It was January 15th, 2013. Louisiana "winter" and in the busy selling period when I worked for Mizuno, 6-8 weeks that occurred every six months when I'd have to be gone for full weeks showing my accounts the product that would come out another six months later, the orders written to commit what shoes we should build. You'd also take this time to talk a bit about the coming months and what marketing and promotions you'd do with the accounts to help sell your shoes. I remember this year specifically because Mizuno had sent us all 100 or so little notebooks to leave with accounts to be used as running journals. I gave one to my then 8 year old son, Ian.

That night we ran a loop that amounted to about 2 miles and he came back beaming, pride in himself for doing it. The dopamine rush we all get from a run. It was a start. He only made one entry into that journal, but we still have it somewhere.

Later that spring myself and 3-4 other runners helped bring a program called Let Me Run to a few different schools. We met 4th and 5th grade boys 3-4 days a week and ran them. We taught simple life lessons. The boys blew off steam. Sometimes there were squabbles, but not from Ian. He was the lone 2nd grader, forced to wait the 90 mins after school as he had no other ride, and so. He ran.

The program culminated with the boys running a 5k and Ian joined the dozen older boys and ended up placing 4th among the group, some 3 years younger. His stride, natural and smooth.

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Over the next 4 years, he'd do the kid's triathlons we produced but his relationship with running was loose. We never made him. Have fun, run if you want. Soccer, band and other team sports followed, but none "took". He was a gifted skateboarder, the broken bones to follow.

By 6th grade he decided to try cross country. He sat squarely middle of the pack, but liked it. A season or two of Middle School track as well.

Around this time I was asked frequently to coach the team., both High School and Middle. The time commitment seemed impossible but the opportunity seemed impossible to pass up. I had quit selling shoes in 2014 to get off the road and spend more time with the family. I n February of 2017, I agreed to coach the XC team for the fall, figuring six months would give me time to get the rest of my ducks in order and allow me the time needed. The next day the track coach called and asked me to start immediately coaching the distance track kids. Unable to say no, my six month buffer disappeared.

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Ian ran track and xc in 2017, and improved. The fall of 2018 , another cross season, but in November of that year he stepped on a soccer ball at p.e. and broke his foot, and after healing, he opted out of a spring track season.

That spring the middle school boys team improved with consistency and Ian felt like they were running away from him. Small for his age, he felt like they all got fast and he'd never compete, he opted not to run his freshman year. I opted to continue coaching.

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In the spring of 2020 we all remember what happened, the track season just another victim of the times. After that strange and sometimes glorious spring, I decided that the kids I coached needed something so I laid plans for a Summer Running Camp, open to kids from any school, Ian decided to give running another go. That Covid summer was bizarre, but we ran, and we cobbled together a fall season. Ian enjoyed it and improved. Still having the nuts and bolts of more potential than his times indicated.

Consistency builds strength and speed and most runners aren't "naturally gifted". They have to work to improve. Over the next year, that's what he did. He battled asthma and learned to lose while being part of a team. He slowly built mileage and going into his junior year, seemed to be poised for a breakthrough. It wasn't to be.

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As a coach, I am not a proponent of high mileage for high school kids. The road to improvement and success can take a long time and I look at a season with no injuries to be as successful as a season of PR's and team performance. There's usually one to two kids every year that can go on to run at the next level and my goal as a coach is to give all of them the lifelong gift of running. Burnout and injury are real and more prevalent than not. I say this as in September of 2021, after a slow summer build, Ian had a nagging pain around his ankle. High schoolers are hard to read. The difference between discomfort and injury can be minuscule and more often than not, a day or two off and or some treatment protocol usually does the trick. In Ian's case, it did not. He was diagnosed with a tibial stress fracture and time was the only thing to heal it.

He lost his junior year cross country season completely. It was devastating for him.

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That fall saw the beginnings of college visits and our first looked to be his last. We visited Western Carolina, a gem in the mountains of NC about an hour west of Asheville. Ian loved it and said he didn't need to go see anywhere else. If the numbers worked, he wanted to head to the mountains. We were cautiously optimistic we could figure it out. A perfunctory glance at their cross country team told us that running there would not be in the cards as the times were super fast and he hadn't run for six weeks with no end in site to the forced time off. We looked to the '22 track season as a chance to rehab, run some races and just enjoy running.

