Tahoe Bachelor Party: The End of My Running Retirement

Andy’s bachelor party was set for Lake Tahoe. I drove up to Springfield so Steven and I could fly out together. Long layover in Vegas. We didn’t sit still. No gambling. No chaos. We wandered the Strip, recreated photos from a trip fifteen years earlier. Same poses. Older faces. Then a sprint back through security, arriving just in time — as though we’d planned it that way.

Former college teammates packed into a cabin. The kind of weekend that happens when enough time has passed for careers and geography to scatter everyone, but not enough to dull what was built through years of shared miles.

The first full day, we hiked Mt. Rose. The views were the kind that stop conversation. On the descent, Steven and I turned it into a race. Half control, half calculated recklessness. We reached the bottom more relieved than we let on. Some instincts don’t retire. They just go quiet.

That night, the Olympics were on. The 10,000 meters.

There’s something about championship racing that compresses everything: effort, precision, the cost of a single decision made at speed. I’ll never forget that moment as the final laps unfolded, Danny moved in front of the TV. We all screamed at him to move. We were locked in. We understood exactly what we were watching.

Later, after a few more beers, someone — probably Steven — said it.

“We should run a marathon.”

Not a specific race. Not a plan. Just the idea, offered into the room.

If we were going to do it, we agreed it couldn’t be casual. Sub-3 felt like the standard. Boston-qualifying. Ambitious enough to mean something, grounded enough to be possible. We did the math out loud. 6:40 pace. The way runners always do — assuming the body will eventually answer to the mind. Even after years away.

We’ve had big ideas before. Adventure races. Multi-sport epics. Plans that dissolve when the weekend ends and real life reasserts itself.

But this time we pulled out our phones. Looked at races. Talked about mileage. The conversation carried a different weight.

The next morning, departure day, we scheduled an “official” first run. Symbolic. A start before everyone scattered.

Two guys made it out.

I hit snooze.

No cinematic sunrise. No redemption miles along the lake. Just a choice — the same one I’d been making for years: comfort over commitment.

I wanted to run the marathon. That much was clear. What I wasn’t sure about was the training. There’s a difference.

It had been years since I’d held myself to anything. Even cycling had softened into something recreational. Structure requires sacrifice, and I hadn’t asked that of myself in a long time. Tahoe didn’t change that overnight.

I flew home still undecided — drawn to the idea of lining up with the guys again, uncertain whether I was willing to do the work that would make it meaningful.

The first runs back were casual. Inconsistent. More gesture than commitment.

Only later, back inside the weight of normal life — work pressing from every side — did running begin to feel different. Less like a group challenge, more like an anchor. Steven, Andy, and Matt would text. Ask about training. Share workouts. A quiet thread of accountability stretched across the distance.

That’s when something older surfaced. Not nostalgia. Not obligation. Competition.

The part of me that had been dormant, but never gone.

I didn’t want to just finish. I wanted to race. To hold a standard and meet it. Once that instinct returned, it didn’t ask permission.

Tahoe wasn’t the comeback.

It was the invitation.

The decision came later. Quietly. Without ceremony. The way most real decisions do.