some faster PRs on the front end)—we’re traveling for a race together right around 15 years after brain surgery and 13 after that marathon stroller win. I’ll be trying to beat him. But the reason our friendship survives and thrives is because we talk in motion.

I was recently at an event for cancer survivors in Vermont where people noticed I talked much more during hikes than at the dinner table—where I’d just throw in a dry remark here and there.

With Kiana’s mom—the creative-writing major—there was something she wrote that I found recently entitled When He Leaves, about how I was always leaving, never knowing how to do lazy days. The quality that’s gotten me invited to speak is the exact same one.

With Elaine, it makes me think of a new Mumford & Sons song, Run Together, which says:
When we run, we run together.
When we’re apart, we fall apart.

It’s why I proposed on a run—and perhaps the biggest reason why, when our relationship became long-distance, it fell apart.

But that’s not the song I started with. It’s one I’ve listened to many times: When Will I Be Changed? And I think the answer is likely never. In my best relationships and connections, I’ve learned to grow as we go—but growth and change are different dynamics.

And I hope that in this green and peacefulness
That you’ll let me stay,
Let me stay.
Even a poor serpent needs a place to rest
For a while as he’s waiting to be changed.

I know priorities—but even in running, what I’m infamous for, I’m also notorious for not taking a break. I’m on my way to my 3rd 1,000-day streak, not taking a day off, where even my doctors and coaches have given up on getting me to try. I show my priorities in that I realigned my life to be a better father—not just a single one—but even there, winning a marathon with a stroller was part of that alignment. With the stage race, I didn’t race once in July, but I’m at four weekends in a row in October and will finish the year averaging about a race every other weekend (some weekends had two or three).

So perhaps, like a friend shared this morning while he ate bacon—someone was lecturing their 70-plus-year-old mother not to eat it because it was bad for her—I laughed. There comes a point where you have whatever you want. Heck, I started eating more dessert in my thirties because I wasn’t supposed to make it to my forties. It cost me some pant sizes and some dental work, and I still have no apologies for it.

But this speech every few months creates some forced perspective. The professor introduces me by talking about that marathon win from so long ago, quoting media pieces from when I was 32. He talks about how he ran with me the day after my 40th birthday, when I made him run a very steep place called Mt. Bonnell to celebrate being “over the hill.” He shared a note from a student who said that class inspired them to run, and that it’s helped with their health—mental and physical—and perspective.

I’ve chosen to stay active in the cancer and brain-cancer communities, and with today’s speech there was someone sitting near the front who made my day: the daughter of the founder of Austin’s brain-cancer research race, the Brain Power 5K.It was my first race after brain surgery, about five months later. It was also the first race I’d won since college, and I was the top fundraiser. Maybe it was the universe reminding me I still had a role to play.

Kelly—the founder—had put off her brain surgery to carry her pregnancy to term, risking her life to deliver another. That’s as motherly as love gets, I think.

I’ve been thinking about it since then. The Brain Power 5K went defunct after COVID, but Kelly and I—and our kids—are still standing. And I’m glad that hasn’t changed.

The Story Is Writing Me

 Torn between what is and what could be.

It’s hard to write the story

When the story’s writing me

— Great Expectations, The Outsiders

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Those of you who have known me a while know I kept a blog of my cancer journey, Picking Up A Hitchhiker, for over a decade. It started as a simple way to hold onto memory when I was worried brain surgery would damage it so much that I wouldn’t remember my life story. I also had—and still have—full intentions of reading it when my time came.

Cancer, fortunately, has become less and less relevant to my everyday life. I’m not on maximum dosage of medication. It’s been over a decade since a seizure; the appointments are fewer and farther between. And for a variety of reasons—one of which is definitely that I’d stopped envisioning since my twenties—middle age has made me as much, if not more, afraid of aging than of dying.

I mean, let’s be clear: I’ve started middle age in style and wildness. The kid born 8/8/80 used to assume before cancer that he’d make 88, so I figured arriving at 44 last year was the midlife crisis marker. It started with skydiving with people I love and trust. It was followed by Burning Man where, well, let’s just say when in Nevada, do as the Romans.

But the wildness refocused, because I think I’m still standing by well—not standing still. In November ‘24, I managed to win, randomly in raffles, entries to both a six-day stage race, the TransRockies, and an Ironman 70.3. I had plantar fasciitis going hard, but despite a good friend saying, “Just because you win an entry doesn’t mean you have to do it,” I signed up for both.

Each of those events would have deserved an entry of their own in the old Hitchhiker days. But both are a bit past now, and they’ll have to rest in my limited and damaged brain. Just to add spice to the mix, I also did my first Spartan Trifecta during that midlife crisis—three of the hardest things I’ve done in about a seven-month span. Aging like fine wine in a damaged bottle, I suppose.

I miss the writing. I still actually do write to process thoughts—type at length—and then just select all and delete, somehow trying to both let it out and let it go. But I miss this intentional writing, where I describe the story.

I even played with the idea of writing a memoir of sorts, titled The Thrill of Hope: A Soundtrack of Quiet Desperation. Each chapter or entry would be labeled after a song, since I regularly think—and my heart often beats—in lyrics, in both Spanish and English.

A few days ago, Kiana and I went to see a musical, The Outsiders. I won’t ruin it, because before I went I’d never seen or known anything about it, but it had two songs that stuck with me enough that an old man downloaded them and has had them on repeat—enough to inspire this writing.

The lyric at the top of this blog captures it perfectly: “It’s hard to write the story when the story is writing me.” Perhaps the blog was never that different from putting off brain surgery to run a marathon, or walking out of ambulances. It was an attempt—quite literally—to control the narrative. But I think the story has written me just as much.

I used to ask my doctors, “Can I keep running, and am I fit to raise a kid? Because one is how I get through the day, and the other one is why.” I’m still running, but I know my PRs are almost certainly behind me, and Kiana’s a full legal adult, no longer sharing a roof with me—so both of those equations are less relevant.

I think about heading to Mexico and just restarting life where it started for me. But I still have some promises to keep, and no matter where, there are many miles to run before I sleep.

While I’m still thankful and grateful for each day, there are more moments—more days—where I’m trying to figure out what all this has been for. People offer things like, “Don’t you want to see [insert great idea here]?” But the truth is, the answer is almost always no. I didn’t stick around to be a passive spectator of anything.

I’m now officially working in race production, but unlike most race directors, I snuck into both the races I’ve done so far—fastest guy on my team at the first relay and third-place male at the second one—so there’s still something in the tank.

Parts of my brain, heart, and soul are broken—some through circumstance, some through choice—but I don’t see myself as a victim of either.

But I’m still running, still singing, still loving, and still trying—as more of my hair grows gray—to stay gold.

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Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

— Robert Frost