Slow Living and Fast Memories

It's 3:47pm on a Wednesday and I just closed my last meeting tab. The youngest is home from school, already changed into house clothes, already standing next to my desk with that look.

"Daddy, when are you going to run?"

She's been asking this for weeks now. Maybe months. I keep giving different versions of the same non-answer: soon, kid. Maybe this weekend. We'll see.

She doesn't buy it anymore.

Six Years Looks Like This

I've been off the road since 2019. Not injured. Not burned out in the dramatic way runners talk about burnout. Just… gone. Entrepreneurship ideas ate the calendar first. Then COVID reshaped everything. Then I looked up one day and realized I'd spent an entire Sunday morning with my kids instead of at a race village, and it didn't feel like I was missing out.

It felt right.

Slow living wasn't a choice I made. It was something that happened while I was busy building businesses and surviving a pandemic and learning that rest isn't the same thing as quitting.

Now I'm here. Working from home. Surrounded by cats (three of them, plus the lovebirds outside my window). The body is soft in places it wasn't before. The legs forgot what tempo feels like. The idea of lacing up and just going feels both impossibly simple and completely foreign.

What Replaced Running

Weekday mornings: work by 6:55am, sometimes earlier if a call's scheduled with a client abroad. Meetings until lunch. Focused work 'til 4 or 5pm. The desk doesn't move. My body barely does either.

Friday evening: the middle kid's Taekwondo gear laid out for the next session. The eldest asking if we can hit the court this weekend for Pickleball. The youngest - my self-appointed training coach with zero credentials and infinite persistence, reminding me that I "used" to run Spartan Races and trail ultras, so what happened?

Good question, baby!

Weekends aren't race weekends anymore. They're driving the kids to their thing. Sleeping past 8am without guilt. Watering the plants. Maybe catching up on a work study module. It's a different kind of tired. The kind that doesn't come with a finisher shirt but doesn't feel like failure either.

The PH Running Scene From the Sidelines

I still follow the scene. I see the race announcements. The Spartan Sprint at Nuvali, Subic, or Porac. Trail runs in Tanay. Marathon events coming back strong post-pandemic. There's always that flicker maybe this one. Maybe I sign up and show up and remember what it felt like.

Then I close the tab.

I'm genuinely happy for everyone still out there. The community I never fully left even though I haven't shown up in years. There's something beautiful about watching people chase their PRs and finish what they started while I'm here on my couch with a cat on my lap and no alarm set for a long run.

But there's also this: I still owe the 2018 Spartan Race Philippines, my 1st (and still the 1st) Spartan Race Trifecta back in 2019, and also my back-to-back Triathlon in the same year a proper write-up. I finished that thing - the inaugural event, obstacles and all, first-ever multisports, and never put it on the blog. It's sitting in my chest like unfinished business. And the Skyrun at Mt. Ugo way back more than a decade now, where I finished beyond cut-off? PhilSky, we've got a rematch pending whenever I figure out how to be that person again.

What the Youngest Sees

She wasn't even born yet when I was racing Spartans. She's only ever known this version of me, the one at the desk, the one who talks about running in past tense.

But she's seen the photos. The medals still hanging in the room (though honestly, they've been there so long they just look like decor now). She knows I "did" something once. And in her kid logic, if I did it before, I can do it again.

When are you running again?

I don't have an answer yet. But I'm starting to think that's okay. Maybe honesty is better than a training plan I won't follow. Maybe admitting I'm not ready is more real than pretending I'm about to make a comeback.

Or maybe, and this is the part I'm still sitting with, maybe one morning I'll just lace up and go. Not because I have a race on the calendar. Not because I owe anyone a redemption arc. Just because the youngest asked again, and this time I didn't have a reason to say no.

So here's where I am: provincial desk, WFH quiet, six years deep into a life that looks nothing like the old race weekends. No training plan. No motivation to sign up for anything. Just a kid who keeps asking, and a pair of shoes that technically still fit.

If you've been away from running (or anything you used to love), how do you know when it's time to go back, or if you even want to?