Running is one of those things where most people have a love or hate relationship – they either love the feeling of a good run in the morning or they would opt to stay in bed.
Ironically, 2021 Britton-Hecla graduate Wyatt Bray has been on both sides of that spectrum. He admits to hating running in high school, yet he ran his second Sioux Falls Marathon 10 days ago.
“Typically people would think running 26.2 miles sounds like the opposite of fun, but when you have great friends and family running with you and cheering you on it makes it a weekend I will always look back on very fondly,” said Bray.
Bray was on the track team in high school but admits to staying as far away from the track as possible.
“I was only a thrower and refused to run. That’s how much I hated it.”
But life sometimes throws a curveball, and for Bray that came in the form of an ankle injury he suffered in a fall while hiking three years ago that tore a couple of ligaments and fractured the ankle.
“It healed enough without surgery where I could work out and lift weights, but one thing I couldn’t do was go for a run. I would be in pain for a day after any sort of running.”
Bray tossed the idea back and forth in his mind for a while on whether he should get the ankle surgery and finally decided at just 21 years of age that he didn’t want to go the rest of his life unable to run. The surgery was successful, and after four months he could run pain-free. That’s when he made another decision.
“I decided I wasn’t going to take the ability to run for granted anymore. That was the whole point of me having the surgery. And I decided to go full bore and train for a marathon. That led me to discovering that I actually liked running.”
As he trained and became able to do longer distances, the running bug bit.
“The first seven-mile run I did was when I got that runner’s high where you get into a meditative place,” recalled Bray. “That’s when I started to like it.”
A year ago he met his goal of running that marathon in Sioux Falls. This year he decided he would go back, along with a couple of friends. Daniel Person and Dashel Davidson, who worked with Bray in his landscaping business this past summer, decided they would join him for their first marathons, and all three completed the 26.2-mile course.
After running the marathon in four hours and 12 minutes a year ago, Bray wanted to run a 3:45 this time around. After running 20-30 miles a week to prepare he reached that goal by three seconds, running a 3:45.57. He was 104th in a field of about 600 marathon runners and over 2,000 runners from 46 states and Canada participated in all the distance divisions of the event.
“I think what I enjoy most is just the feeling that you get after a run and even during the run,” said Bray. “Sometimes it’s a hard thing to describe. On those really long runs all you can hear is your feet hitting the pavement and get in a kind of meditative space in your head. It’s very therapeutic.”
Bray is already planning on another marathon next year. After running twice in Sioux Falls he’s hoping to try another venue this time around. He even has the famous Boston Marathon bouncing around in his head for the future.
“Boston is always in the back of my mind, but it’s too big of a goal to really conceive of right now. You need to run a 2:55 to qualify for Boston and it would be really cool to do one day. But it is definitely years down the line of working at it.”
For now Bray just sees running as a “cool” thing to do and a way to help navigate one’s way through life.
“Marathon running has kind of blown up the last few years and I think it’s really cool to see that people are getting into that and choosing to do something hard that’s completely voluntary. We live in a world that has so many comforts to offer compared to how we’ve lived for most of history. And yet it seems somehow we don’t get more satisfaction out of life due to those comforts. So it seems that for me and many others adding intentional discomfort - like running - into our daily routine is very helpful for navigating life during this “comfort crisis.”
