Tag: life

A Fall of Good Memories

The Kid in Me Has Reunited With Old Friends

I haven’t been on the blog since I ran my first half marathon earlier this year.

Since then, I’ve been training for a full marathon and have eclipsed the 13.1 mark 4 times since that first half marathon.

I didn’t think I’d ever be where I am now, running my first half marathon and my first full marathon in the same year, but, I’m still climbing.

There’s a journey involved with that story and once I cross the finish line in Dallas on December 13th, you will hear about it shortly after that.

Today will be about a different topic. Today is a little more about the kid who never thought he’d be where he is today for a different reason.

Today is about how this Fall has invoked special memories from my youth that I just had to discuss. I may jump around a bit, but please be patient with my thoughtful word vomit.

I’ve always loved the fall. One of my favorite things I’ve ever written was on this blog a couple years back about what the Fall means to me.

Football, flannels, the fall colors, and Halloween of all things are truly things that calm me down. In how hurried of a society we’ve gotten ourselves into, I rely on the fall to be the great equalizer.

Football season arrives with cool weather that has always soothed me. Leading right into my favorite holiday of Halloween just makes it even better.

So what is it about this fall that’s made me feel good? Well, the cool wind brings back warm memories of the past. This fall has been all about tapping into good old nostalgia and taking a much needed smelling of the roses.

I’ve also written about nostalgia on the blog before and while I discuss its positives and negatives, I’d like to lean much more into the positives this time around.

Video games are almost always that nostalgia kicker for me. But it’s not just me that’s feeling that nostalgic bump: the whole industry is!

With The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake soon to drop, it’s one of those games that stands as a legit attention threat to the highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI release just a few weeks later.

Not only is OOT one of the greatest games ever made, it’s one that literally transcends time itself across its story and its legacy. People still have the original game as their favorite game of all-time and I don’t blame them!

The game itself was first introduced to me by my older cousin who had a Nintendo 64. And God bless him because I’m sure he was “made” to share his console with his younger cousins at family gatherings, but in my youth, this was one of the more formative experiences of my life.

While Mario Kart 64 was the prime attention-grabber at the time, I couldn’t help but still feel captured when I first heard the Song of Storms for the first time. I mean, nobody forgets their first time hearing this:

I eventually got to play through Ocarina of Time as it was brought to different consoles over time, never thinking it could ever be remade considering it was, indeed, a classic that as long as it got scaled up and was available on some Nintendo hardware, it was fine.

But, the people love Link. Our boy wasn’t in need of a modern remaster, but boy are we glad he is now. Look at this side by side:

The game isn’t going to be a 1-to-1 remake. They’re going to take some liberties and update the experience so it plays like a modern game. Good things like camera control and giving Link a jump button! If you said “Jump” button in 1998, people would’ve thought you were insane!

While some people are upset the changes are going to be made, I can’t help but be excited about the changes and what improvements have been made. I went back and played the original a couple years back and yes, the age of some of the controls and situations shows all too well. It doesn’t make it any less of a classic, but at the same time, it’s still frustrating.

With a modern game, OOT can continue to live on forever, building its legacy from the original audience to a brand new one that will carry the game and the fandom forward. I’ve been in the Zelda fandom for a long time and will be when I get to show future generations the OOT remake.

That’s how time is meant to be. And to quote Sheik from the original game to close out this section, I say this:

Another video game remaster has had my attention this fall.

Toy Story 3: Complete Edition is the remastered classic from the PS3 era that has, until now, been locked on the now aged PS3.

Sony has this issue with remastering and porting PS3 games to modern hardware. However, given peoples’ love and want for more experiences from the old days, they couldn’t help but jump on board with this.

Toy Story is in my Top 3 films of all time and always will. Sheriff Woody will always hold a special place in my heart. As shown in this comparison photo of me and my older brother from days past and when seeing Toy Story 5 this summer, that love will always be there:

Back in 2010, when Toy Story 3 came out, it became one of the first experiences I’d had where I cried in public. That film, to this day, makes me cry on the spot throughout the entire end sequence of the film.

