Milestones

This is Western Coffee—notes on building the creative body. Last time: Less. The whole series is here. Please share this email; you can sign up free below.

I just signed up for this year’s New York City Marathon. I’ll be raising money on behalf of and running with an organization called Achilles International, which supports athletes with disabilities. (I’ll keep the solicitations to a minimum, but you can donate here if you’re so inclined. Here’s the organization’s four-star rating on Charity Navigator.)

This is in one sense only an incremental push from the athletic endeavors of the last couple of years: first the Malibu Triathlon in 2021 and 2022, then shorter competitive runs sponsored by New York Road Runners, the organization that stages the marathon; soon, a half-marathon in Brooklyn and another triathlon in upstate New York. So routine by now, this vocabulary of ’thons—but also one I happened to acquire at an age when, as recently as 1850, I could have expected to be kicking the bucket.

Training.

Getting farther into terrain you once knew to be out of your reach (even as, in some corner of your brain, you impishly nursed the fantasy) does not reduce the impact of having crossed over in the first place. I’m excited to run this race as an athlete, but I’m at least equally excited to do so as a citizen of New York City, my chosen home. The city is famously at its best on marathon day: diverse, ambitious, joyous, communal, vast.

I’ll leave it there for today. Thank you as always for reading, and may your dreams (especially the good ones) come true.

Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram, or let’s Peloton together: @leggy_blond.