Achilles International is a nonprofit that anyone who is active needs to know about; they pair athletes with disabilities with volunteer guides, enabling them to participate in mainstream racing (running, biking, whatever their passion is). They have been around for over 40 years and are built on a simple conviction that I think applies to everyone, no matter their ‘story’: that the course belongs to everyone. (This, coming from a back-of-the-pack journeyer.) Today, Achilles guides ran alongside, supporting runners who carried disabilities: some blind, some deaf, some running on blades, some on the spectrum. They made room for them and announced what the runner could not.

You hear it again and again over the course of the morning, before you ever see the bright fluorescent green Achilles shirts: the guides announcing. Loud, purposeful, non-negotiable, and repeated as often as the course demands. Kind but relentless, firm in the task of supporting their runner, they clear the way confidently with words, making room for the possibility of the path ahead.

I found myself thinking: what if we had guides like that in daily life?

Join me for a moment and imagine: “Caution, this runner didn’t sleep well last night.“ Or “Excessive hangover coming through, keep the volume down.“ Or supporting my single friends, NYC Tinder style: “Bad date last night, much disappointment and loss of hope coming through, make room and be supportive.“ Wouldn’t we all be more patient and make more room?

Because the truth is, we all carry hopes and challenges, especially challenges that no one around us could possibly imagine. Particularly the ones that aren’t visible and that we haven’t yet been given language for.

Here’s what I’ve been sitting with since the finish line. The race had a name, and it took me four miles to understand that it was also an instruction: HOPE is not always enough. You need to know what POSSIBILITY exists, or at least the direction of it. And in between those two words, you need to do the work.

The runners around me today were carrying both. For many, this was their first race. The NYC Marathon in November shimmering on the horizon. That race is a party like no other, winding through all five boroughs of New York City, and today’s 4 miles was perhaps one more step towards that Willy Wonka golden ticket of an adventure. I talked to them. I admired their hope and blew on those embers gently, making them glow, encouraging them as their excitement lit something back up in me.

Because that’s how it works. Unless you voice your HOPE, whether internally or externally, you cannot find the possibility. If you want a guide running next to you, if you want to accomplish something extraordinary, you’re going to have to let yourself be seen. We are not that far from each other in this.

Around mile 3 near the Jackie O Reservoir, I encountered guides accompanying a runner on the spectrum, counting down a running interval loudly so that the goal, the endurance, was broken into something reachable. They shouted the numbers loud enough for the whole field to hear. Thirty seconds at a time running, and then a break to walk. And everyone surrounding them joined in; we couldn’t help it. 30. 29. 28. Like New Year’s Eve, right there on the course. When the countdown hit zero, she slowed to a walk, her face lighting up with the accomplishment, and the whole field around her cheering. Then it began all over again. Hope and possibility interlocking and supporting all of us, united through her challenge. She had no idea how much she was inspiring the rest of us in return.

The man with two blades for legs pushing his daughter’s baby stroller. Her legs kicking joyfully in the wind, supporting her father’s quick pace as she yelled out “Faster! Faster!”

The runner who is blind, well known on social media, surrounded by a particularly large Achilles entourage of guides. I’ve seen him at NYRR races before. His words about life and philosophy, the world seen through senses other than sight, always draw people close. The guides surrounding him today weren’t just guiding; they were choosing to be near something. The buzz of deep conversation and connection was like a magnet, drawing the group surrounding them ever larger.

Here’s my confession: I told myself I would run this race beginning to end and not walk and not stop, and instead I’m doing exactly what I’m doing right now, breathless from running and “caught in the act” as I slow down to speak into my phone’s notepad, writing, thinking, being inspired, and sharing. But I digress. I accept. I knew I would and won’t pretend to be surprised.

Because running sparks my mind, and it gushes forth with words, stories, and ideas. I empathize with John Milton, the blind poet who composed Paradise Lost entirely inside his head. He could not see the page nor hold a pen to record his words. He would lie awake turning verses over in his darkness, then wait for his secretary to arrive every day so he could, as he famously put it, be “milked” of all those words. Every masterpiece memorized first, written in the mind before it ever touches paper.

I am not Milton; but I understand the urgency and the need. If I don’t capture these words before the endorphins wear off at the finish line, I risk my mind erasing its giant chalkboard of thoughts, gone blank in the moments post-race.

