My First Run

Reposted from April 2020…

Before opening GAIN, I hit a serious rough patch. I’d spent a year cautiously training—trying not to aggravate my back and hip—followed by a full year off from working out altogether. As a former athlete with no team, no goal, and chronic pain, I had nothing to train for. That mix of lost motivation and fear of making things worse kept me away from the gym entirely.

Running had always hurt. In college, we’d do captains’ practices down Hills Beach Road, and every single time, I’d strain a groin muscle. I’d be limping for a couple of days before it faded—just in time for the next running workout to set me back again.

Despite how much I hated it—how uncomfortable and boring it felt—I remember thinking: Someday I should run a marathon. It didn’t make sense, but I figured anything that difficult and miserable might be worth overcoming.

That thought disappeared for years.

Then one Saturday morning in the spring of 2014, something changed. I had recently started getting back in the gym. I was managing my injuries, spending real time stretching and foam rolling. For the first time in a long while, I wasn’t training to compete—I was training just to be human again. To move well. To stop hesitating out of fear.

That meant I had to learn to run without getting hurt.
So I dove in: I studied running mechanics, explored the Pose Method, and treated running as a skill—not a race. I didn’t like it, but I believed I should at least be capable of it.

That Saturday, Hannah and I left my apartment in Hampton with one goal: run 1.2 miles to the Secret Spot for breakfast burritos and iced coffee. Solid motivation.

The whole way there, I thought about how to lean and fall to create momentum, how to let my feet just kiss the pavement and lift them off quickly. By the time we arrived, my calves were seized up, my achilles were aching, and the bottoms of my feet were screaming.

We ate our burritos watching cars pass by on their way to the beach. We walked home. That became our summer routine. It was the first time I ever consistently ran—week after week, every Saturday.

In September, we ran down to the Secret Spot one morning and found it boarded up—closed for the season. And just like that, the ritual ended. I forgot about running again for a while.

It wasn’t until two years later, after we got Clementine, that I discovered trail running—and finally started to call myself a runner.

—Justin Miner
@justinminergain