The Drive That Keeps Me Going, by Guillermo Rangel

Hey there, I’m Guillermo or Memo (he/him), I moved from Mexico 7 years ago, but just joined Frontrunners a few months ago. You would think me being a writer (by hobby, real work is programmer) would make writing an entry about me and running very easy, but on the contrary, I feel the pressure of writing something meaningful and interesting for you, and that is hard for me, since that means I’ll need to open up a bit. However, I’ll accept the challenge and give it a try.

Let’s start with a story I’ve never told anyone. The night after my second Wednesday run was a hard one, and not just physically, but emotionally as well. I had so much frustration bottled up and it just exploded. I had, again, let myself go and was overweight and out of shape. It had happened gradually. It was easy to ignore the changes in the mirror, but that run had been a crude reminder of my reality; there were many feelings in the mix, like envy, defeatism and self-directed anger for not doing something earlier. It was ugly, and I was mad and sad, feelings I’m not proud of sharing but are necessary to understand my journey and how much this group changed my world.

That night there was a voice in my head that may be familiar to you as well, the one that always seems to be against you. “You can’t do it”, “you’re not built for this”, “you’ll never...”, well, that voice was loud that night and for a couple minutes, it got the best of me.

But now there was a faint voice saying, “good job”, “you did great!”, that echoed all the support I had received after the run, all the high fives, all the positivity. That voice made me put on my running shorts again next Wednesday and give it another try, and after it became a bit louder; every time I ran, it grew more powerful, more thunderous, fed by all the optimism in the group. It became effortless to listen to it and by now it’s prevailed over my pessimistic thoughts.

However, my inner negativity is not the only problem I’ve faced in my bumpy relationship with exercise. I don’t like routine. I would be one of those people who signs up for the gym January 1st, then stops coming a week later because it starts to get boring to do the same thing over and over again. There was a time I used to run on the treadmill with a tablet in front of me playing TV series; it solved the problem partially, but still, it got old after a while.

With Frontrunners, I’ve never felt bored. Every run is exciting, and I need to confess, not exactly because of the runs, but because of all the social events happening around them. Having a drink (or a couple) at Union in the middle of the week is something I wouldn’t imagine I’d be doing so often, but it’s hard not to when it’s a group that makes it so easy to be yourself and talk about whatever but specifically about LGBTQIA+ topics (maybe I should just admit it’s guys). I can’t do enough justice describing the vibe of the group, but I’m sure everyone knows what I’m talking about.

So now I don’t dread exercising, instead I get in a bad mood if something like COVID or a smoke cloud cancels my plans. That means not only that I won’t get to record more miles on my Strava account, but that I won’t get to hang out with these people that in just a couple months have become amazing friends. It makes it much easier to give exercising the priority it should have in my life. It’s fueling that drive towards self-improvement, a drive that hasn’t felt this strong in my life.

Guillermo Rangel

He/Him

This is my biggest achievement this year, my first book. It took a lot of years to make (more than 10, but there were breaks) and it's only available in Spanish (for now). It makes me very proud every day I see it on my shelf.