Oh, I know, Coros…believe me, I know…
Unpacking Movember: What I Learned Grinding Through 510 km Last Month
Three days after finishing my Movember project, I still do not really know what the month means. My body is relieved to not be dragged out the door for another ten to twenty kilometres. My mind is quieter but not settled. My emotions feel like someone shuffled all the pages in the book and forgot to number them. There is no obvious lesson sitting neatly at the top of the pile. No triumphant moment of clarity. No satisfying sense of completion.
What I know is that I covered 510.42 km in November. What I also know is that I spent most of the month emotionally tender and physically exhausted, with pockets of pride, fear, doubt and stubborn resolve all wrestling for position. I know I raised money for a cause that matters deeply to me, yet I did not hit the number I had set for myself. I know I shared more of myself publicly than I ever have in my entire life, and that I am still not sure whether that was brave or foolish or simply necessary.
So this is not a tidy wrap-up. It is an unpacking. A look at a month that asked more of me than I expected, offered less certainty than I hoped for, and left me with questions I am still sitting with.
Sometimes the most honest thing you can say at the end of a journey is that you are still figuring out what the journey meant.
This is my attempt to do that.
Why I Took This On
The seed for this project was planted long before November. I had been following Fergus Crawley on YouTube for a while, drawn to him initially because of his hybrid athlete work and the epic moustache in his YouTube thumbnail image. As I watched more of his content, I found myself pulled into the deeper parts of his story. His openness about his mental health struggles, including an attempted suicide in his past, created a kind of gravitational pull. There was something in his honesty that resonated. It helped me feel seen in some of the darker parts of my own history.
When he spoke about his previous Movember fundraiser and how it intersected with his recovery, the idea lodged itself in my mind. Movember was not just about moustaches. It was also about mental health, suicide prevention and starting conversations men rarely start on their own. It was about naming the things I had spent much of my life trying not to name.
My own battles with depression are woven through a lot of my story. I spoke about some of that in The Mask Men Wear, and I touched on more of it in The Cost of Silence. Alongside that lived experience, I have watched the people closest to me struggle. Friends. Clients. Family. People who fought back from the edge. People who never fully made it back. Men and women whose pain shaped the way I see the world, even when their stories will never appear in a public-facing article.
Then there is my stepdad, Glen, who battled prostate cancer for decades with the sort of grit that humbles you just to witness it. Movember’s work touches that side of men’s health too, and honouring him was part of this as well.
Layer all of that on top of the rising tide of toxic masculinity in recent years, the Tate-and-Peterson flavour of online influence, and the way it intersects with political extremism and exclusionary rhetoric, and I felt pulled towards doing something visible. Something that countered that narrative with a quieter, steadier version of masculinity. One that is capable, compassionate and not built on domination or posturing.
If I was going to talk publicly about what I believe healthy masculinity looks like, I needed to put some skin in the game. I needed something that demanded effort, not just words.
That is what Move for Movember became for me. A container. A structure. A commitment to movement in every sense of the word.
Of course, I also hoped it might bring some awareness to what I do professionally. I am not ashamed to say that. Fergus has driven a lot of good into the world through Omnia Performance. Seeing someone do that with integrity helped me imagine that maybe I could too. But that was never the main reason for doing this. It was just a thread woven into the edges.
Why I Chose 300 km, and Why 600 Whispered to Me Anyway
The official Movember target is to move 60 km to represent the sixty men lost to suicide every hour globally. Sixty kilometres would have been too easy for me. It would not have created a meaningful challenge or required any real discipline. So I chose 300 km instead, which meant averaging ten kilometres every day. That felt significant. It felt like something that required intention and daily commitment.
But then the idea of 600 km began to circle in my head. Not publicly, at first. Quietly. Almost tauntingly. Six hundred kilometres would clearly be out of reach for someone like me. I am not built like an endurance athlete. I am five foot seven and nearly two hundred pounds. Everything about my biomechanics screams strength sports, not long-distance running. But I have always been able to suffer. Not in a self-destructive way, but in the sense that I can stay in hard things for a very long time. I can keep moving forward when I probably should not. I can endure.
Running has been the one thing that has continued to “work” for me over the past few difficult years. While my business has struggled, while my confidence has taken repeated hits, while life has thrown curveballs from every angle, running has been the only space where I could still progress and see tangible proof of forward momentum. It became one of the few things I could rely on when everything else felt unstable.
