Hi everyone, yeah, I still have a blog! As of this writing I’m about to cross into NY from North West PA. Sorry about the lack of blogging. Most of my blogging time has turned into working on med school secondary apps which, frankly, are more important than this blog! Since the last post we’ve run through SD, into IA, over the Mississippi into IL, hung out around Chicago, ran thru IN to get to MI, ran back through IN to get to OH, and then tracked around Lake Erie in PA. By the end of the day, we’ll all be in Orchard Park, NY, near Buffalo. I’m not going to go through every day in this post but I’ll talk about some brief highlights.

Iowa City:

Aside from DEFINITELY being the coolest part of Iowa, I got to see Peter, Hannah’s AWESOME boyfriend, who took me to a famous diner that presidential hopefuls often patronize during the Iowa Caucuses. We got breakfast on a rest day and, wow, it was incredible to eat such a huge breakfast. Made me miss Jersey diners for sure. Always great to see Peter as well.

Chicago:

We felt like the road from Rockford into Chicago wasn’t safe to run on (too narrow, a lot of traffic), so after running 2 of our 4 legs we decided to shuttle to Chicago and finish miles along Lake Michigan. I only had to run 4 more miles in Chicago but, in spite of the heat, I was feeling really good and the setting was beautiful, so I ran 11 miles for a 15 mile day. The next day was a service day in Chicago for Imerman Angels, who do some really great work, and that evening I did a light workout to see where my fitness was at: 2x1k @ 3:20, 90″ rest, 3x1k @ 3:20, 60″ rest. It went very well given the poor track I was on. Feeling pretty confident in my fitness for the fall. Looking at you Paul Short! Oh, AND Anna took me to Wrigley for the first time ever and we saw a freakin’ walk off BOMB from Kyle Schwarber. 10/10 for Wrigley. Beautiful ballpark.

Kalamazoo:

DEREK F’ING JETER’S HOMETOWN. PERIOD.

Lakeside-Marblehead, OH:

A teammate, Emily, and her family have a lakehouse near this host and they hosted an awesome party for us with incredible food and many, many drinks. It was cool to meet Emily’s family and play with her beautiful dogs. I think it was good for everyone (our DDs excepted) to kick back with a few drinks, even if a lot of us felt it at 4:30 wakeup, hahaha.

Cleveland, OH:

So much good stuff to write about Cleveland, I guess I’ll start with my seeing my good friend, former teammate, and protégé Sam Miller. Sam will be a junior at Loyola in the Fall and he’s going to captain LUXC to a fantastic season. Write that down, that on July 24th I predicted a huge year for Loyola Men’s XC! Anyway, Sam lives in Bath, near Akron. His family has run this really cool non-profit named Victory Gallop that provides equine (read: horses) therapy for kids with disabilities. They also trained a miniature horse as the first “therapy pony” in the US that is certified and cleared to visit kids in hospitals. How cool is that? Anyway, it was so great to see Sam and his family. They have been incredibly supportive of my 4K journey and I’m very grateful for Sam’s friendship.

We did service at Rainbow Babies hospital, which has a cool AYA Cancer center. Really holistic stuff, a lot of art therapy and emotional/psychological support. I’ve seen a lot of cancer centers, both on this trip and at other times, and I’ve never seen anything like Rainbow Babies. They’re doing some really cool stuff, and the proof was in the pudding when we spoke to patients.

