Joel Reese

So I’ve begun a new blog — it’s about a quest I came up with about five years ago: I’m going to try to run a five-minute mile. Why? Well, I conceived of the idea not long after my ex and I separated. I was watching a crappy horror movie, and then I looked at myself and what I saw was scarier than what was on the screen: I realized I was a doughy, balding, drunken failure. So I decided the way to try to combat that was to set a goal. And that goal: Run a five-minute mile.

I’m not sure where the idea came from: it was something I did a few times back in high school and college, during my completely unspectacular career as a runner. (Indeed, I finished dead last in the first race I ever ran, freshman year cross-country, at Evanston Township High School. Good times.)

Anyway, that goal has come and gone a few times — I pursued it fairly diligently at one point, getting to the point where I was able to run five miles in around 37 minutes. Not bad, but only a good starting point. Then, just when I was ready to start getting serious, I got a new job as managing editor of a financial website. And my life had changed pretty dramatically by then: I was remarried, and we had a daughter. So the need to pursue this goal seemed a little less… urgent.

And then came one of the harshest winters in Chicago history — there was one week where the temperature never reached above zero. It was snowy, icy, windy, and sucky. So the running simply stopped.

But now spring is here. And the itch is back. (So is the doughy belly — the hair, alas, is still gone.) So I’m going to give it one last shot. I’m going to set a date: Nov. 14.  What’s special about that date? Well, for starters, it’s 8 months from today. There’s more, but I’ll get to that later.

Meanwhile, I’m beginning this project at another blog, titled 5minutemile.blogspot.com. Check it out, send me ideas, cheer me on, tell me I’m doomed to fail. But at least say hello.

So today, deadspin.com is running my story “Down and Out,” which originally appeared in Texas Monthly, December 1995, and was anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing of 1996. The deadspin version is my retelling of the story, using some quotes that were in the full-length version (which is available here). I originally intended to make it shorter and funnier, but even now, some 14 years after it all went down, there’s still not much humor in a man unable to conquer his drug addiction.

But there are many more details in the full-length version, including interviews with former NFL stars such as Mike Ditka, Cliff Harris, and Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson. The story begins after the introduction, “The Story Behind the Story.” Check it out — and feel free to peruse my other work to the right as well.

This website is, literally, hours old. Soon, though, it will have all sorts of fancy graphics, pictures, video, and hopefully minimal photos of my 11-month-old daughter (I might not be able to help myself, though). Unfortunately, we are not there yet, so I’ll have to make do with this. For now.