So yes, the ego latched onto that. It suggested that maybe 600 km was the real goal. Something audacious. Something borderline unreasonable. Something that would push me into that familiar space of suffering where I could finally feel like I had earned the right to say I had done something meaningful.
All of that was wrapped up in the number before November even began.
The First Week: When Reality Arrived and Took a Seat
On the first day of the month, I went out the door for a thirty kilometre run with a bit too much confidence in my legs and not nearly enough food in my stomach. That run devolved into a slow-motion wreck by the last eleven kilometres. Cramping. Depletion. Frustration. My Strava caption said it all. I had made poor fuelling decisions and paid for it.
It was the first clear sign that the 600 km dream was not going to survive contact with reality.
The physical blow landed early, but the emotional one came from a different direction. The first major article of the month was The Mask Men Wear. It required me to be open about parts of my life I have kept quiet for a long time. Putting those words out publicly was harder than I expected. I knew it would feel vulnerable, but I did not anticipate the surge of panic and fear that came with it. The fear of being judged. Of oversharing. Of being too much. Of being seen more clearly than I was comfortable with.
That combination of physical struggle and emotional exposure created a bit of a wobble in the first week. Thankfully I knew the following weekend I would be running a marathon distance with my friend Julia, and I had been excited about that for months. That anticipation helped stabilise me. Sharing hard miles with someone else often does.
Gorgeous conditions for Julia’s first marathon!
Week Two: Pain, Doubt and the Heavy Cost of Honesty
The marathon with Julia was a highlight. Hard, yes, but meaningful. She supported me during the Solstice Run earlier this year, and this was my chance to return the favour. Running alongside someone who understands the grind makes things feel lighter, even when the miles are long.
Unfortunately, that was also the day my knee issue flared up again. Burning pain along the inside of the joint. Moments where my leg would not fully extend. The sensation was familiar because I had dealt with it during ultra training in 2024 and prepping for my Solstice Run in 2025. I had always assumed it was simply mileage accumulation, but whatever the cause, the impact was the same. Pain. Doubt. Frustration. And this time, a creeping fear that it might derail the entire project.
I decided to alternate walking and running days to manage the pain. That adjustment meant the 600 km goal was gone. I set my sights on 450 km instead and held onto a thin hope that I might still push to 500 if things improved.
Emotionally, the week took another hit with the article The Cost of Silence. Writing that piece drained me. Talking openly about the masculine urge to isolate, suppress and soldier on hit close to home. I had lived that pattern for years. Naming it publicly was heavier than I expected. It left me a bit raw and fragile going into the middle of the month.
The combination of pain, failure to meet my own expectations, and the emotional weight of the writing left me genuinely worried that I might not finish what I had committed to.
The Tiny Breakthrough That Kept the Whole Thing Alive
Late in the second week, something shifted. I noticed that the knee pain did not flare when I walked in my Xero 360 shoes, but it fired almost instantly when I wore my road running shoes. That sparked a small investigation. I tested my Altra Lone Peak trail shoes and found the pain stayed mostly dormant even when running.
Looking back, I realised that both previous times the knee issue had appeared, I had also been putting heavy mileage on that same model of road shoe. The pattern clicked into place. Maybe the shoe was the problem. Maybe it was not my biomechanics or the mileage. Maybe the bouncy midsole or the five millimetre drop were irritating something that the zero-drop shoes were not.
The relief of that discovery was huge. It broke through the fog of frustration just enough to give me hope that I could still complete the project. I did not want to destroy the tread on my Lone Peaks with hundreds of kilometres of road mileage left, so I bought a pair of Altra Escalante 4’s to experiment with. They ended up working beautifully. The knee settled. The pain eased. And I felt like I had been given a second chance at the physical side of the challenge.
Sometimes progress in life comes from the big heroic pushes. Sometimes it comes from switching your shoes.
Grey day on the Rotary Trail for a half-marathon with Steve to start week 3.
Week Three: A Physical Lift and the Hardest Writing I Did All Month
The third week started strong. Daily running felt manageable again. My knee was calmer. My confidence returned bit by bit. Physically, things were looking up.
Emotionally, this was the week that nearly broke me.