Now the most important part of our stay in Believeland… Project:Return, part II. There’s a longer post forthcoming on this subject. The short version, for those who may not remember, is that my teammate Ryan is a cancer survivor. He ran track in HS and ran his mile PR of 5:30 the day before his diagnosis. Since finishing treatment 4 or so years ago, he hasn’t broken 6:00. In the first few days of 4K this came up and I was like, dude, we are GETTING YOU to 5:29 by the time we make it to Boston, and so on rest days or easy days we’ve added some mile-oriented track workouts into the mix. Our first time trial was back in Austin, NV, so check that blog post out. Anyway, we stayed at Case Western Reserve University, where I almost went for college. One of the things that enticed me to Case was their beautiful track; I would have loved competing on it collegiately. Anyway, I knew that we had GREAT facilities, so I told Ryan that our rest day in Cleveland would be an ideal day to take a real shot at running a fast mile. Ryan places so much trust in me, it’s really humbling, because I don’t really know what I’m doing that well! So far I’ve pushed the right buttons with him, but I think I’ve gotten lucky so far. Anyway, Ryan was game for the second attempt. The plan was to pace the first half around 5:40 pace and see what happened. I was expecting 5:40-5:45 from Ryan. Gotta pat myself on the back, I paced very well and we were at about 2:49 through 800m. Everyone was out cheering their hearts out for Ryan while some football team was practicing. The football team was pretty flabbergasted. It was funny. Shoutout to the football coach keeping lane 1 clear for us! Going into the third lap I told Ryan we were gonna wind it up and make that lap hurt, and that he had to trust in me and himself that he’d have enough left for the 4th lap. Credit to him, he jumped in with both feet and stuck right on me and I think that lap was like an 84. The last lap was great too, and he finished in 5:37!!! He blew me away and blew himself away. All of this in trainers! UPDATE: we have acquired some cheap spikes from a thrift store for the next attempt.

Working with Ryan has been so rewarding to me. I remember how desparately I wanted to run fast after being hospitalized for Crohn’s in high school. My CD, my own body attacking itself, took running away from me. I wanted nothing more than to take back control of my body from that fucking disease. I had coaches and teammates who were so supportive, who worked with me and helped me get back to where I was before. Not to say that Ryan didn’t have a support system, but from what he’s told me it doesn’t sound like he had people to run with when he initially attempted to break 6:00 again. When he told me his story, I wanted nothing more than to give Ryan the same support I received from my high school teammates (by the way, shout out to Babich, Mark, Sean, Jack, Max, Ariel, and Coaches Donodeo, Febles, Kennedy, and Bonagura for their support back in the day!). Separate post coming for Project:Return, but our next attempt will be August 1st at Portsmouth, NH High School, with a tentative GUEST APPEARANCE from Loyola TF star MOLLY SMITH!

Somewhere Between Cleveland and Erie, PA:

John-Hanson found this amazing park on Lake Erie that was 40 minutes from our host, so we went there when we finished our miles. Got charcoal and BBQ stuff donated and grilled out. Then J-H and I went on a 2.5 hour long ODYSSEY of a walk/swim/shimmy to reach a lighthouse. When we finally came back, the locals in the park had told the other 4Kers that someone had died doing what we did just this past Saturday. Sorry Mom! We came back in one piece fine, though. The water wasn’t exactly calm, but it wasn’t that bad. I could see how it would have been more dangerous if the water were rougher. Whatever. All’s well that ends well! We have about an hour of gopro footage to show for it!

…by way of Wyoming! Justin (an actual human angel) and I were in the host van for this day, which was quite the adventure.

I suppose that now I should explain what the host van is and does. When you’re in host van, you don’t run. It’s a 2 person cargo van. In the morning, the host van people pack up everyone’s sh*t (duffels, backpacks, all the food that isn’t going in the vans), goes out and tries to score food donations, drives to that night’s host site, and unloads everyone’s sh*t at the host. Sometimes, the host van will also deliver lunch.

Justin is a homie and extraordinarily trustworhy, but since he’s not 21, I drove all day to Rapid City. I didn’t mind at all, the scenery on the drive was gorgeous. We basically drove southeast out of Montana, through the northeast corner of Wyoming, and then into South Dakota. After two unsuccessful asks (being told a store was permanently closed, and then getting a FIRM no), we found all of our donation needs in the city of Belle Fourche, SD, where they were on the brink of having their 100th iteration of the Belle Fourche roundup, a historical rodeo. This was an absolute cowboy town, it was really quaint. Let me just say, the highs and lows of host van are SO real. Getting told “No” outright is the lowest of lows, from there, the path to despair is but a brief promenade. However, getting a string of “Yes” responses is such a rush; all you can do is ride it out until, like Icarus, you inevitably become too confident and fly too close to the sun. The higher you get, the longer the fall back down to earth.