We obviously took care of our toys from the old days, but coming home from the movie and being able to hop into the Open World “Toy Box” mode of the Toy Story 3 video game helped create new memories with Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the gang in a much more interactive way.

The Toy Box mode has dozens of hours of missions, activities, and more that brought the scenarios you once only played with your imagination and your toys to digital life. This game created a fun environment for our favorite toys to clash with aliens, Wild West bandits, and more in a free-for-all sandbox where the only limits are your imagination.

Having this game back on PS5 is like a hug to my 13-year-old self. The kid who wondered how long those memories with Woody could last, considering Andy had just decided to move forward from his memories in the climax of the third film.

While that 13-year-old kid grew up and is still doing his best to figure it out, he’s still got a friend in Woody. The toys are still here to help after all these years. To Infinity and Beyond.

The final game I have to discuss is one that’s also boldly coming out in November to dethrone GTAVI as this fall’s top game:

This game actively referencing GTA in its marketing is the perfect way to go about the unexpected remaster of a beloved title from 2004.

Shrek 2 gripped the nation like no other. I’ve written about my love for Shrek on the blog before, but this game was one of the best multiplayer experiences on consoles, hands-down.

The PS2’s Multi-Tap, an accessory that allowed 4 controllers to be plugged in at once, was made almost specifically for this game.

The game loosely followed the plot of the film with a few deviations to help carry the plot out a little more.

I always played as Donkey where I could and his “Burro Blast” special move was always one of the top experiences of playing as him. I also can’t help but remember every sleepover from the years 2004-2006 almost always had Shrek 2 as a part of them because it was such a great 4-player game.

Everybody got a chance to find a character they liked or play as a new character in each level. The gameplay balance and challenges of this game was also spectacular because just when you thought you loved playing as Shrek, you’d have to play as the Big Bad Wolf for a few levels just to move things forward.

But, one of the most notable parts of this game was that at the end of each story level, the game would activate a “Hero Time” moment and a single player would have to pass a challenge to advance the game:

There was nothing quite like passing the controller around with siblings and friends as we all failed some of the harder “Hero Times” as young 7 and 8-year-olds.

While I’m sure myself and my friends have become better gamers in the last 22 years since this game’s initial release, I can’t wait to play this with them again.

To cap off this nostalgic section, I’ll just have to close it off with a banger from the Shrek 2 soundtrack:

I know I tend to wax poetic about nostalgia and compare what was to what is a lot.

I’ve realized this blog has become much more of a time capsule for me as much as it’s also my attempt to entertain through a kind of storytelling I don’t get to do on an everyday basis anymore.

A lot of the stories I have from my life experience wouldn’t be possible without the three games from above nor the ones from this chart below:

Now, none of the 9 games on this graph of mine are the three remastered games in this blog. However, almost all of them have modern remasters or ways to play them today.

As a matter of fact, now’s never been a better time to be a Kingdom Hearts fan like myself because you can finally take it on the go thanks to their most recent release on Nintendo Switch!

So, my lasting message to you from this blog is this: if you’ve ever had a favorite video game from when you were younger, there’s never been a better time to go dig it up and play it again.

Whether modern consoles have it available or not, you can recapture what you once had. A lot’s happened since you last played that game. I know it has. A lot of hard days with even harder situations you never thought you’d experience have happened to you.

But, these games can help center you and bring you back to a much more peaceful time, guaranteed. While we can’t rewind time, we can carry the happy memories with us into the present to create a better future. Whether it’s in a virtual sandbox with your favorite toys, listening to soothing tunes on an ocarina, or breaking an Ogre and his noble steed out of jail with your friends, the tales of our past can give us the right spark to fly into the future.

Enjoy your fall. Create some new memories.

