A Health-Related Hibernation
Hello everyone! It’s so good to see you all. Reginald and I are both currently in the process of coming out of hibernation, but we are still here, and still just as excited about our mission as the day we started. Over the past year, our adventures may have been restricted (involuntarily), but I’m happy to report that our giving was strong. Over the course of 2025, we donated 325 stuffed animals to Ronald McDonald houses in Colorado, which brings our grand total up to 650 since the creation of Running With Reginald. It may have been a quiet year athletically, but it was our best on the giving front. I just want to say thank you to everyone who has donated, and continues to support the work Reginald and I do. It means the world, and we couldn’t dream of being here without you. As we gaze upon the horizon of 2026, there are some exciting things to come, and we hope to get back to consistent communication above all else.
If 2024 was the year of outward adventure, then 2025 was certainly the year of internal discovery. As winter turned to spring, I was in the midst of rebuilding fitness and speed from my attempt on the Nakasendo Way, and moving towards a completely different goal, the Boston Marathon. Training was going well, and physically I was in a solid place. Mentally however, was another story. There may have been some let down from the FKT attempt in Japan, but realistically it was a low patch that had been stretching on for nearly a year, and been present well before October. Low patches were nothing new to me, but it had been the longest one I’d experienced in nearly ten years, and it felt like an appropriate time to address things medically.
Most people who know me are probably aware in some capacity that I have dealt with depression most of my life. It’s something that I am very open about, and though I have been in talk therapy and treatment for over a decade at this point, I have yet to try medication. Personally, I struggle with anything that will make me feel out of control physically or emotionally. I have never had a sip of alcohol, never taken drugs, I’m fine with any and all over the counter meds and supplements, but hesitate when the list of side effects starts to grow. This is, in part, born out of my depression and ADHD, as a way to regulate my environment and keep myself in check, but also born out of fear. Past experiences where I can’t control my mind, my surroundings, or how my reactions feel. As someone who has spent a life in sport, feeling connected to their body, taking something that could potentially harm that connection was a scary thought for me.
I want to make it very clear that there has never been judgement surrounding the medication itself. Medication exists for a reason, and it can be an integral piece of the puzzle no matter what you are dealing with. I was in group therapy for years and saw a vast array of health conditions, I have friends, colleagues, and family that all require medication to live their healthiest, happiest lives. How we talk about it matters, and shame around the topic is not productive for anyone. Unfortunately, despite my own lack of judgement, I was unlucky in my first experience with a psychiatrist. After diagnosing my MDD, they simply wrote me a prescription, and showed me to the door without explaining side effects or their reasoning for writing it. Pick it up, start taking it, and see if I ‘got better’ were the instructions. I stuck the prescription in my wallet, and it stayed there for years.
Shortly after my initial diagnosis, I started counseling and had a much better experience. My therapist made sure that I knew SSRIs and SNRIs could be an important step, but she allowed me to construct the rest of the puzzle first to see if there were any missing pieces. There was a lot to work on back then and I appreciated the understanding of my personal boundaries, as it allowed me to focus on what was immediate without added fear. Fast forward ten years, and I decided it was time for me to be brave and try something new. Clearly whatever pattern I was in wasn’t serving me, and the support I did have just wasn’t enough to get me out of the low patch this time. I was lucky enough to find a great psychiatrist, someone willing to listen to my concerns, explain the cyclical relationship between ADHD and depression, and make the process seem far less scary. I promised myself that if I started medication, I would fully commit regardless of the physical impacts to training for at least six months, and then re-evaluate, understanding I could step away with professional guidance if I wanted to. Ultimately, I was prescribed a low dose of an SNRI and began taking it in early February.
The first few weeks were understandably interesting, as my brain attempted to cope with the influx of norepinephrine. My mood was volatile, my nervous system was reactive, and I was having trouble sleeping, but I was hopefully moving towards a better place. My fear was greatest before and during the first month, even if I was prepared for the instability, as it was playing exactly into the anxiety I had. Another few weeks passed, and a lot of the mood fluctuation had settled, I was a bit more rested, and my motivation was higher than before. Between sleep tracking and in-training data, I could tell that my baseline heart rate was still sitting 8-10 beat per minute higher than normal, and my HRV was reduced by about 25-30%. Side effects that had the possibility to go away with time (though my numbers stayed pretty consistent), and were simply a result of nervous system activation. On most of my easy runs, I was okay. I noticed that I would get out of breath a bit quicker, especially on hills, and my heart rate zones had to be pushed up, but the bigger issue I ran into was on workout days. Initially it was hard to hold anything faster than marathon effort. Tempo, 10k, 5k, 1k effort, etc. all left me completely gassed, and the more I tried, the harder it was to recover. Eventually, sustained marathon effort and long runs felt tough on the body as well, and as some tension started to creep into the legs, I made the decision to withhold high intensity work and any run over two hours in the lead up Boston. Not ideal to say the least, especially as I was hoping to run my fastest time ever, but I was still in the adaptation window for the medication, I had made a promise to myself, and my mental health was far more important.