We had a rest day the following day, July 4th, in Rapid City. Just gonna talk about that here because it was incredibly uneventful (for me). The team went to Mt. Rushmore for the day, but I stayed back. As people know, I’m applying for medical schools throughout this trip which has made things… interesting, on the one hand, and stressful on the other hand. Secondary apps have started to roll in and pile up. I’d heard that Rushmore was underwhelming, so I felt that my time was better spent working on secondaries throughout the day so that I’d be able to enjoy my afternoon and evening, since it was also Rizwan’s birthday.

I think I made the right call, because I got drafts of 3 secondaries done (lol only 26 more!) and was able to take Riz out to a wine bar downtown and have some fun that night. Overall Rapid City was a weird place, 7.3/10, would return for 2 nights but not any longer than that.

Got to peace out of Bozeman and head over to Broadus. John-Hanson and I decided that when discussing population sizes of host cities, we would only refer to them in terms of Austin, NV. Broadus was approximately 2 Austins. On day 17, I was partnered with Mason Atkins and dedicated my miles to Carol Machado (John-Hanson’s mother) and to Ang.

Let me talk a bit about Mason. Mason is from Oxford, Mississippi, and he SOUNDS like it! Major Southern accent, which has made it pretty funny to watch as he interacts with the locals of Montana. He gets the “you’re not from around here, are you?” quite often! Mason went to Auburn and was a star of the drum line there, which is cool as hell. He also blew me away one night by talking about his own mental health. I think that his ability to lead by example and make himself vulnerable allowed the rest of the 4K men to feel comfortable talking about their own mental health. Oh, and he’s one of the team trainers. Pretty cool freakin’ dude.

We ran by one dude’s house and cattle ranch (I guess), only to have his TWO dogs come out to greet us! The man came and retrieved his runaways and told us he recognized us from the news, and that he appreciated what we were doing.

The day was really interesting. Mason and I talked a lot about his Native American heritage, because we ran through two different Indian Reservations. I had never been on a reservation before. We talked to a woman about what we were doing and she told us about her son who killed himself at 28. She explained that suicide is an epidemic nationally, but it’s even worse (somehow) on reservations. As if Native Americans haven’t been through enough! Which brings me to my point: when you read this, think about the land you’re standing on. Odds are, our ancestors did unspeakable things to pry this land away from its rightful owners. Seeing as there’s no chance this country will ever pay reparations under current management, the least we can do is be cognizant of how this country was built. I know it’s 4th of July SZN, but the hard truth is that the foundation of this country was made of dead slaves and dead Native Americans. Just something to reflect upon.

I was featured on the news on the way into Billings, by the way! The guy asked us all who wanted to be interviewed and when no one said anything, I was like “yeah sure I’ll do it!”

John-Hanson and I felt like seeing the locals so we went to a local bar, where we actually got recognized from the news by a patron, who purchased us a drink! I love these small, Austin-like towns. Overall my review on Broadus is pretty positive. 4/5 stars.

Definitely sad to leave Yellowstone, but it was a good day of running through BEAUTIFUL Montana with Aspen. I had the daily dedication and I dedicated our team’s miles to Griffin, a good friend of Hannah Loiselle’s brother who had passed away a day or two prior after a bout with brain cancer. It meant a lot to me to have Griffin written on so many of my teammates’ calves.

The running was great but otherwise unremarkable. Aspen and I crushed it, can’t really say much more than that! I guess one noteworthy thing was that I kept getting brutal nosebleeds on the run. This concerned a lot of people but anyone who knows me knows that this happens all the time. Most importantly: Montana is SO beautiful!

Bozeman was a really cool, but weird, town. It’s like, sort of up and coming but also sort of in the middle of nowhere? It strikes a strange balance, that’s for sure. A few of us went to Bozeman Running Company to ask for donations after our success at Pocatello. The owner wasn’t very friendly or receptive to our requests, unfortunately! I mean, I get it, we’re asking for free stuff. That being said, I expected a little more, I don’t know, enthusiasm about what we’re doing from someone who, in theory, would be an anchor of the local running community. If she had said no, but been a bit more excited about a group of young people running ACROSS THE USA… I think I would have been cool with it.

Anyway, bottom line is that Bozeman is a cool but strange place. Schoch out.