~DS

I ran a half marathon. Here’s what I learned about myself in the process

Life Is Too Short To Last Long

This past weekend was one of the most memorable I’ve had my entire life.

For the time being, my Chicago White Sox own the city of Chicago. I was in attendance for an unforgettable Saturday night baseball game that had the atmosphere of a playoff game on the South Side.

While I joked on Twitter that Sunday’s walkoff winner from Edgar Quero was the best thing that happened to me that weekend, it is just that: a joke.

The best thing I did this weekend was compete in Life Time’s Spring Half Marathon in Chicago. I crossed the finish line in 2 hours and 22 minutes and couldn’t be more elated because of all it took to get there.

I don’t like celebrating my achievements loudly because I have a sick, competitive instinct to not live in the moment sometimes. I’m always looking forward to what’s next.

But I did just want to write about the journey and why the closing of this chapter isn’t the end of the book.

This is what I learned about myself in training for and running this half marathon.

The Note

On October 13th of last year, I wrote on a sticky note, “Danny to Run a Half Marathon in 2026. (Or lunch for the Ninjas).”

The Ninjas are my teammates at work, and while I’d love to say my motivation for running a half marathon was purely about personal growth and discipline, avoiding the cost of buying all of them lunch certainly didn’t hurt.

Anyway, the day prior to writing the note, one of my best friends ran the full Chicago Marathon. Seeing everything she went through to achieve that goal was one of the most inspiring things I’ve seen. She had to end nights early to start even earlier mornings for months to climb that mountain. Once she did, she gave me her free beer at the end.

Working that hard for something isn’t something I’m unfamiliar with, but it’s just something I feel like I hadn’t truly done in a long time.

That night, I thought about everything in my life. The great, the good, the bad, and everything in between.

I have amazing friends and family. I have a job I love. I have a college degree. I’m in good health (despite carrying a few pounds more than I’d like). But there’s just this competitiveness and this will to win that lays dormant.

Having successful relationships and being great at my job are things I do not take for granted. As I referenced in my last blog, I feel like I have the responsibility to keep my head up and keep fighting because people count on me. I don’t carry that lightly.

The successes from work and from relationships are great, but they don’t wake up the same feeling that I felt like I used to have when I was an athlete. So, I told myself the next morning when I woke up, “I’m going to challenge myself to do something I never thought I’d do.”

So I wrote the note.

Changing the Mechanism

I knew I didn’t need to begin my training right away, but once I had written it out, it became even more real. My friend that ran the marathon vowed to do it with me and all of a sudden, my goal became our goal.

Shortly after that, we circled the event we wanted to race and had to settle into beginning our real training until around the start of February.

I had started to tell family, friends, and acquaintances that I was training to do it. A few people were really surprised that I said I was going to do it. While I don’t think any of these people meant to cast shades of doubt on me, it was still something that pissed me off a little bit.

I wasn’t so much pissed at them, but I was upset with myself for getting to a point in life where people would be shocked that I was going to run a half marathon.

So with that fuel added to the fire, I now knew I needed to get in running shape. But the only way I’d ever learned how to workout was just how I did it as a former football player.

Lift heavy stuff, put it back down. Stretch a little bit so you don’t get hurt and then eat some protein and drink some chocolate milk. Repeat.

I’d never trained to be a runner before and I knew it took a lot more than just playing the Rocky soundtrack and running a little bit more every day.

So I learned how to work my body differently, addressing the areas that still don’t work 100% because of previous athletic injuries, and learning how to breathe better when I’m working on my cardio.

I’m never not learning something. I like to read, ask questions, and improve just about any which way I can in all of the other facets of my life. But this was the first time I’d truly changed my workout regiment since I was 17 years old and I noticed a difference almost immediately.

My workouts were now at least 30 minutes of cardio and 30-minute core lifts around my key muscle groups with a mandatory 15-minute stretching session in between to ensure proper recovery.