So I capture them. That’s the deal I’ve made with myself. I allow myself to make an audio and/or text record or scribble in my tiny notebook, hoping it will make sense later in the day when I try to decipher the misspellings and garbled text. It’s a bevy of symbols, an alien language that sometimes needs a Rosetta Stone or a cryptograph to translate. But that’s sometimes the fun of it, as ideas need time to grow, and in translation, I often find another layer. My yellow notebook from 4 ultra marathons has left me doodles and symbols that are birthing two books, so I honor the process and don’t question the need anymore.

My own reflection on the power of possibility brings me to a thread I keep returning to: sober-minded living. It began small: a 21-day reset in November of 2024, no drinking, after I finally admitted to myself that something didn’t feel right. That one honest admission opened a door — connections, people, tools I hadn’t known were there. But a door is only a beginning. One step is never enough; you have to continue your steps and keep walking through doors that appear. The possibilities I couldn’t imagine on that first day are becoming real now, some tangible today, some still dreams with direction.

That is why the new runners undid me a little today. So many of the ones I saw were lacing up for their very first race, and it made me overjoyed. Because I know that start line very well. I have stood at that kind of beginning myself, at the edge of something I couldn’t yet see the shape of, carrying hope and no map.

We are all somewhere on the same course. Some of us at mile zero, some near the finish, all of us needing the way cleared with a few loud, generous words. Hope and possibility, and everything we are willing to do in between. That is the race. It always was.

Here’s my ask. (Already a subscriber who knows the drill? Jump to the list. New here? The why follows right after.)

1. Subscribe. There is a free option. There is a paid one if you want to help support this work. Both mean something and when you do it means that I’ll land in your email box.

2. Like this post. Hit the heart at the bottom of the page. One second. It tells the platform this writing is worth moving.

3. Restack. New to Substack? Restacking is sharing, Substack-style. It puts this post in front of your own followers and tells the algorithm someone vouched for it. Hit the circular arrows icon at the bottom of the post. And if something landed, add a note when you do. A line, a thought, whatever stayed with you. That is how the signal actually travels.

Algorithms are robots. They still have feelings. Give them something to work with and they carry this writing to the people who need it. We are supposed to be driving them. Not the other way around.

I want to meet more of you. Tighter circles, not wider and thinner ones. Let’s show up for eachother. That is the deal.

→ Camera Dark - a memoir in progress about sober-minded living and what the dark room reveals.

→ Mental Laundry - notes from the back of the pack, across four deserts and nine NYC Marathons.

Not in a bad way. In the way of a season that was calling louder than my Garmin watch.

Last fall, I was deep in the Sober Sis community, in its connections and messages. The posts, Zoom calls, and video messages, the reflections, and the strange intimacy of women sending each other something real across a screen, all rooted in sober-minded living. I let the training schedule slip. Long runs gave way to long conversations. The 5 am alarms got quieter. The work of that community was doing something that the miles couldn’t, and I knew it, and I let it. Then, somehow, I laced up in November anyway and ran my eighth NYC Marathon, more meaningful than I could have predicted. The finish line last year was carrying a lot. One year of sober-minded living. My birthday. Twenty-six miles of proof that whatever the previous season was, it had gotten me there anyway.

I have been thinking about that ever since.

There is something the body knows before the brain registers it. Not motivation. Not resolve. Something else: a readiness that arrives without announcement and says the next season is here. My legs have been saying it for two weeks.

So, I signed up for NYRR group training. Tuesday mornings, 6:30 am, which in New York in July and August means heat that arrives before you do and humidity that reminds you immediately why you chose this. There is something about showing up to a group session in conditions that no reasonable person would design that resets the whole relationship with the word accountability. These are not ideal miles; they are honest ones.

Late June in NYC is not a great time to remember you have a marathon in five months. The heat index rises at 7am. The park is thick by 8. There is no runner’s dream climate waiting out there. What there is: a Runna plan loaded on my phone, a Tuesday morning with my name on it, a date circled in November, and the low, persistent hum of the ninth marathon starting to make itself known.

Nine NYC Marathons. I want to sit with that number for a moment because I didn’t always believe I would make it to eight. Not from injury. Not from life getting in the way. From the quieter fear that the season would change and not change back. That my restlessness would stop arriving. That I would become someone for whom this was past tense.

It is not past tense.

November 1, 2026. That date is carrying more than a marathon this time. I am not ready to say everything it’s carrying yet. But the training has started, the Tuesday alarm is set, and the legs know why, even when the calendar looks daunting. That is enough for right now.

