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When did you start running and why?

I started running when I first met wife. One day she said, “Anyone want to go for a run?” I said, “Yup!” I could barely run an eighth of a mile. I was ashamed as hell. I was 27, and we were both counselors at a camp for people with disabilities. I started running very seriously after that. It wasn’t long after that I did my first race and I enjoyed it so much, after getting over the hump. The first race was a relay marathon in Griffith Park where I ran 5.2 miles to benefit St. John's Hospital and five others did the same. That was in 2004. In 2006, I did the New York City Marathon and just got the bug and have it to this day. I’ve run so many races since.

What was the most exciting part of running the NYC Marathon?

Seeing masses of every age, every ethnicity, engaged in a beautiful, celebratory thing. You see all five boroughs of the city on foot and there are bands along the way. Metal bands in Brooklyn, hip-hop bands in the Bronx. It's just a mobile party and you can only really participate if you worked your behind to the bone to get there. Running the 2006 NYC Marathon [in 4:28] was one of the greatest days of my life, after getting married, seeing my two kids be born, and the day Serena Williams let me smell one of her sports bras.

Does your wife still run, and if so, are you competitive?

My wife still runs. She has two kids under three and is still a beast of a runner. I wouldn't say we're competitive with each other.

Tell me about some of your other races?

I’ve done a lot of trail races in Southern California. I love trail running. I’ve done a lot of half-marathons. Some of my favorites have been obstacle 10-Ks at Camp Pendleton, the Marine base south of L.A., where, matter of fact, my grandparents met as Marines. My wife and I have done their obstacle 10-K. You swim across a river and climb up a mud mountain with Marines shooting hoses at you.

I'm guessing it was just your grandfather who was the Marine?

My grandmother was, in fact, a Marine. She did not deploy, but women could be Marines as of 1943, even though they wouldn't be involved in combat.

That's awesome. I guess if anyone ever said, "Oh yeah? Well, your grandmother wears combat boots!" you had the perfect comeback. Maybe I'm dating myself here.

Ha! No, my mom totally urged me to say that to bullies when I was a kid. No joke.

Do you have any ultras in you?

I don’t think so. Right now, I could do a half-marathon today and enjoy that. But the training required for a marathon displaces aspects of your life and I have two young children, whom I run with regularly in a stroller and I love doing it. But a marathon right now would be difficult having a two-year-old and a seven-month-old, because I like to be around them all the time. They don’t want to go for four-hour training runs. Maybe one day an ultra, but no time soon.

How many miles are you able to get in with your baby stroller?

I only run by time. My magic amount is 55 minutes. I don’t know why. It’s just the perfect amount of time. I have not run more than 55 minutes with the two of them because running with a double jogging stroller is a cross between running and dead lifting. Pushing my kids in a jogging stroller up a big hill is brutal, crazy-hard. I enjoy workouts where you want to throw up, because I’m mentally ill.

Do you ever get recognized?

It’s happened, but not often. Maybe I might see someone tweet after the fact: “Saw sweaty Rob Delaney run by in a yellow outfit looking ridiculous.”

Was there a moment when you first felt like a real runner?

I felt like a real runner after finishing my first race and seeing a flyer on my car for another race and saying, I’m going to do that one, too. I’d gotten such gains fitness-wise that I thought I’m not going to stop.

How many miles a week do you run or how many hours?

Three hours a week, three-and-a-half.

You have a particular persona on Twitter which is different from your longform voice. [Delaney’s memoir, “Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage." was released in September.] What does your runnerly psyche look like?

I don’t listen to music when I run. I just like to think. I definitely write jokes when I run. I love running up hills. Anything to make it harder and more brutal, I’m into. I love to run canyons.

Sounds like there’s some self-punishment going on there.

Definitely. I want it to hurt.

What are you punishing yourself for?

Hmm, I don't know. I just enjoy pushing a double jogging stroller up a hill much like I enjoy standup. There's nowhere to hide. It’s hard, but it’s “good” hard. If you conquer it, you’ve conquered it. No subtlety.

