She couldn't sleep. So I started running.

My daughter Jessie has Rett syndrome. She's four. She's nonverbal, so expressive, and the reason I run.

It started because she couldn't sleep. Before the diagnosis, before we had a name for it, she would jump in her crib for up to two hours at night. Walking helped. Running helped more. She must have been two the first time I put her in the stroller and ran a mile. I thought I was going to collapse. She was giggling the entire time.

So I kept doing it. Tired in the morning, we'd run. Tired in the afternoon, we'd run. She slept so well at speed that I just started running as far as I could. It was a tool. She needed movement. I was the engine.

I didn't plan to love it. I didn't plan for it to change how I think.

In September 2024, Jessie was diagnosed with Rett syndrome at three. One of the hardest parts of the diagnosis was learning she may never talk. You have this picture in your head of fatherhood. The little girl who can't wait to tell you about her day. That picture changes.

Shortly after, I took her running. She was squealing, laughing, having the time of her life. And something clicked. This is one of the ways I connect with her. Not the way I expected. A different way. A bond built at exhaustion, facing the same direction, without a single word.

She communicates with her eyes now, with an eye gaze device, with expressions that say more than most sentences. It's as good as I ever expected. Better. Just different.

Running gave me two things I didn't know I needed.

Road running is an open canvas. Whatever is in your head gets room to breathe. If you're stressed, the stress comes up and you sit with it for miles until it loosens. If you're in a good place, ideas surface that never would have at a desk. It's unstructured thinking time in a life that has very little of it.

Trail running is the opposite. Rocks, roots, terrain. Nothing exists except the next step. You can't think about the business. You can't think about the diagnosis. You can only think about where your foot lands. It's the most focused I ever feel.

Both are meditations. One opens your mind up. The other narrows it to a point. I need both.

I started watching documentaries about people who'd run 100 miles. They all described the same thing. A place where everything in your mind tells you you're done. And you take the next step anyway. That's the part that stays with you. Not that you finished. That you know what it feels like to keep going when every signal says stop.

I knew fatherhood was going to be hard. Now there are challenges I wasn't prepared for. Running doesn't make them easier. It makes me more familiar with the feeling of doing hard things. And that familiarity is the preparation.

Most of my days are screens and systems. Running is the complete opposite. One of the most natural things humans have done for millions of years, in places that have barely been touched. I need that contrast too.

Later this month, Jessie and I are running our first 5K together with Ainsley's Angels, an organization that provides running strollers for kids and adults with medical limitations. We come as a duo. She'll probably sleep through most of it. It's right at her nap time.

Every Saturday I do a long run before the family wakes up. On the way back, I swing by the house, pick up Jessie and the stroller, and we finish the last mile or two together. We call it Princess Plus One.

The goal is 100 miles. Late 2027, maybe 2028. Mountains. Possibly an ocean view. She won't be at the start of that one. But I want her at the finish.

A hundred miles is a long way. It starts with a 5K.

The thing that prepares me for the hard thing came from the hard thing. She couldn't sleep. I started running. She gave me the tool without either of us knowing it.

One step in front of the other.