120: He Ran Because She Couldn't: Running the Houston Marathon w/ Ryan Trask

About this episode

Ryan Trask shares his journey of running the Houston Marathon, motivated by his wife's chronic illness.

Ryan Trask has always been a runner at heart, even when life kept pulling him away from it. From getting cut from his middle school basketball team and stumbling into cross country, to running through job loss, a pandemic, and the chaos of raising four kids, running has been the thing he keeps coming back to. So when he decided it was finally time to run a marathon before 40, it felt less like a new chapter and more like finishing something he'd started a long time ago. But this one was about more than just him. His wife lives with a chronic illness that keeps her from moving the way she'd like to, and somewhere along the way, Ryan decided that if she couldn't run, he was going to run for both of them. That purpose carried him through four months of pre-dawn long runs, a zone two training experiment that humbled him in the best way, a 100-day streak he wouldn't exactly recommend, and a bout of flu A that landed right in the middle of taper. He showed up to the Houston Marathon having done the work, even if it didn't always feel that way. What happened out on that course, especially in those last six miles, is the kind of thing that's hard to fully understand until you've been…

People in this episode

Host: My First Marathon

Guest: Ryan Trask

Topics covered

• marathon training
• chronic illness
• personal motivation
• running journey
• family support

Keywords

• Houston Marathon
• running
• chronic illness
• marathon training
• personal story

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, myfirstmarathon.co, myfirstmarathon.co/resources

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