In February, he started the long trek back to fitness. Stutters and stops, aches and pains. Anxiety over anything that felt remotely uncomfortable. We moved slow with no big goals other than being healthy and running.

Oh, and Ian tells me that he wants to run in college...

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I have this thing/idea that is a constant in my mind. When talking running and sports with parents I get downright animated and preacher like. I've written before about the fact that I never remember having a lot of ADHD symptoms growing up. There may have been some, successful procrastination for sure, but I wasn't all over the place all the time. I credit the structure of school and more importantly, swimming and tennis to a lot of that success. When I came to college, I didn't have to go to class, so I didn't. I didn't have to manage swim practice and home work and social stuff, and the time management skills needed to negotiate life and perhaps ADHD were removed. I floundered and underachieved.

We as a society spend billions of dollars a year on youth sports. We shuttle kids to early morning practices and weekend competitions from the time they are 5 until they graduate. 13 years of structure. At the end of May their Senior year, it all stops. We remove the time management of studying and juggling practice. We send them away to college where they are learning to be adults and we remove the structure. Then we guffaw when the struggle.

I believe in sports and I believe in their power to make us better at everything. My son is literally a different person when he’s running. Confident, happy, focussed, his schoolwork, carefree and easy. If my son wanted to continue running in college, we were going to look for the opportunities.

Well and he was going to have to run his ass off.

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I always say that the kids and athletes that are the most consistent, get the most out of their training. This is true damn near 100% of the time. This is only one part of the equation though. There's two more parts.

Patience and trust. You have to trust and believe in your coach and their process. You also have to be patient. Gains are incremental. There are no short cuts.

These were the conversations Ian and I had in May of 2022. I still believed he had a lot of upside that he was unable to tap into due to his injuries and year off. He just had to be consistent. I promised to do everything I could to get him where he needed to be. I didn't ask for a promise back. He simply showed up and fulfilled every day.

Over the summer he and his mom began to research smaller schools that had teams he could compete with and that had the academic programs he wanted. I did none of this. He researched the times and knew what he needed to run. Jeanne researched the academic scholarships available and planned more visits.

He ran hard and neither questioned or missed a workout. He ran PR after PR. His times entered the realms of what it took for colleges to notice. His high school team finished fourth in the regional round, finished State Runner up 10 days later against the same teams. Ian received Scholastic All State for maintaining a 4.0 throughout high school. CONSISTENCY + TRUST = SUCCESS.

In October he visited Roanoke College and met with the coach and some of the team. Virginia it turns out is not unlike North Carolina. In November we crunched the numbers and with academic scholarships, confirmed that he could indeed go and continue to run.

Success.

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The above is for sure is charmed. No storybook ending ever tells the behind the scenes , but on the surface, his road has made me as a coach and my wife and I as parents, extremely proud. His hard work did this. Period.

This passed weekend though, we were all given a truly incredible gift.

13 years ago, Craig Sweeney, a friend of mine from High School, and I started The Louisiana Marathon. It's a full weekend event and it is the jewel of our FRESHJUNKIE Racing season. It's the event that brought Juba, PatO, Mike and I together as business partners and we have 20+ of our closest friends/colleagues in every year to put it on. The work is hard. The weather and outside environment sometimes brutal, but on the days when the sun shines and temperatures cooperate, it's magical.

On Saturday, on the 12th running of the event, my son ran the 5k and won his first race and we were all there at the finish line to celebrate and witness it. I can barely put into words how incredible this was. To some it may have been "just another race", and maybe he will go on to win plenty more. I hope so. I'm not sure any other will compare.

Our crew, my friends, took the finish tape and each wrote a note to Ian and presented it to me after we'd cleaned up.

Tears. For sure.

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I don't often write like this, but I wanted to capture this so that one day if I'm old and can't remember or if my son forgets, he can look back and remember.

Running has given our family a lot.

For that, I'm eternally grateful.

#hugsandhi5s