I woke up at 5:15 AM each day to get to the gym early before work and the last thing I thought about before each session was the note and the shades of doubt.

The Racing Program

Once the new year rolled through and it was time to begin Hal Higdon’s 12-week training program, the time had finally arrived to start the real training.

With the mental aspect already down between my note and internal motivations, I just needed to maintain discipline, add in a few miles every week, and start that climb.

For the first time since I was a training athlete, I was religiously hitting the gym, eating the right way for recovery, and pushing myself on runs every Saturday morning.

By this point, we had picked up a couple other friends that wanted to run with us and we all had the goal in mind. May 17th was circled on the calendar and it was a 12-week grind to get there. Here are a few of my favorite moments from training:

First Long run in January! 5 Miler had me looking rough!
Trained on the Frozen Lake Front
First ever 8 Mile run by myself!
Jumping for Joy after hitting 10 miles for the first time!
Squad.
Strava’s best.

Each week, I was setting new records for my longest runs ever.

Mind you, normal life is still happening around all of this. Any ups and downs, any fun events, nights out, etc. All things I previously did without second thoughts, began to change. I still needed to get out of bed the next morning and go to the gym or go for my run. There were no days off, regardless of how I felt.

That competitive fire that had lain dormant for over a decade truly was back. Every sore hip, every groggy morning, I stayed consistent for months with the same routine to get to race day.

Then, just like that, it was.

Race Day

When I woke up the morning of the race at 4:25AM, I wasn’t tired or groggy. I was calm and ready.

I had lain out what I wanted to wear the night before, bought myself a Gatorade to have with a very light breakfast, and showered without any of my usual music in the morning.

My wardrobe featured one of my old football dri-fit long sleeved shirts, LuLu Lemon joggers that featured all of the pockets I’d need for my things, and a White Sox hat. Fashion with function.

It was going to be in the 80s weather-wise that day, but I still wanted to wear what felt like a uniform to me. Every Saturday long run I had, I wore those joggers and a long-sleeved shirt of some kind because a lot of those days were cold. But, there’s pride in a uniform and since I had trained in long sleeves and pants, I needed to run in them on Race Day.

I met up with my friends on the train, walked into Grant Park, and started to stretch. It wasn’t lost on me that I was about to start a race in the place where Michael Jordan and the Bulls celebrated all six of their NBA Championships in the ’90s. I told myself then that once I crossed that finish line, I can’t wait to celebrate the same way.

1998 Chicago Bulls Championship Celebration in Grant Park

We began to head toward our corral and I started to get into the zone. I haven’t felt this same kind of excitement in a long time. We even got a rendition of the National Anthem before we began. It truly felt like game day all over again.

I snapped this picture just before the National Anthem. I was taking it all in.

Once each corral letter before us started to move, we had been at the very front of the group. We got to lead our group out of the tunnel and into the rest of the race. I started jumping up and down and dancing out some excitement just like I would’ve as an athlete.

All of a sudden, a shot went off and our race began. The starting line was lined with tunnels of people on both sides. At the very end of the first tunnel was my mom and dad. The reason I’m on this planet and why I’ve gotten to do everything is because of them. I already had a jolt of energy to do it for them.

Shortly after that, a large group of our college friends were standing there cheering with ringing cow bells and signs for each of us. All I could do was just smile and clap because some of my favorite people on the planet to start the race made the day feel already like a great day. I was running for them too.

I run like a fucking duck and always have

1 Mile Down. 12.1 to Go.

Along the way, we asked each other a few questions like “If you were an inanimate object, what would you be?” or “What is your desert island album?” to help pass the time. At each mile, we’d rotate who asked the question and each of us had fun in hearing the others’ answers.

While this was happening, we were running around Chicago’s museum campus featuring Soldier Field, McCormick Place, and the Adler Planetarium. It was around then where I realized “Oh shit, this is real. We’re doing this. All this work was for right now.” That energized me a little bit but that’s when I first thought about how much more we had left to go.