You quit drinking some 12 years ago. Does running factor into your sobriety?

I couldn’t run if I were still drinking. Going for a sober run early in the morning, soaking in the scene, is the antithesis of lying in a piss-soaked bed. Running clears my mind. It’s very physically and spiritually healthy.

Did your running coincide with your getting sober or help you emerge from the bad times?

I got sober in 2002 and started running in 2004. It’s a massive component of my mental health now. It clears the cobwebs, the jets, my digestive system—everything.

Would you say there is an addictive quality to serious running? If so, is that a good or bad thing?

There is an addictive quality to serious running. I'd say it's 75 percent good. You can hurt yourself, you can ignore other parts of your life with it, certainly. I hit it hard the first three years, then settled into roughly a 45-minute run every other day for the six years after that, bringing us to now.

You’ve been open about your struggles with depression. Do you find that running has a mitigating impact there?

Oh, definitely. The runner’s high is real, so in the short term you feel good. In the long term, your heart is working better. Your mind is cleaner. And the mind and body are so intimately connected. If your body is in shape, you’re going to have a better shot at feeling well emotionally, so it definitely combats depression.

Do you remember where you were when you heard about the bombings at the Boston Marathon?

I was in California at my house.

Having grown up around the Boston area, did you experience the incident in any particular way?

To the bombing itself, my reaction was no different from anyone anywhere. But then the shootouts, when they were apprehending the suspects, happened near my sister’s house and the house of one of my best childhood friends. They were hearing all that happen live. The cop that was killed the night the first Tsarnaev brother was killed was a friend of a friend. It felt very real to me because my sister was texting me like, “Jesus Christ, what’s happening?”

This past year, the sport has undergone some significant stress and unwanted attention: the Boston terror attack, the Oscar Pistorius murder case, the Suzy Favor Hamilton call girl scandal, Hurricane Sandy and the backlash against the NYC marathoners. Has your view of running changed at all?

I don’t suppose that is has because it’s a truly ancient thing. If you think about Pheidippides and that story, that’s pretty remarkable, and then how the marathon was made 26.2 miles so they could run past Buckingham Palace. Isn’t it funny when you tell someone, “I did a marathon,” and they say, “Holy mackerel, 26 miles!” And you’re like, “It’s 26.2, don’t forget that point-two.” But throughout history running is probably the most likely to be intruded upon by history both positively and negatively. It’s so physically simple and most people are able to do it even just for a little bit. I think that’s why we appreciate Usain Bolt. You’re not playing tennis generally unless you’re rich, so the most famous player, Rafael Nadal, for example, is obviously a towering, unbelievable, almost untouchable player. But there might be some kid in Haiti, or outside of Johannesburg, who could be better but we’ll never know. But there’s nobody better than Usain Bolt because we can all run.

Running is special. We’ve all done it: well, poorly, focused, in fear, being pursued, toward a goal. It’s just elemental. Running is like fire.

What do you find funny about running?

Involuntary body functions.

Speaking of which, you write in your book about a pretty embarrassing GI moment you had while running. Can you recount that?

I don’t know how I could recount that for a family magazine, but my body did the one thing you probably wouldn’t want it to do. It wasn’t totally involuntary. I got a few seconds of warning. I was in a residential part of Hollywood, in the middle of a 30-minute run at about 6:15 a.m. The ultimate detail is that I had eye contact with another human being while shitting.

When do you know a runner takes himself or herself too seriously?

If they’re not having fun. If it’s interrupting your life. My kids are more important to me than running so I’m not going to palm them off on my wife for fours every weekend, and say, “Whatever, I gotta run,” and you leave her with two tiny kids without assistance. A person who damages their own relationships for running, which is a real thing I’ve seen.

You talked about writing jokes while running. How does running influence your creative process?

