”RUNNING MEMPHIS”
I’M TRAINING TO BE A GOODER FRIEND, GOODER DAD AND A GOODER SIGNIFICANT OTHER I CAN BE
RUNNING THROUGH MEMPHIS
Every week, I take one Memphis story—sometimes inspired by local headlines, sometimes by the streets I walk myself—and ask what it reveals about fatherhood, creativity, entrepreneurship, faith, and the people who call this city home.
This week, the story isn’t from the news.
It’s mine.
A few weeks ago, I completed a 52-mile ultramarathon through the city I love.
Around mile 37, nine hours into the run, Memphis became almost unrecognizable.
The city was quiet in a way that only Memphis can be before sunrise. Porch lights glowed against the darkness. The birds hadn’t started singing yet. The streets that usually carried so much noise had settled into stillness.
By then, my legs had stopped asking questions. They were on autopilot.
My mind, though, had finally gotten quiet enough to ask one.
What if I trained for my relationships the way I trained for this race?
What kind of friend would I become?
What kind of father?
What kind of significant other?
Would those relationships become strong enough to carry themselves through difficult seasons the way my body carried me through mile after mile?
As I looked around, I saw people running beside me. People I spend time with every week. We train together. We eat together. We laugh together. We fill up group chats. We take road trips. Somewhere along the way, we stopped becoming just runners and became a community.
Then I remembered a conversation with one of my children.
They said, “You took a trip with your friends… but you didn’t come see me.”
I answered without thinking.
“I planned that months ago.”
The phone got quiet.
Then I got quiet.
Because even while I was saying it, I knew it wasn’t a good answer.
The truth was, I had planned months ahead for my friends.
I hadn’t planned months ahead for my child.
That realization hurt more than mile 37 ever did.
Training for an ultramarathon forced me to confront something else.
My ego.
I’ve spent much of my life believing strength meant carrying everything alone. Asking for help felt like weakness.
An ultramarathon doesn’t care about your ego.
You need people.
You need someone handing you water.
Someone checking on you.
Someone reminding you to eat.
Someone encouraging you when your mind wants to quit before your body does.
Relationships work the same way.
They don’t survive because we love each other.
They survive because we keep training.
Preparing for this race taught me that if I wanted to reach the finish line, I had to put my ego on the shelf. I had to ask for help. I had to trust people enough to let them show up for me.
And maybe that’s what’s been missing in some of my relationships.
Ego has cost me friendships.
Ego has strained family relationships.
Sometimes the fear of failing a race made me more disciplined than the fear of failing the people I love.
That realization has stayed with me.
Because I don’t usually think about relationships the way I think about goals.
Maybe I should.
What if friendships required scheduled workouts?
What if fatherhood required recovery days?
What if forgiveness looked like physical therapy?
What if marriages needed hydration before they reached exhaustion?
What if showing up wasn’t something we hoped would happen?
What if it was something we trained for?
Lately, I’ve realized some of the most important parts of my life haven’t been getting enough training hours.
There have been moments when I’ve wanted to quit.
Marriage.
Fatherhood.
Friendships.
Then I think back to race day.
My running community showed up.
Not because they had to.
Because we’d spent months building something together.
Training wasn’t just preparing us for 52 miles.
It was preparing us for one another.
That realization left me with another hard question.
Most of the people who showed up for me weren’t family.
What does that say about me?
Maybe it says I’ve spent more time training my heart with my running community than I’ve spent training it with the people I love most.
If that’s true…
Then maybe it can change.
Maybe relationships don’t grow simply because time passes.
Maybe they grow because we keep putting in the miles.
This is Noah.
I’m still training to be a gooder friend, a gooder dad, and a gooder significant other.
Until next time…
I’ll holla.