5 Miles Down. 8.1 to Go.

The groups of spectators started to disperse a little bit. The lakefront trail started to tighten up and the bobbing and weaving began.

To this point, I’d trained on the northern half of the lakefront trail, doing a decent amount of bobbing and weaving around folks, but with how many runners there were during the race, there were a plethora of different paces surrounding us at once.

In all of my training, I hadn’t done this much slowing down and speeding up. Some folks were already burning themselves out and stopping to walk in the middle of the trail. I almost barreled over a small girl as she stopped for a moment of reprieve.

I said out loud for the first time “I’m getting fucking tired from avoiding collisions and speeding up to bypass people.”

My friend said “This is just normal for big races. It’s the same during a marathon, just have to keep pushing through it.”

Along the way, we were seeing signs and spectators. There was a full-on live jazz band playing some funky music that was an awesome sight.

But by now, the sun was fully out and it started to get really warm. I felt myself getting a little overheated.

8 Miles Down. 5.1 to Go.

I was a lot overheated as we crossed the halfway point of the race and did the turnaround.

While respecting my uniform, I will admit that my long-sleeved shirt decision did hinder me. I had bypassed a couple of hydration stations in the first half of the race. During the second half, I stopped at each one to grab a little bit of water just to dump on my head. I barely even drank any of it, I just needed to cool down.

I didn’t want to take off my shirt because I didn’t want to fuck up my official race time that was being recorded at checkpoints from the tech in my bib that was fastened to my shirt, so I just had to keep going.

Our group started to play some music out loud and my friends started to push their pace. As I was overheating, I was maintaining the same 10 minute, 45ish second pace for the whole race. This was a moment where I accepted that I might have to cross the finish line alone.

I didn’t want my friends to slow up for me and I didn’t want to burn myself out trying to catch up to them about 15 feet ahead of me. I kept pace alongside a few people that had been near us most of the race and just started to talk to myself in my head.

Just keep going. You’re hot, but you’re not dying. You trained hard for this. You’re going to finish. Just keep going.

10 Miles Down. 3.1 to Go.

I had caught up to my friends shortly after a huge gust of wind off the lake literally gave me a second wind. The sun went behind the clouds briefly and that wind felt like a huge pat on the back to just keep going.

My friends were talking about pushing the pace again and I just said out loud “I’m going to put on my music. You guys just do your thing.”

I unzipped my ass pocket, grabbed my headphones, put them on, and immediately hit shuffle on my running playlist.

It’s now your choice of music. You have to just keep going. Just keep going. It’s still fucking hot, but you have to keep going.

Songs from the Rocky series helped push me for another mile. First it was the iconic Gonna Fly Now before transitioning to Runnin’ from Creed II which gave me a little bit of extra juice to get to Mile 11.

I had the song I wanted to play as I crossed the finish line picked out for a few months. But with a shuffling playlist, I’d have to navigate to it and find it if I wanted it to guarantee my finishing moment. But I still needed to get there. I just let my music shuffle and had to skip a few songs to get to some that allowed me to keep stepping on a beat. I was almost there.

12 Miles Down. 1.1 Miles to Go.

As we made it to the home stretch, we were running along a long stretch of Lake Shore Drive’s sidewalk, lined with just about every spectator. The energy of all the people helped will a little bit more energy into me.

Just keep going. Are my friends here? Are my parents here or by the finish line? Don’t worry about that, just keep going.

All of a sudden, I saw my friends to the left. Gave them a quick Rock On symbol and kept running. Shortly after that, I saw my parents with my youngest brother who now lives in Atlanta. I had no idea he was even in town, let alone coming to see me run this race. I got emotional seeing him cheer me on.

His football career ended due to injury. I had stopped being consistent with my workouts in my post-athletic career and it was always my injuries that stopped me from pushing myself to a better place. He played against SEC opponents with all the aches and pains and still dominated. I had another mile to go. I had to do it for him too.