Wow, sorry everybody! I’ve gotten so busy the past week that I’ve for sure been slacking on the blog. Day 14 we had a rest day in West Yellowstone, MT, and it was incredible. One group woke up at 4:30 to go the park and the sane group left at 8:30ish to get into the park at 9:15. We hiked up Mt. Washburn by Dunraven Pass. It was pretty incredible.

One thing that I have to say about Yellowstone is that is absolutely life changing. Seeing the mountains, the grassy fields, the wildlife… it’s life changing. It puts you in awe of the world we get to live in, and gives you a greater appreciation for the delicate balance of life. If you think about what we are actively doing to the world, as humans, by fundamentally changing the climate, then it deeply disturbs you that, in our lifetimes, places like Yellowstone could very well disappear, or at least be transformed beyond recognition. Places like Yellowstone are treasures that not only merit preservation, but necessitate it. Think sustainability in your daily lives AND when you vote in November. That’s my rant for the day.

We heard a lot about how much snow they’ve gotten out here and how unseasonable the winter was, but there’s nothing like actually seeing it. We weren’t sure that we’d be able to make the summit with all the snow and our lack of gear, but we made it! The summit was about 3000m up, so it was some serious elevation and I could definitely feel it.

After we descended Mt. Washburn, we went down to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and took in some splendid views of the falls. This took up pretty much the whole day, so when we got back to West Yellowstone and I paced Ryan for a workout I definitely felt exhausted. He ran really well, especially considering the nearly 7,000 feet of elevation. By the time night fell we were all pretty exhausted, but ready to get up and run to Bozeman, MT the following morning.

I think that this day is the early frontrunner for my favorite day of the whole trip. I was partnered with Jack, our resident Londoner and token foreigner, for the 10 miles. I mean, we hit two national parks today… how can we top that?!

First we ran through the Grand Tetons. The views were just unreal. The way that the Tetons formed resulted in the jagged mountains rising up into the sky without creating any foothills in front of them, so there are these crazy long valleys (where we were running thank GOD) directly adjacent to these intimidating, stark mountains. It’s quite a contrast and it’s really unbelievable. Also we saw a huge herd of bison that was awe inspiring!

We also ran alongside the Snake River, where we had a pretty fun (for me) encounter. We asked a guy to take our picture and he said “ok” with a rather heavy accent. My suspicions were aroused. Then, when he took the picture, he said, “un, deux, trois.” Now, I was certain. I burst into French, asking the guy if he was French or Quebecois. He was so taken aback that I was speaking French, HAH! He kind of stumbled over his words and was just like, “uhm, wow, your French is great, I’m from France……how do you know French?” It felt pretty good. Hopefully I helped to rectify some of America’s public-image issues abroad. After explaining to the man what we were doing for the summer (in French, hell yeah!) he had perhaps the most French reaction of all time and simply said, “Oh, that’s really cool, good luck” before walking away, seemingly exasperated. I think it really only could have been more French if he had puffed a cigarette as he walked away.

I’m done humble-bragging about that. We went to Jackson Lake in Grand Teton Nat’l Park after that. Proud to say that I honored my commitment to Coach Ringwood and I did indeed swim in this body of water! On our way out of Teton and into Yellowstone we stopped on the banks of the Snake River and I was feeling good, so I took another dip. Another body of water down! The Snake River was a bit intimidating, the current was REALLY swift. It was truly an in and out affair. Both bodies of water were glacial as hell, but when else am I going to be out here? Hopefully soon…

We drove through Yellowstone, and stopped by Old Faithful, the geyser that erupts (not sure if that’s the proper term or not but we’re rolling with it!) on the most regular schedule. We only had to hang around about 15 minutes until we saw the real deal. It was phenomenal. Awe-inspiring. But I’m going to talk about Yellowstone much much more in the next post.

We didn’t really fully celebrate Evan’s birthday because we had a 5 AM wake-up the morning after. However, we had a full rest (ie no service event) day in West Yellowstone on Saturday, so all bets were off for Friday night. We were told by locals that Buffalo Bar was the place to be, so we walked on over. Evan showed up and attempted to order a draft beer. I stopped him in his tracks and told the bartender that he’d be having an AMF. If you don’t know what that is… google it, and you’ll have an idea of how our night went from there on out. Gotta say, Evan had a dope birthday! Schoch OUT!

