If you’ve read my blog, you know my wife made her marathon debut yesterday in Long Beach. I’ve talked about it a lot, I’ve been excited about running with her, and we finally got to tackle a marathon together yesterday. But I’ll talk about her another day. Today, I’m going to talk about my brother Josh, who completed the Long Beach Half Marathon yesterday. It’s flat-out amazing that he was able to do what he did.
I’m going to rewind to February 28, 1993. That’s the day that my little brother got in a car wreck so bad that the coroner came to the accident scene. It happened about 250 yards from the house in the morning, so a neighbor let me know while I was eating my breakfast and I was on the scene immediately. It’s something I’ll never forget. It was horrific seeing my little brother, only 16, getting cut out of a car with the jaws of life. My dad thought his left leg looked so bad when they pulled him out that it would end up being amputated.
He ended up having his shattered hip operated on that day, he spent about a month in traction, missed a semester of school, he had to use a walker for a while, he wore ankle-to hip braces, he’s had countless knee surgeries over the past 16 years … basically, he has horrible legs — his left leg and right leg are both thrashed. He saw me at the end of the Pacific Shoreline Marathon (now Surf City) in 2007 and got inspired to run a marathon. One treadmill workout later, he tore up his knee (again) and went under the knife (again).
On top of it all, he’s never really been athletic or taken good care of himself. He has gotten into a gym routine over the past year or so, but all-in-all, he’s probably about the last person you’d expect to run a half marathon.
In the spring, he started talking about running a half marathon. I didn’t necessarily doubt him, but I didn’t have 100% confidence. His injury risk, the chance that maybe he’d get sidetracked and fall off of a training plan … in hindsight, I’d say I probably would have given him a 60% chance of going through with it. That’s not an insult — just an honest guess.
I gave him a training plan, and when I told him about Operation Jack while I was planning it, I think he really locked in on this. He can have a very tough exterior at times, but he has a softer spot for Jack than probably anybody on this planet. Well, maybe Tiff has him beat, but maybe not. Josh is proud that he has the same initials as Jack (JAF) and he probably wouldn’t admit that he had a favorite out of my three kids, but if he took a truth serum, I know he’d say Jack.
Josh is the good-looking guy on the right with “Josh” on his bib. I’m the better-looking guy on the left.
Anyways, he stuck with it, did his long runs and got himself ready for the race. I saw him at the expo on Saturday and I could tell he was excited. He asked me a few questions about race day when I saw him, then texted me with some more on Saturday night. I thought it was going to be pretty cool that I’d see him as a fellow participant after a race, not just as the president of my fan club (I swear, I think he’s been to more of my race finishes than my wife!). I glanced around in the starting area but didn’t see him. But the race started and I got rolling.
During the race, I focused on Tiff, but I thought about him, doing the math at times and wondering where he was. At one point, me and Tiff were talking about how he was doing and where he probably was. I thought he would run a 1:55, and I knew he started about five minutes after us, so I figured when we hit the two-hour mark, he was done.
He ended up with a 2:05, but there’s nothing wrong with that. As I pointed out to him when I saw him in the finishers area, he beat my debut half-marathon time by 24 minutes! And while I came from being overweight, he has Evil Knievel’s legs! That’s a really bad thing for a distance runner. It was really cool seeing him standing there with a medal around his neck. It was something I’d never expected to see and I was really proud of him.
So, good job, dude! Yet set out to get this done, and you took care of business. I hope you always look back on yesterday with fondness!