Why I’m Running the New York Marathon
Note from the author: Choices, mental health, depression, family, friends - it sounds so dramatic to me while actually being completely and exactly how I feel and think about it. That in itself feels really strange.
- Steve
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I’ll never forget laying on the beat-up, tan, sectional couch in the first house we called home for my family, sobbing uncontrollably in February 2019. There have been so many times since then that I’ve wished I could forget that moment. But I can’t forget it, and today, I’m grateful for that. But more on that in a minute.
Now, my claim to athletic fame boils down to having been the best in the world at running for five seconds and sitting for a minute. As a bobsledder, that’s what I did. I led Team USA’s 4-man bobsled team to break a 62-year Olympic Gold Medal drought for my home country at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver to conclude my third, and final, Olympics as an athlete.
If there is a polar opposite sport to the grueling 26.2 miles of a marathon, bobsled would have to be it. I’m built for speed and power, and have the Type II B fast-twitch muscle fibers that I pushed to their absolute edge for decades to prove it. (For those that don’t know, these are the body’s largest and fastest muscle fibers that produce high force, strength, and power – they’re used for all-out effort, and fatigue very quickly. Consider yourself a poorly trained exercise physiologist now. You’re welcome.)
In fact, I had never run more than five miles in one effort in my entire life before this past April at the ripe age of 44. And I never planned to. I once told an Olympic Teammate, Lorenzo Smith, that I would never run a marathon; I would never even remotely want to run a marathon.
But that was before I spent some of my worst moments on that beautiful, wise, old couch. And it was before I understood the beauty of training for a marathon lives right next door to the decades-long Olympic pursuit I so loved.
That couch has been with me since before I won my Olympic medal. It was a fixture in our dump of a training house. It was where I sat with friends like now-Olympic legend Kaillie Humphries while we watched the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games and talked about what our Olympic moments might be like just a year and a half later in Vancouver. And it was where I collapsed with exhaustion and gratitude, just three days after accomplishing my childhood dream of achieving Olympic Gold in February of 2010.
That couch is where I told my wife, Rhiannon, I loved her for the first time in 2013. It’s where I laid skin-to-skin with our daughter Brett in 2017 and with our son Axel in 2022, when they were both just days old.
That couch caught me when I crumpled in 2017 when Curt Tomasevic, the brakeman from our Olympic gold medal 4-man bobsled team, called to tell me our driver Steven “Holcy” Holcomb had been found lifeless in his room at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, NY from an alcohol and sleeping pills related overdose. And it’s the same exact couch I was sitting on in 2020 when I learned my once best friend, roommate, and 2006 Olympic teammate Pavle Jovanovic had taken his own life just days before.
That couch has seen it all. Including the worst days of my depression.
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Coming back to the winter of 2019, I laid on that couch in quiet desperation on too many days than I could count. Day after day I would wake up, hoping this day would be better, and discover I couldn’t make it beyond that raggedy old couch.
There are parts of this story I haven’t really told, so bare with me as I do my best to talk about things that I don’t like to talk about yet recognize they may be both helpful for others and me.
Rhiannon would come downstairs and lay with me there and hold me. She wouldn’t judge me. She wouldn’t question me. She would just hold me until I could talk through the tears, through the stomach-clenching pain and powerlessness that gripped me. She would ask what was wrong and I did not know. All I knew was I couldn’t move, I couldn’t work out. I couldn’t do much of anything.
While Rhiannon held me as I lay on that couch, sobbing uncontrollably, she gently encouraged me to take small steps forward, wherever I could. And just when I thought I would stay paralyzed forever, I started making choices.
I chose to go to my doctor and have a very honest conversation. He had never seen me like this and a casual conversation quickly escalated when he was able to listen, and quantify, how bad it was. And so we chose to get on medication.
I chose to talk to one friend, and then two, realizing that the more I talked about it, the better I would feel. The less alone I would seem in my own head.
One morning that winter, I contemplated taking five steps to my left as I walked down 7th Avenue in downtown Calgary and onto the tracks of the lite rail, I chose to keep on walking.
That’s when shit got really real for me and I fully realized, when that thought crept it’s way uncontrollably into my head, that I needed to put the gas on the changes and choices that were needed.
I chose my family, my friends, my life’s work, my future.
I chose to see a counselor, where we talked about my backstory — which was likely a bit different than most. And he realized, and then made me realize, that everything great I had accomplished in life followed a low point and discreet choices I then made. This would be no different.
I would choose to pass by the couch, not ignoring it but acknowledging it, and go to the gym, even just to walk on the treadmill with the cold spring arriving in Calgary. I chose to lift my first weights in months.
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Today, I choose to live this life with everything I’ve got. I see the world with a new lens, a new comfort, and a new joy that I hadn’t previously held in my first 40 years.
And that means I’m choosing to run 26.2 miles (42 kilometers for my Canadian friends) because I can. My body is allowing me that choice, though a handful of times over the past few years it resisted and I needed to make some choices to keep it ready.
I didn’t start out planning to run a marathon. I started this journey by choosing to run 1 mile further than I ever had in April, just to see if I could. And I did it. Then I chose to run another mile. Then two more. Then three more.
Then I decided to write to you all, sharing some of my running in the July 25th newsletter.