Boston came and went, I managed to sneak under 2:45 for 26.2 and loved every second of the experience despite not feeling my fittest. It was hard not to think about the volume and intensity I had missed in training, the time I had left on the course, but at the end of the day, it truly felt like the race was a celebration of prioritizing myself, and I was okay. I could feel that my mood was higher than it had been in months, and I could start looking forward to what was to come, rather than working hard to get through each day. [On a side note, I was unable to run with Reginald during the marathon itself due to the restrictions of what you can carry, so he was with me in spirit as we made our way to the heart of Boston!]
As I built back following the race, I continued to deal with some side effects. It was hard for me to discern what was a lack of fitness from a couple weeks off of running, and what was from the medication. Each run felt like a bit of a battle, I was really struggling in any kind of heat, and I was continuing to feel out of breath more often than not. During this time, I also unknowingly injured my back and had a bulging disk that began to push on my sciatic nerve. By June, I had severe pain in the outside of my right leg, and was having trouble running, then eventually walking without pain. I was managing a handful of lopsided miles a week, until eventually I couldn’t force it any more. I didn’t know the extent of how bad things were at the time, but it wasn’t until November that the pain went away completely.
From the end of June to early October, I hardly ran. Some days I could get in a bit of time before that pain ramped up, some days I could barely walk the dogs. I found a great PT and chiropractor that were helping me, but as with a lot of nerve issues, it just takes time for things to heal. During these months, I leaned into some of my work, I was able to go to the gym and find strength routines that felt good, I added on some muscle and non muscle, and prioritized my metal health as I had been doing. I noticed as time went on, that even without running, the side effects I had been experiencing from my medication only seemed to get worse. I was hardly sleeping, I couldn’t be in direct sun for more than a few minutes, I was out of breath walking up the stairs, I was getting irritable and antsy again like I had in the first couple weeks of taking it. I was feeling ROUGH, and some of my initial fear crept in again. After a discussion with my psychiatrist, he told me that was most likely a sign that my baseline brain chemistry had shifted, and that in all likelihood, the medication was providing more norepinephrine than I actually needed at the time. Something specific to the prescription I was taking, but in other words, the nervous system overdrive was simply a sign that the medication had worked, and I was in a better place than I once had been.
After nine months, and with the understanding that it may not be the last time, I waned off of the SNRI, and by the time I began running fully again, I had a lot less fitness, and a lot more peace inside. If I examine my fear before and throughout the process, I think I can simultaneously say that it was and was not justified. Yes, medication has an internal impact on you that you can’t control, and may end up causing less than ideal side effects, and it can also be integral to your longevity and health, sometimes requiring temporary or prioritized sacrifice for lasting results. Though the desire to control my environment is a result of the way my brain works, I feel like this entire year was a lesson in being brave and prioritizing yourself. If I look back on 2025, I can simply say that it was really hard. Physically, it was one of the most challenging years of my life, both in athletic capacity/performance, and in day to day life/comfort. Mentally it was probably the same. From extreme lows, massive fluctuations, and finally homeostasis through it all. In a year you can always expect change, but sometimes, when it’s this extreme, everything else seems a little less scary going forward. If you need any proof, when I finally started to find some fitness again at the start of 2026, I got my first stress fracture in six years, and I’ve had less anxiety surrounding an injury than maybe ever before. You learn, you adapt, you grow.
So here I sit, writing this to you, one week out of a boot with dreams and possibility on the horizon. It was a quiet year for me and for Reginald, and for that I apologize. I hope that if you are going through your own battle, with fear, with health, with anything, that this can be a lesson in belief. Reginald and I have a lot of exciting things on the way, some of which we will announce in the next couple weeks. Going forward, communication will also be coming out on a regular basis, as will media. Our hibernation was long, thank you all for being patient. Sending my best to everyone, please be kind to yourselves.
Sincerely,
Chris and Reginald