12.5 Miles Down. 0.6 Miles to Go.

To this point, the most I ran in my training was a little over 12 miles. I had done it twice in the last few weeks leading up to the race, so I’d known for a couple of weeks that I would be able to crush this last mile.

I’m not sure if it was the heat from my uniform, the overwhelming emotions from seeing my friends and family, or something else, but this last little bit of a mile before the finish line was the hardest part of the race.

I was overheated. My hip was really bugging me despite all the stretching and caring I had done for it the last few months. Also, my music playlist started to put on songs that I loved in my training, but absolutely hated in the moment. They didn’t feel like the right fit.

I was furiously talking to myself in my own head at this moment:

Dig fucking deep. Are you serious? All this training and for what? For you to slow down now? Do you want to walk across the finish line? You haven’t stopped once and now you want to with less than a mile to go. JUST KEEP GOING. LET’S FINISH THIS FUCKING THING!

We turned from the lakefront onto Randolph Street and into the lower part of that street in Chicago’s tunnels:

With the sun now gone and the cool wind in the tunnel surrounding me, I finally had another wind to push me through the end. I saw my friends ahead of me and I sped up to them. They definitely slowed down a bit to get to me as well. I love them for that.

I just put on the song that I knew I wanted to finish with and then it was a fight to the end. I needed to drown my own thoughts out of my head and just run.

With Bored to Death by my favorite band of all-time, blink-182, scoring this moment. I finally started to feel the relief:

We left the tunnel and I could see the finish line. We sped up. The cheers grew louder. And then…

“…Life Is Too Short To Last Long…”

Elation. I crossed the finish line with the line of the song that helped kickstart this journey in the first place. Life is too short to last long. You have to keep going and do something with the time you’re given and I did it.

I screamed with all of the passion I had left and just like that, I felt like this kid again:

Victory Lane and What’s Next

Once I had that medal around my neck, I knew this was one of the greatest days of my life. I never slowed down to walk. I ran a half marathon. The amount of work I put in to get to that level was some of the hardest, if not, the hardest work I’d ever put toward something in my life.

While celebrating afterwards with my family and friends, I said “I’m going to run a full. I want to run a full.”

With my hip hurting, my body overheating and running on fumes, I said out loud “I’m going to run a full.”

The elation was short-winded. The next goal is already on the mind. While my body wound down from the experience, I got more exhausted thinking about not just the 13.1 miles, but all the miles that led to this moment.

I started to think about how many miles I’ll need to run to be able to double up that performance and do it again for a full marathon within the next year. I don’t even know which I want to do, but I know that I’ll be wearing short sleeves for it.

But for now, all I know is that I fucking did something that I said I was going to do. Celebrating in Grant Park was the culmination of months of work, a mindset and body shift, and a competitiveness that I needed to crawl into a deep place to bring out again to finish this race.

To wrap this up with a quote from my favorite athlete of all-time who also celebrated in Grant Park, I say:

“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” – Michael Jordan

For years, the only thing that was keeping me from achieving a goal like this was me. Despite all of the internal pep-talking I needed to tell myself as I finished the race, it took me saying out loud and writing down on a piece of paper months ago “Danny to Run a Half Marathon in 2026.”

After that, those thoughts and words led to small changes that eventually led to big changes.

That fire never left me. I let it dim just a bit and I’m never going to let that happen again. I know I can do anything now. I’ve proven it to myself once and I’m already excited to do it again.

It’s never too late to start, but it’s better to start sooner rather than later. It’s easier to make excuses if you don’t truly believe in it.

For anyone that thinks that fire within them is gone, take a deep look inside yourself and ask yourself one thing: “Did you give it your very best? Did you do everything you could to make it happen?”

If the answer is no, then you still have gas in the tank. Go after it. You can do it too.

Just keep going.

~DS