This is a field note from the beginning of something. The community work hasn’t gone anywhere. Neither has the Sober Sis connection. But the long run is back on the Saturday schedule, and 6:30 am on Tuesday is about to become a recurring character in this story, and I did not resist this morning, which is the start of my new season. I am in it.

Soundtrack: Tom Petty, Runnin’ Down a Dream, Full Moon Fever, 1989.

Here’s my ask. (Already a subscriber who knows the drill? Jump to the list. New here? The why follows right after.)

1. Subscribe. There is a free option. There is a paid one if you want to help support this work. Both mean something.

2. Like this post. Hit the heart at the bottom of the page. One second. It tells the platform this writing is worth moving.

3. Restack. New to Substack? Restacking is sharing, Substack-style. It puts this post in front of your own followers and tells the algorithm someone vouched for it. Hit the circular arrows icon at the bottom of the post. And if something landed, add a note when you do. A line, a thought, whatever stayed with you. That is how the signal actually travels.

Algorithms are robots. They still have feelings. Give them something to work with and they carry this writing to the people who need it. We are supposed to be driving them. Not the other way around.

I want to meet more of you. Tighter circles, not wider and thinner ones. Show up for me here and I will show up for you. That is the deal.

※

→ Mental Laundry: Notes from the Back of the Pack — four deserts, nine NYC Marathons, the back of the pack as a way of life.

→ Camera Dark Notes — sober-minded living and what comes into focus when the noise clears.

When I was five years old, I pointed toward Jordan while floating on the Red Sea with water wings.

My family was on the Israel coastal side. The other shore, Jordan, was right there, close enough. I put my face in the water and started kicking. I could not understand why everyone on the shore was waving their arms and yelling at me. I had made my own assessment: the other side was within reach. What I did not know, and they did, is that what looks like a short crossing from inside the water is four miles of open, perilous sea from the shore.

Inside view. Outside view. Two entirely different reads of the same water.

That story opens the book. It is also the book.

Mental Laundry: Notes from the Back of the Pack is a running memoir, but it is not a book about running. I want to say that clearly from the start, because it matters.

I am not an athlete. I am, on a good day, a practitioner of Patagonia Pace. That is the rhythm I first found as a kid in California with a yellow Walkman and a blues cassette, the tempo set by the music rather than any clock. I took it to four 155-mile self-supported desert ultramarathons: Patagonia, Atacama, Lapland, Mongolia. I have run eight NYC Marathons and a ninth this November. I have never podiumed. I do not qualify for Boston. I am the person the elites pass on the way out and again on the way back. The honest private translation of Patagonia Pace is SAS: Slow As Shit. I mean it without apology.

What the back of the pack teaches you is not what most people expect.

There is a philosophy that happens out there when the body has been doing something hard for a very long time, and no one is watching, and you keep going anyway. That is what this section is. Field notes from those miles. Reflections from training weeks and race days, and the streets of New York, and the concert stages where the same rhythms show up in a different key. Threads I am pulling on for the book.

This is not a training log. There are no splits. Nothing to optimize.

There is what the body does when it has already agreed to go somewhere. And what you find out about yourself in the miles between agreeing and arriving.

The body goes where the mind has already agreed to go.

That is the whole thing, and that is what we are here for.

Welcome to Mental Laundry.

Here’s my ask. (Already a subscriber who knows the drill? Jump to the list. New here? The why follows right after.)

1. Subscribe. There is a free option. There is a paid one if you want to help support this work. Both mean something.

2. Like this post. Hit the heart at the bottom of the page. One second. It tells the platform this writing is worth moving.

3. Restack. New to Substack? Restacking is sharing, Substack-style. It puts this post in front of your own followers and tells the algorithm someone vouched for it. Hit the circular arrows icon at the bottom of the post. And if something landed, add a note when you do. A line, a thought, whatever stayed with you. That is how the signal actually travels.

Algorithms are robots. They still have feelings. Give them something to work with and they carry this writing to the people who need it. We are supposed to be driving them. Not the other way around.

I want to meet more of you. Tighter circles, not wider and thinner ones. Show up for me here and I will show up for you. That is the deal.

※

→ Mental Laundry: Notes from the Back of the Pack — four deserts, nine NYC Marathons, the back of the pack as a way of life.

→ Camera Dark Notes — sober-minded living and what comes into focus when the noise clears.