Walking 100 Miles: A Story of How Chronic Disease Makes Us Stronger

“I am The Breathing Diabetic, I am The Breathing Diabetic,” I kept repeating this as tears ran down my face.  I had been walking for over 33 hours straight, and I felt dead.

But I only had a few more miles to go.  The end was in sight and I was being flooded with emotions.  I had worked so hard for this moment.  It was a culmination of many things I stand for: hard work, persistence, breathing, and contributing.  What was once a mere thought, “maybe I could share my positive experiences with breathing as a diabetic,” was now (almost) a reality.

Why 100 Miles?

I am relatively obsessed with breathing at this point.  Most of my free time is spent reading journal articles and books related to all aspects of respiration.  And I try to get the information I study out to as many people as possible.

But I also practice what I learn.  I’m always eager to try new things and to see how much this “breathing stuff” actually works.  Providing information is useful, but I also want to embody that information. 

So, I did the 100 miles as a fundraiser for a nonprofit organization called the Health and Human Performance Foundation (HHPF). “HHPF is using science to explore simple breathing practices that provide immediate and long-term physiological changes to the body’s performance systems.” One of their focus areas is chronic diseases, including diabetes.  I believe deeply in their mission, and raising money and awareness around it was a natural fit for this endeavor.  If I hadn’t been doing it for HHPF, I could not have found the strength to do it at all.

The 20 lb. Weighted Rucksack

I wore a ruck (a weighted backpack) to symbolize the extra burden those living with chronic diseases carry around every day. To show that, despite that weight, we can still do anything.  

In fact, I believe that living with a chronic disease makes us stronger.  It’s kind of like a workout for our life muscles.  We deal with a lot of day-to-day nonsense, but it is making us more resilient.  I genuinely believe that, so I wanted to prove it.  

Training – Listening to My Own Advice

In February of 2019, I wrote a short blog post about a 50-mile ruck my brother and I did.  At the end, I had some “Lessons Learned.”  When I began training for the 100-miler, I tried to take my own advice.

I treated every training session like it was race day.  I didn’t try to “hack” my breathing practice for this one.  I was consistent and diligent with it.  I almost always trained sore or tired (it’s hard not to with the miles I had to put in).  I woke up at 2:30 a.m. if necessary. I worked my full-time job. I tried to remain a good husband and father. After about five months of training, on Leap Day, February 29, 2020, I started the 100 miles.

The Healthy Paradox

I was doing the 100 miles to raise awareness around using breathing as a tool to live healthier with chronic disease.  Paradoxically, I became the unhealthiest I’d been in a while during my training. 

I wasn’t sleeping enough, I couldn’t eat enough to keep up with my training, and I wasn’t recovering enough.  My blood sugars deteriorated back to “pre-breathing” levels (which still were not awful, but not where I like to be).

I learned something important from this.  Sometimes to get a message out, you cannot live the message.  I never understood why self-improvement authors said things like, “writing this book made me so unhealthy.”  I thought, then what’s the point?!?  But I learned that sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself for a bigger mission.

Finishing the Ruck and Getting Back to Normal

It took me 35 h 45 min and about 225,000 steps to finish the 100 miles.  But I didn’t do it alone.  I had so much support both in-person and virtually that I was brought to tears several times throughout the ruck.  Including those who walked with me, we covered a combined 291 miles for chronic disease and raised about $2K for HHPF.  Mission accomplished. 

Rucking 100 miles taught me a lot.  It showed me I am capable of physical feats I would have never thought were possible.  It showed me the power of my breath practice, disciplined training, and determination.

It also showed me that you return to normal pretty quickly.  It actually feels fake writing about it now, a few months later.  But now I’m the healthiest I’ve ever felt, and my breathing is the best it has ever been.  That adversity made me stronger.  And it can make all of us stronger.  Whether it’s a chronic disease, an endurance event, or any other problem in life, as long as we persist, we’ll come out better on the other side. 

In good breath,
Nick