You want to have free flow in your head and your heart if you’re making stuff for yourself or for others to consume, if you’re doing it at the craftsman level, which is to say, whether you like to or not, it’s a really good idea to have your arteries and synapses in your mind flowing properly. So running just clears those passages so information and inspiration can flow more freely. So it’s very important to me to run.

Can you give an example of a joke you wrote or tweet you composed while running?

Sometimes I’ll write absurd fitness tweets when I run, about pumping iron or running up a hill in a mighty fashion, powered by my oaken thighs. That’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

What does running allow you to escape?

Monotony. Pain. Fear. Sadness. Depression.

What does it allow you to embrace about yourself?

Commitment, health, happiness. That’s one thing I like about races is I like to set a goal and achieve it, gradually over time, because you cannot fake it.

Any nagging injuries you’ve had to contend with?

Nothing serious. In the beginning, before I developed a healthy running technique with my footfalls and all that, I would get shin splints. For me it’s best not run every day, but every other day. That pretty much took care of it. Getting the right shoes, increasing the frequency of footfalls and not going down hard on my heels, that knocked ’em right out.

How do you measure your success as a runner?

Probably by: am I doing it all the time? That’s my main thing, by the consistency by which I’m doing it, 4 to 5 days a week. I have chosen to try and excel and work very, very hard in a different area, not that a person can’t be very good at multiple things, but at 36 having never competed in the Olympics that’s not likely to happen for me. It’s close, but we could round down to impossible; and so success—it’s consistency and enjoyment. Am I still having fun?

Are you careful about what you eat?

I’m 36 and really do have to watch what I eat which I resent tremendously and it makes me very angry that I have to focus on what I eat. I’m angry at running because it doesn’t allow me to eat whatever I want. That’s the one thing about running that is bad and not good. No free pass.

Where are some of the cooler places you’ve run?

I have run the woods of western North Carolina a fair amount, all over the North Shore of Massachusetts, very beautiful stuff there. I ran in Tallahassee and almost sweat to death. I’ve run on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Ran around Centennial Park in Nashville a few weeks ago. And, of course, all over Southern California. In Paris, they took a viaduct and built a park over it and it connects to a bunch of other parks (the Promenade plantée). Last time I was in Paris, I ran on that like five times. It was awesome.

Do you have any desire to try barefoot running or Vibrams?

Well, barefoot running is fine, but the toe shoes, no that—even if that’s better for your feet, which it really might be, naw, that can’t happen. I once did a show where the host was wearing Vibrams. My set became all about how you can’t do that.

What did you say?

I was like, In God’s name, man, you’re on a stage, there are lights on you. Have you no shame? Stuff like that.

Are you into gadgets and gear?

Couldn’t care less. I’m a Brooks brand loyalist though. I love their shoes.

What advice would you give a newbie runner?

Get fitted for the right shoes. That actually matters. At first, just run every other day. In the beginning, walk breaks can be helpful. You’d think it’s contradictory, but I do believe if you do the walk break here and there, you will be able to finish faster, paradoxically.

When you’re running races, do you take note of the inspirational spectator signs?

Actually, I had a bizarre ritual when I was training for the NYC Marathon. There was a stop sign that I would pass twice and what I would do is run around it in a circle and point at it and say, “I am tenacity.” Just me saying symbolically: “I don’t pay attention to stop signs. I just go.” I told a friend about that and when I did the NYC Marathon, I came around the corner and she was holding a sign that read “I Am Tenacity.” That made me very happy.

What kind of sign would your family make up for you?

It would probably involve the word “beef.” Because I don’t know why I associate beef with fitness, I just enjoy the phrase.

Okay, speed round: Solo runner or with a group?

Solo.

Water or Gatorade?

Water.

More likely to pass or be passed?

Pass.

Morning, afternoon, or evening?

Evening.

My most essential running equipment is…

The shoes.

The perfect running weather is…

Cool, with scattered clouds.

The difference between running and stand-up is…

Running is easier than stand-up comedy by many, many multiples.

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