I grew up in west Texas, and after a stint in the military and some bouncing around, ended up on a small ranch in Kent County about 90 miles east of Lubbock Texas with my wife Jaclynn and daughter Tessa. I also have a son Ashton, and daughter Helen that live in nearby Lubbock. Although I was exposed to sports at a young age, it was never my thing. I was much more interested in books and computers and was an admittedly difficult child. After high school I decided to join the US Army in 2003. I was going nowhere fast, and the Army promised me opportunity to see a totally different kind of life. It was a, casually taken, huge leap into the unknown.
I decided to join the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division as an artillery crewman. The next 5 years were a whirlwind of new experiences and life changing challenges. I completed 2 deployments to Baghdad in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom during 2003-2005 and had the opportunity to go to some excellent schools while in garrison. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the military and made sergeant in just over 2 years. In 2006 everything changed in an instant. On a cold January evening I made the last parachute jump of my career. A bad exit, high winds, and a rough landing created the perfect storm of disaster. Initially I thought that I got away with a broken leg, it wasn’t until weeks later that I knew the extent of the injury. I had severely damaged my spinal column and started bleeding into my brain.
All told I spent moths in the hospital and needed multiple surgeries. My surgeon was very optimistic about saving my life, but walking again wasn’t guaranteed. It was a long road to recovery, and although I was repeatedly told how lucky I was, I felt anything but. I recovered better than expected with no paralysis, but was left with a ton of hardware in my back and chronic debilitating pain. Needles to say, the Army was done with me. After being released from the hospital it took about a month for me to be medically retired.
I moved back to Texas and enrolled in Texas A&M where I proceeded to take a bunch of classes that I had no real interest in. I had a host of medical issues and got thrown into the VA system right away. It was a difficult time, and I felt I was basically starting life over as a broken man. The VA had a pill for every problem, and I was happy to take them. It would be 15 years before I would finally take the last one. I was a high functioning addict, but an addict nonetheless. Eventually I found myself in a nice corporate job and plodded along until I met my wife in 2017.
We were able to purchase a small ranch in 2019. It was a shared dream that we had talked about from the very first date, and a sharp adjustment from city life. We had a small chunk of land in county that boasted a population density of less than 1 person per square mile. It was 55 miles to the nearest Walmart, and the 903 square mile county didn’t even have a gas station. In a word, it was perfect. During that first year I rediscovered my love for the outdoors and started hitting my limitations pretty quickly.
Although my injuries were long healed, I still dealt with chronic neck and back pain, as well as severe migraines. The copious amount of pain killers and muscle relaxers that the VA proscribed kept me functional, but I was far from healthy. I had tried to get off the meds multiple times, but I was never successful past a few weeks. It is embarrassing in retrospect, but eventually I accepted that this was as good as it was ever going to get. It was a private war that raged inside me for a long time. So what changed?
In 2020 my wife became pregnant with our first child. We were beyond excited as we had been trying for some time. A few months later we got our first ultrasound and there were problems right away. My daughter has a severe congenital heart defect and would need surgery right after birth. We chose a hospital in Houston and traveled down there in January of 2021 for the delivery. It was a crazy time in America, and suddenly finding ourselves in one of the biggest cities in the country during the height of the COVID pandemic was quite the shock.
It was a year of crazy highs and unbearable lows. Tessa had a hard road, but she is a fighter. After several procedures to get her stable a very gifted surgeon was able to completely rebuild the veins and arteries feeding her heart. I will be forever thankful to the doctors and nurses who cared for her that year, but the insanity of COVID protocols and general stupidity that followed made for a very difficult time. The hospital did not even allow both of us to be in our daughters room at the same time, so we would take turns, with the other spending the day sitting at the Ronald McDonald house wondering what was happening.
That year I took my generally mediocre health, and made it much worse. I sat on my ass the entire time, and managed to pack on another 30 pounds with constant takeout and junk food. The city was on lockdown, and my stress was through the roof. There were many days where I doubted things were going to work out at all. Thankfully my faith was not the deciding factor, and that summer Tessa came home for good. There are still some issues, and she will need to stay healthy and take care of her heart for the rest of her life. However, she was doing terrific, and I finally had the time and bandwidth to take stock of my situation.
It was the perfect situation for a wake up call, and it didn’t take long. One evening I caught some pigs on a game camera and decided to walk out and harvest one for us to butcher. I had to walk about third of a mile, carrying around 20 pounds of rifle and night vision, to get to the feeder. As I approached I was so out of breath that I couldn’t hold my rifle steady and had to take a seat to get my heart rate under control. As I sat there reality hit me like a ton of bricks. I was 38 years old, and so out of shape that I couldn’t even WALK a few hundred yards without gasping like a fish out of water.