The Mindset Monday article Raising Better Men was the most difficult piece I have ever written. By far. It forced me to confront fears I usually keep buried. Fears about fatherhood. Fears about failing professionally. Fears about not living up to the men I admire. Fears about what kind of example I am really setting. Even now, I feel my eyes well up when I revisit that piece.
Writing that kind of truth takes something out of you. It demands a lot of emotional energy to name the places where you feel inadequate or ashamed. I do not think people always realise that when they read a finished article. The words feel tidy on the page, but they are not tidy when you are writing them. They are messy and heavy and intimate.
By the end of that week, the physical grind and the emotional heaviness had merged. I was exhausted in every possible way but still had a week to go.
Week Four: The Downward Spiral to Crying in McDonald’s
The fourth week felt heavy right from the start. The accumulated fatigue was no longer just in my legs, it had settled into my bones and into my head. Every run felt like wading through wet cement. I was close enough to 500 km that it felt wrong to back off, yet far enough away that the prospect of what it would take to get the over 156 km I still needed in that last week sat on my shoulders like extra weight. I knew what was required. Long days. Big distances. No missed sessions. The pressure was entirely self-imposed, yet it felt very real. I had told people I was going to do this. I had written about it. I had turned it into a public promise. That promise was now dragging behind me like a loaded sled.
I woke up on Friday, November 28, to one of the most beautiful days of the entire month. The sun was out. The temperature was perfect. The sort of day runners dream of in late November. It should have lifted my spirits. Instead, I dreaded putting on my shoes. I felt empty. Drained. Mentally foggy. My legs felt like they were filled with sand. I had no breakfast because my stomach felt sour. I procrastinated getting out the door far longer than I should have.
My plan was to break the run into two parts. I left the house intending to run without my vest, then grabbed it at the last second in case things improved enough to attempt the whole thing in one go.
They did not improve.
I shuffled my way through the first loop, ignoring the pace on my watch. The weather was stunning, yet I somehow turned that into ammunition against myself. I chastised myself for being ungrateful, for living in a beautiful part of the world and not appreciating it. I stopped a few times to take photos, going through the motions of what I normally enjoy. I even forced myself into a brief Facebook Live video to try to manufacture some sense of purpose or positivity.
It did not work.
Thirteen kilometres in, I reached McDonald’s and decided to stop for food. My hope was that eating something might settle my stomach and give me the energy to finish the day’s distance. I sat there with a hash brown in one hand, barely tasting it, and then my phone buzzed. It was a message from my youngest, Kira, who is away at university in Ontario.
Kira:
Crazy blizzard here. Cozy inside today
Me:
(Sent a picture from my run)
This is today here! Taking a McBreakfast break at 13 km of today’s run. Aiming for 30+
Kira:
Crazy. Have a good time dad
Me:
Really struggling today
Kira:
You’ve got this dad, just head down and lock in
Me:
And now I’m sitting here crying in McDonald’s
Kira:
Aw dad, are you okay? Do you need to call?
Me:
Nah, just SO tired, and it seems so pointless but I can’t stop so close to the end.
Kira:
It’s not pointless dad, I am so proud of you for your dedication to your goals. If anyone can handle this it’s my dad, I know you can do this.
Do you feel like you need to stop for your safety? If that’s the case then please do take a rest and be gentle. Don’t break anything!
Me:
No, I’m totally fine, just tired
Kira:
Don’t let tired stop you from your goals. It’s hard and it sucks, and yet you know you can 100 percent overcome this. Keep doing what you always do dad, lock in and get it done
Me:
Oh, it’s getting done. Zero doubt of that. But I’m barely halfway to my fundraising target, and despite all my efforts, it’s not reaching enough people to be meaningful for the cause or to have a meaningful impact on my business. The only point to it now is just blind stubbornness. You know that’s enough for me to finish it, it just sucks that it’s not more. Feels like the story of my life right now (professionally and athletically).
On the other hand, I have you guys (you kids and Mum) that I am super proud of and thankful for.
Kira:
You’ve got it dad. It is impactful, it shows people that you show up and get it done. It shows your commitment to what you say you will do and shows that you follow through. Blind stubbornness is a great motivator, but so is staying committed to a goal and seeing it through. You’ve got this.