Coincidentally, a former intern at the U.S. Olympic (& Paralympic) Committee, Stuart Lieberman read that newsletter and reached out to me. Stuart is the Director of Media and Public Relations for the NY Road Runners, the non-profit organization in charge of the New York Marathon and a massive amount of other running and education-related endeavors in the Greater New York City area. After hearing my story, Stuart and the NYC Marathon invited me to run with the goal of raising awareness for Classroom Champions. (As a reminder, Classroom Champions is the non-profit organization I co-founded, which gives kids the opportunity to learn life skills like perseverance and goal-achievement from some of the best athletes in the world.)
When Stuart invited me, I hesitated at first. A marathon is a big undertaking, and the timing wouldn’t give me a ton of time to train. It wasn’t something on my radar for this year, if at all! Lorenzo was shocked when I told him about this new goal!
But I chose to say yes to Stuart and the greatest Marathon on the planet. And I choose every day to recommit to that goal. Why? For a few reasons…
I choose it because I want people to know that even if they feel powerless at times, even if they lack the ability to control many things in their lives, there will always be small things they can control - including how they choose to see themselves.
And, if I’m honest, I’m running to prove the same to myself. To remind myself that my limits are based on the choices I make, the actions I take, and how I choose to see myself - and this is a long life so best tear down as many barriers as possible. All those years I claimed I wasn’t a distance runner - I was a sprinter, a bobsled pusher, and I couldn’t be both. And that statement was only true because that’s what I told myself. Conversely, I am now a distance runner simply because I choose to run.
I also choose to run for the good of my mental health and performance. We know that running can help us reduce anxiety and stave off depression (Johns Hopkins Medicine).
Plus, running and pushing ourselves beyond our perceived limits helps build a number of important social-emotional skills that contribute to well-being and reductions in anxiety and depression. For example: Building personal perseverance (like continuing to run when we don’t want to); goal-persistence (like setting a goal to run a marathon and sticking to it); and positive re-affirmation (taking a perceived negative and turning it into a positive -- like having a bad training run but realizing you still got your miles in).
(For more, this American Psychological Association piece digs deeper: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders)
Beyond that, I want to remind all of us that we have a choice, not just for ourselves, but for the people we want to inspire and lead. I want to remind the Olympians, Paralympians, Professional Athletes, and NCAA Student-Athletes out there, the ones who have volunteered with Classroom Champions and the ones who have never heard of us, that they can choose to be role models.
I want these athletes to know that the mindsets and skills they possess as athletes are exactly what is missing in today’s world, and they have an opportunity to choose to share that wisdom with young people who are hungry to learn it - because role models are important for both youth and adults. A lack of role models has even been shown to increase polarization in societies and, ultimately, as explained in this Psychology Today article, we all need role models to motivate and inspire us.
Life is about choices, that’s it. It’s that simple.
Yes, life can be very difficult for many. I’ve witnessed some kids in pretty challenging circumstances through my work with Classroom Champions. But I’ve also seen, especially in these cases, the power of choice. Whether the incredibly resilient students on remote First Nation reserves in Canada or in inner-city neighborhoods in Camden, New Jersey, or in rural communities like Seymour, Indiana -- I’ve watched kids and adults choose to frame, perceive, and take on their challenges in ways that will make their lives and futures better.
No matter what situation we are in, we can choose to go forward, to take a small step in the direction we want to go in, to think about ourselves in a new way.
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So, this is me inviting you to join me in making a choice, however small. Don’t wait. If your mind and your body are allowing you that choice, take it right now.
Choose to get off your couch and go for a walk around your block today.
Choose to forgive someone who’s wronged you - for yourself, for them, for both, or for no reason other than to prove to yourself you are capable.
Choose to extend your thanks to someone who’s helped you but who may not know it.
Choose to do something, today, that you know is good for you but you don’t have the time, energy, or attention for. Leave your reasons on the couch and just do it.
Choose to run a mile, or even a marathon.
It doesn’t matter what it is exactly, as long as it’s something that moves you forward.
Meanwhile, I hope you’ll also choose to join me and Classroom Champions in our quest to remind athletes of their value to society so there are no more Holcys and Jovanovics, whose lives were cut short. And help those athletes choose to teach kids that they can achieve what they want for themselves, by developing skills and making choices.
Classroom Champions is setting up a place for you to support - by the time this publishes, the landing page is likely to be ready. Take a look here.
Finally, if you have a couch in your life that you’ve been sitting on a little too long, choose to get up off it.
I will always be grateful for our old couch — it’s been there for me in some of the best and worst moments of my life. I’m sure I’ll fall back on it again, likely after I stumble in the door post-marathon, and likely when difficult moments strike, because they inevitably will.
But for today, I’m off the couch. I’m lacing up my running shoes. I’m heading out the door to get some more miles under my belt.
After all, I have a marathon to run.
- Steve
P.S. - And in the same vein as the above and because doing hard things makes us stronger - I’m doing it because it’s new and it’s hard. And I like to remind myself, from time to time, that I can still do new, hard things. I’m not too old for this. I didn’t punish my body or my brain too much for that. It’s life, we do this one time, and we can do all the things while still prioritizing what’s most important to us while still being a good human being. Thank you to Kim Wright and Jason Zaran for inspiring me to just, never, stop.