It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots. I had fallen into the same trap as millions of others. I spent my working days in front of a computer and my evenings drinking beer and watching TV. Big surprise I was fat and out of shape. During COVID I watched a disproportionate amount of those same people dying left and right, while healthy people rarely had a problem. I remembered the talk that the doctors had given me about Tessa, about how important it was for her to stay active and be mindful of her health. I wondered what kind of example I was demonstrating, and if I would even be around to see her grow up.
In December of 2021 I decided to change my life. I wasn’t sure what was possible, but resolved to work my ass off and find out. Over the years I have gained and lost an impressive amount of weight. I love to eat and drink, but knew I could cut weight when I set my mind to it. Getting in shape was a whole different problem. I had no idea what I could do, but there was only one thing that I refused to do. No running. I actually wrote that in my plan. Absolutely nuts to think about today, but I always hated it and was determined to get in shape some other way.
In early 2022 I stared an aggressive rucking program. I could throw some weight in a pack and hike around the ranch as long as I could take it, absolutely free of charge. My wife gave me her full support and I was determined, it did not take long to start seeing results. Eventually rucking became much easier and I started looking for ways to keep pushing the envelope. I went on my first run since my Army days in April of 2022. Two miles in 19 minutes. It was terrible, and I felt unbelievably accomplished.
From there things spiraled quickly. I was slow, but had some success on longer runs. I had never run a race before, or even considered it, until my sister talked me into signing up for a marathon that November. I googled up a training plan and went to work, doing basically everything I could wrong. The race was a road marathon, and I did end up finishing in just under 5 hours. I conclusively proved that determination can indeed get one through a marathon that you had no business signing up for in the first place. I wasn’t too impressed with my time, but felt a huge sense of accomplishment. I was so dehydrated and under fueled that it’s a miracle I finished at all.
After the race there was a lot to consider. I was pretty wrecked and knew that if I was going to continue down this road I would need some serious help. At my wife’s encouragement I started looking for a coach, and that’s how I met Will Frantz. Our first call was an interesting one. I told Will I wanted to run a 50k and proceeded to walk him through the list of surgeries, broken bones and general trauma that I had been through. I might have imagined the skepticism in his voice, but he agreed to take me on. Will and I hit it off right away, and I was soon furiously searching Ultrasignup for races.
I ran my first 4 ultras in 2023. I tackled progressively longer races, starting with a 50k at the Zion Ultras in Utah and finishing with my first 100 miler at the Dinosaur Valley Endurance Run in Glen Rose Texas. Running became routine, and staying in shape a lifestyle. That summer, between my first 50 miler and 100k, I made the decision to get off all prescription painkillers and muscle relaxers. Although I had managed to cut way back, quitting completely had eluded me. I knew that they were now holding me back more than they were helping anything. I was terrified, and while it was definitely difficult, it was not the insurmountable challenge that I expected. As the drugs left my system, the scales fell from my eyes. The mental anguish at realizing the true cost of those little pills was worse than the withdrawal in the end.
Today my life, and my hope for the future, is in a totally new place. I have had many experiences in life, and have made many mistakes. Deciding to speak publicly about it has been a difficult decision. In the end I realized that I’m not special. My story of injury, discharge, and subsequent addiction is shared by thousands of returning service members all over the country. Many never find a way out, and the 22 veteran suicides per day are a stark reminder of the desperation encountered by many former service members upon return to civilian life. Hopefully others can learn from my mistakes, and find their own victories in health and life.
Running has been a powerful tool these last couple of years. I can’t say that I love it, but we have an understanding. A relationship if you will. It has strengthened my body and mind, and has shown me a new path. Doing hard things and setting aggressive goals has shown me that I am capable of more than I would have imagined just a few years ago. I’m now a firm believer that we should all be looking for physical challenges, and that spending time outdoors sweating is a pillar of both physical and mental health.
Going forward I will continue to run, and to speak and write about my experiences, both past and present. I find it extremely cathartic, and hopefully others can also find some benefit. It’s definitely not all serious. I’m a gear junkie and love to try and review new things, as well as share stories from the trail. I’m no expert on running or health, but I am happy to share experiences and hear from others.
Please feel free to drop me a line at trail2ultra@pm.me
-Brian Gilbert, May 2024
Trail 2 Ultra 