San Diego, CA - 4.17.12
Last year I attended a career transition seminar to see what sort of effort it would take to leave the military behind, start a new career, and begin living my life. The last day of the seminar was a sit down interview with the guy giving the talks, David Sona. In between all the expected inquiries of work ambitions and life goals, he stopped to ask me: “What do you REALLY like to do?" I told him that I really liked to run but that I wouldn’t consider myself a "runner” in the truest since of the word. A runner to me at the time was someone cranking out sub 5 minute miles in a singlet and slit shorts. I never considered it as an actual lifestyle I guess. The me last year rarely saw the forest for the trees. David looked at me for a moment and asked, well how much do you run? I told him it was somewhere around 6 miles a day 5-6 days a week. Then he asked what’s your 5k time? I told him around 18 or 19 minutes at the moment. Nodding his head and smiling he told me:
“Consider yourself a runner. I imagine you leave the jogging to your buddies trying to run off last night’s beer hangover. I imagine if you really worked you could be a good runner. That’s why I think you should forget about finding a job for the moment. Either stay in the Navy, go back to another boat, or get out and apply to a top business school. Either way you’re going to succeed. That’s who you are inside. Serious runner’s rarely let themselves fail … Now should we order some breakfast? They have some really good omelets here.”
Since that talk with David my world has been turned upside down more times than I care to explain. There aren’t many constants in my life at the moment, but there has been running. Week to week, month to month there’s running. It is that reliable friend, that unrelenting foe, that generous benefactor. I don’t know if I’ll ever make running a career. In fact, I’m almost certain I won’t. It’s just not in the cards. What I do know is that, for now, I’m all in.
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