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On Leap Day in 2020 – two weeks before the United States government declared a national emergency around the COVID-19 pandemic—I ran the Atlanta Marathon. At forty-eight, I was as fit as I’d ever been, and I finished the race in 14^th place out of 2,152 participants, clocking 2:46:59 on a brutal course with more than 1,200 feet of climbing. I can’t know for sure, but there’s a pretty good chance I was already infected with the virus when I ran those 26.2 miles, though I didn’t become symptomatic until a few days later, when I was back home in California.

I’d had my share of colds and flus, but this new bug was far worse. At one point during my monthlong confinement, I coughed so hard I broke a rib—or maybe just tore some cartilage between ribs, but in any case, it hurt like hell. I lost all of my hard-earned fitness in that terrible month, and when I started running again in April I was determined to earn it back. And I did, setting an unofficial personal best of 33:25 for 10 kilometers in a solo time trial on a wheel-measured route in August.

But by October I was sick again, overcome by a weird new mix of symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath, and erratic pulse. It took me a while, but eventually, I figured out that I’d developed long Covid, a post-viral chronic illness similar to myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue (ME/CFS), with no known cure. Like a lot of long-haulers, I underwent all kinds of testing in medicine’s effort to identify the cause of my symptoms, which revealed that in addition to long Covid I had coronary artery disease, a comorbidity that probably predated my COVID-19 infection but was likely exacerbated by it. I stopped running in January 2021, not because of my wonky my ticker but because my most debilitating long Covid symptom, known as post-exertional malaise, had gotten so bad that I simply couldn’t run.

By New Year’s Eve 2023, I hadn’t run in three years, aside from a few failed attempts. That night I signed up for the Javelina Jundred, a 100-kilometer ultramarathon in Arizona’s Sonoran desert. I was thirty pounds overweight, completely deconditioned, and still dealing with persistent symptoms of fatigue, neuropathy, shortness of breath, brain fog, and exercise intolerance, and I had ten months to muster the fitness required to run 62 miles on hilly trails in extreme heat.

In a life filled with impulsive risks, this one was by far my biggest gamble. To the best of my knowledge, no person with unresolved long Covid had ever taken on such a severe test of endurance—so why did I? There’s no simple answer to this question, but the biggest factor was a need for closure. Shortly before I got sick, I dropped out of a different 100K race at 38 miles, having fallen twice and hurt my ankle, knee, and shoulder. At the time, I comforted myself with the knowledge that I would have other chances to finish the business I left unfinished that day, little knowing that a viral meteor was heading straight toward me. When the meteor struck, I couldn’t get over the fact that I hadn’t known my last race was my last race, and I needed one more finish line to say a proper goodbye to my runner self.

I’d be lying, however, if I told you I would have attempted my race for closure had I not been a writer as well as a runner. The opportunity to chronicle my quest for the entertainment of others was what justified the risk for me. Merely living the experience wasn’t worth dying for, but telling the story was. By turning my suffering into art, I would make it useful, and not just useful but necessary. A thing of beauty would now exist that wouldn’t have existed had I not suffered.

I’m happy to say that I did not die in the quest to cross that final finish line, and the resulting book, Dying to Run: An Athlete’s Quest for One More Finish, is now available for preorder. It’s about running, yes, but it’s also about life and death and everything in between. It will make you laugh and it will make you cry, sometimes within a single page, and it will leave you changed forever, I promise. I wrote it for you, so please accept my gift.

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80/20 Publishing