I wasn’t sure about this content. On the one hand, this is mostly a sex-and-drugs blog, so me posting about running is a bit off brand. Does anyone want to hear about this kind of personal thing? On the other hand, I’ve written about fitness stuff before with decent results, and fitness stuff fits in with body image stuff, which is definitely lifestyle and drug adjacent. And on the other other hand, it’s my blog and I’ll write what I want. So this is me talking about that time I ran 100 miles in a month for charity.
Which was this month. I finished my 100 miles yesterday, February 27, 2021.
A Little Bit About Shane the Runner
I enjoy running. I like being able to get out in the warm weather, hit a nice forest trail, and just zoom on through the woods listening to music. Six to eight miles suits me best. I get my second wind around four miles in and just feel like I’m gliding. I find it very meditative.
I find lifting heavy weights meditative, too, but in a different way. When running, I can just kind of check out mentally. My mind wanders through whatever creative endeavors grab my interest. If I’m running solo, I’ll write stories or plan out blog posts or just fantasize. When I’m running with friends, we discuss books, philosophy, or history—whatever comes up. The brain can go anywhere.
When lifting, I’m singularly focused on the lift. If my mind wanders, at best I lose my rep count. Potentially, I do a lift poorly and hurt myself, possibly severely. I’ve often said my heaviest lifts were more a mental exercise than a physical one, which might be hard to understand.
So, yeah, I enjoy running.
But not usually 100 miles.
And not so much in winter. Some years I don’t even manage to keep up with it. If I stop in November or December, I can’t seem to motivate myself to get back into it until spring. Usually I don’t go more than three or four miles because my feet get cold and it’s hard to breathe and sometimes the water in my hydration pack freezes.
I just don’t wanna!
About This 100-Mile Challenge
Running 100 miles any time of year would be a challenge, but in February it’s a herculean task for me.
So why did I?
It all started with a call-to-action from Naughty Gym. They posted about the 100-mile challenge to raise awareness for the charity Stop Soldier Suicide. I hadn’t been running a lot this winter, but I had been keeping up with some running and I was trying to force myself to workout outside more often (yay cold-weather training!), so I decided to sign up for a fundraiser and pledged to run the miles.
Stop Soldier Suicide
I like this particular charity. I have an affinity for their mission. I don’t have any experience with soldier suicide in particular, but I’ve always felt our government does a poor job of caring for our military men and women. What soldiers are trained to do, what they need to be able to do, it’s brutal on the psyche. It’s not a harmonious state. And we don’t do enough to help people overcome that and reintegrate when they come home.
I follow the research coming out from MAPS about the use of MDMA and psychedelic-assisted therapy (look at me making the substance-use connection!) in helping veterans overcome PTSD and other trauma.
I don’t know if Stop Soldier Suicide condones that kind of therapy. I’m not trying to conflate these two organizations or their overarching goals. Only that I’m keen on anything that helps our veterans. And that as a substance user, I can see how these substances could be extraordinarily beneficial, that more research needs to be done, and that these need to be shifted out of Schedule 1 (no medical benefit) so that more research can be done.
Awareness of Suicide
I’m horrible at self-promotion. Whether it be promoting this blog, other writings, my personal achievements, my accomplishments at my job, whatever it is, I don’t typically share. Even on social media. I have a weird hang-up about posting on social media: So many times I write something and then think, “Ah, no one cares!” and delete it.
I pushed myself to post about this challenge (even write this blog) because that is how we raise awareness. It’s not about the “Look at me, I did this thing, how awesome am I?” (though that’s how I feel this sounds). It’s about showcasing the issue, the charity, and even giving others an outlet for their generosity. Maybe they weren’t looking for something to donate money to, but when it shows up, they feel good about doing so.
You may have read about Erin and my friend D who overdosed last year. We don’t know for sure if it was suicide or accidental, but we have our suspicions.
She wasn’t a soldier, but if I can bring a little bit of awareness to the tragedy of suicide, then I’m going to do it, which also means sharing a suicide prevent hotline number here: 1-800-273-8255.
Normalizing Substance Use
But there is another level of awareness I want to bring up: I’m an avid user of illegal substances, and I’m a functional, healthy individual. I’m not a shiftless lay about pothead, hedonism seeking ecstasy user, or mentally fried reality-escaping psychedelic user.
Why make a point of showing this?
Perhaps you heard of the recently published book Drug Use for Adults by Dr. Carl Hart, who came out as a habitual heroin user. Dr. Hart has received a lot of criticism by coming out as a functional substance user.
(A brief aside: Thank you to everyone who DMed, emailed, or in any way reached out about this book. That anyone saw this publication and thought they should let me know about it was really touching!)
This is me showing that being a substance user does not mean I can’t be a productive member of society. My use of psychedelics, MDMA, weed, or any other substance hasn’t destroyed my life or my health. I’m quite capable of making goals and spending hours a day running to achieve those goals.
In fact, I could (and would) argue that my use of psychedelics and MDMA put me more in touch with a desire to be socially aware and conscientious of others.
So I Ran…I Ran so Far Away…
Where I live, February is cold. And snowy. And generally awful for outside running, which is the only running I have available because I can’t go to my gym to run on a treadmill due to the COVID pandemic.
The first week of February was particularly bad weather. By Valentine’s Day, which is halfway through the month (‘cause that’s how math works), I was only 25 miles down out of 100.
This resulted in me needing to run more than 50 miles in a week, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I ran my first back-to-back 10 milers, one of which I did after having a cannabis edible (another substance-use connection! Who said this blog post was going to be off brand?).
A little stoned seems like a pleasant way to do a long run! I need to explore the benefits of canna-runs more this spring and summer. Try to get some evidence if running high has any benefit. For Science!
I also ran my fastest ever half-marathon during this week. Which is amusing because that means I beat my time when I ran a legit organized half-marathon race that I had trained for months to run. I certainly hadn’t been training through December and January this time!
I see this as a credit to the Naughty Gym workouts I’ve been doing. As I said in my review of their program, I fall into heavy lifting routines because I’m good at them. Had I been focusing on lifting heavy these past few months (and not doing workouts outside in the cold), I couldn’t have done this challenge.
Moving Forward
What’s next for Shane the runner?
A 150-mile month? A full marathon perhaps? Trying cocaine as a preworkout supplement?
No. Fuck no! Maybe.
For Science!
From here, I want to get faster rather than go longer. I averaged 12:30/mile on days that were below freezing and as fast as 10:10/mile on the days in the 50s. Yeah, we had a 30-degree temperature swing across three days.
And I’m signed up for a Tough Mudder later this year. So that’s something to train for.
But what I really hope comes from all of this is awareness.
From me, mindfulness about helping those in need and continuing to show that substance use doesn’t necessarily look the way the media tends to show it. As long as there is the idea that it is the substance that is the problem, too many people suffering from addiction will be demonized and potentially powerful medicines will be denied those who could benefit from them.
And for you, dear reader, I hope you can find a cause that means something to you, and you work to support it. This pandemic has been rough on so many people. Being socially minded and finding ways to support others where and how we can, that’s important. It’s what makes life worth it.
This felt like something I could do to make a difference, maybe even save a life. For that I would gladly run 100 miles in the freezing snow time and again.