Welcome to 100 Words Per Mile

Back in 2020, I started a journey to document both my journey with IVF and my new running habits. Five years later, I'm ready to share it.

Few people reading this need reminding what life was life in August of 2020. I was twenty-nine years old, on the verge of turning thirty, and in that arbitrary, existential dread we feel upon entering our fourth decade, I felt I needed to do something to iron out the rougher edges of my own inner monologue.

In addition to turning thirty, my wife and I were approaching the three-year anniversary of our miscarriage, and in our continued failure to conceive, we had to redefine what marriage meant to us.

I had to redefine what being a husband meant to me.

One thing was clear back then: I’m most motivated to write after a run. I had this idea of committing myself to so many words after each run, thinking something would come of it. I hadn’t planned on writing a memoir of sorts—in fact, I was really hoping I’d write another novel, or at the very least, a short story collection.

Instead, I found myself logging the runs, if only because it was the easiest way to put something down on the page. After a while, I realized the project needed an end, and I committed to running five hundred total miles.

Each Wednesday, I’ll share two or three of those logs in a post until I’ve shared them all. Additionally, now that I’m five years removed from that dread, I’ll be sharing reflections on those posts—perhaps on Fridays—and how I’ve changed since.

I hope you’ll subscribe and share with your friends.

Happy reading. Happy running.

Caleb