Today’s miles were dedicated to Bill Watson, Caroline Watson’s father, on the first anniversary of his death from gallbladder cancer. Last summer Caroline, one of our directors and my friend, lost both of her parents to cancer in an incredibly short period of time. I have to take a moment to shout out Caroline here because, had I been through what she went through last summer, I think I’d still be in bed. There’s no way I’d be running across the country. We are so, SO lucky to have her leadership and maturity guiding us along our route!

I was partnered with Brenna today and we were cooking with GAS on our legs. We outran the van like 2 or 3 times. This run was really cool. We found an abandoned train early on and took some cool pictures with/on it. Nothing crazy to report about our run into Jackson, other than the fact that Jackson is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been!

This day was also Evan’s 21st birthday. What better place to celebrate than Jackson?! We took him out to the Silver Dollar, a cowboy type bar that was awesome. They had live music that rocked and they had strong drinks, what more could you ask for? I got to try some local brews and a local whiskey (y’know, because cowboys) which was fun, and Evan had a responsible buzz going. Might have spent a little more money than I planned to, but it was so worth it.

When we got back to the host I was able to convince everyone who came back with us to sleep outside with me and holy cow, the stars… it’s just DIFFERENT out here! I used to think that the stars in PA where Cait and I would camp were beautiful but man it’s a different game out West.

Keeping this post short, again, because I’m REALLY tired and I want to catch up, but the bottom line is that this was an emotional day for Caroline, and for all of us who care so much for Caroline. It seemed like the whole team was here for her to pick her up on a tough day, and it felt good to be a part of that. We love you Caroline and you ROCK! Schoch out!

Alright, in keeping with previous posts, I’m going to be keeping this one short because, in keeping with previous patterns, I’m still up at 11:15 and have to wake up at 4:45 AM! Joy!

Alright so for Day 11 we had a 12 mile day and I was partnered with THE Ally Rising. Ally is super cool and absolutely hilarious, our run chats were top notch (at times raunchy) throughout the day. Always a pleasure to run with Ally, because with Ally one often has to stop running to laugh. Crossing the Utah-Idaho border was really cool. Climbing the Idaho sign was perhaps cooler.

I would be remiss to talk about day 11 without mentioning our dedication for the day! As some may know, I’m not the only Tyler on Team Boston. When I first found that out, I’m not going to lie, I was pretty pissed. I love being the only Tyler in the group. I definitely felt threatened. But then I met Tyler Berge, who is an absolute RAY of light in this dark world in which we live! Tyler is affectionately known as Girl-ler, Lady-ler, She-ler, and Femme-ler, being that she is the female Tyler (of course, I’m known as Guy-ler, Mister-ler, He-ler, and Masc-ler).

Anyway I’m getting distracted, as I am wont to do. The point of this story is that Tyler’s younger sister, Tatum is a Hodgkin’s Lymphoma survivor. I’m not going to go into details about Tatum’s story because you can read about Tyler and Tatum in this awesome newspaper article!!! Tatum had an important appointment on day 11, so we all dedicated our miles to Tatum, Tyler, and the Berge family. Thankfully, the appointment went well and Tatum is still in remission and doing great! I only have older siblings, but I can’t even begin to imagine how Tyler must have felt while Tatum was sick. I’m so so happy that so far Tatum has had a relatively good outcome 🙂

Upon arriving in Pocatello we literally ran over to the Pocatello Running Company before they closed, where we met the shop’s awesome owner, Brian. We told Brian what we were all about and asked if the store would be willing to make a donation of some nutrition products like GU gels and Nuun electrolyte tablets. Brian was honest and told us that we had come at the worst possible time, as the store was moving down the block and inventory was kind of sketchy. Nevertheless, he told us to shoot him an email and come back in the morning and he’d put something together for us! He also offered us half off apparel, so we’re now proudly repping the Pocatello Running Company across the country! The store seemed to have a really awesome community of runners and it reminded me a lot of Falls Road in Baltimore.

Ok, that’s all for the moment as I really need to catch up! Sorry for the lack of posting, everybody. We’ve been doing so many awesome things that I want to make the most of my time out here and, frankly, I can blog any time! Schoch out!