Super proud of you and thankful for you dad. Genuinely you are one of my biggest motivators because I see how you can power through uncomfortable scenarios, and it makes me feel like I can do that too. Love you dad
That exchange cracked something open. The moment those messages landed, the emotional wall I had been holding up all morning collapsed. I sat in that McDonald’s with tears streaming down my face, surrounded by strangers, feeling exposed and embarrassed and heartbreakingly tired. The woman sitting a few tables away kept glancing over with a wary look. I cannot blame her. If I saw a grown man crying over a hash brown in public, I would probably worry too.
But the tears were not primarily sadness. They were exhaustion and frustration and futility tangled together. The belief that the project had become pointless. The belief that I had failed in every metric that mattered. The belief that no matter how hard I worked, personally or professionally, it never seemed to be enough.
Yet even in that painful moment, I texted back that I would finish the run. I told Kira that quitting was not an option. Blind stubbornness has carried me through more than a few hard seasons in life, and it carried me out of that McDonald’s and back onto the road. Slowly. Heavily. But moving.
I finished the day at 32.6 km. Miserable. Empty. Ashamed to admit any of it out loud. When Raina asked how it went, I defaulted to the safe surface answer. “So tired. Ready to be done.” I told the world a similar version the next day.
This was November 28 here in Abbotsford!
The Last Two Days: A Brilliant Flash and a Quiet Finish
Saturday surprised me. Despite the emotional storm the day before, my legs delivered one of the best performances I have ever put down. I set personal records at 5 km, 10 km and 15 km on the way to finishing twenty five kilometres for the day. For a brief moment, I felt the spark of satisfaction and possibility again. That little spark faded quickly, swallowed up by the lingering narrative of pointlessness, but it was there.
Sunday was calmer. I spent a large portion of the seventeen kilometre run with my friend Steve, who has been a companion on many miles over the past couple years. Running with someone always steadies me. We chatted. We moved. I ticked past both 500 km and then 510 km. That number felt neat in my head because it matched my age in ten kilometre increments. The symmetry appealed to me. I do not know why.
I finished the month quietly. No big celebration. No emotional high. Just a tired man walking home after a long run, unsure what to make of the whole thing. A sad coda to a month’s hard work.
Was It Worth It?
Several people have asked whether this whole thing was worth it. I do not have a clean answer yet.
On paper, raising $1,716 for Movember is good. It will help fund research and support programmes that genuinely matter. I am proud of every dollar that was donated. But I did not hit $2,500. I fell short of that goal.
I covered more than 510 km. That is a meaningful number. But I fell far short of the ambitious 600 km I had quietly aimed for. Even the revised 500 km goal did not bring the sense of achievement I expected.
I wrote openly and vulnerably every week. A few clients told me they appreciated the articles, and that means a lot. But I do not know how far the message travelled. I do not know how much impact it really had.
And professionally, I did not see a clear uptick in interest in what I offer. I had hoped this month might create some momentum or visibility. It did not.
So when I look at the project in its entirety, I am left with an uncomfortable mixture of pride, disappointment and confusion. I am grateful for what I accomplished, yet simultaneously unsure whether it mattered.
Sometimes we look for meaning in our achievements. Sometimes the meaning does not land on schedule.
Right now, I am still waiting.
The Questions I Am Still Sitting With
Doing something this physically demanding exposes all the emotional cracks that usually stay hidden under routine. It forces you to confront the stories you tell yourself about who you are, what you can handle, what you are worth and what you contribute.
By the end of the month, I had to admit that I am not sure how to move forward professionally or athletically in a way that feels purposeful. The BTG has been my life for fifteen years, and the last seven of those years have been extraordinarily difficult. This month amplified those questions rather than answered them.
I do not have a strategic plan or tidy conclusion to offer here. I am simply acknowledging the uncertainty. The truth is not always comfortable, but it is still truth.
Maybe the clarity will come later. Maybe it will come when I stop forcing myself to look for it. Maybe this was never meant to be a project with a clean lesson at the end.
What I do know is that I am grateful.
Grateful for my family. Grateful for my health and capability. Grateful for the BTG community that has remained with me through ups and downs.
Grateful for the people who joined me for kilometres this month, including my Super-Wifey (Raina), Steve, Julia, Tanya and Alyssa.
Grateful for every person who donated, listed here in the order they contributed:
My Mum
Sherida
My niece, Caylie
Cheryl and Paul
The mysterious anonymous supporter
Tanya
Alyssa
Guy and Sandy
My Dad
Dixie
Steve
Brad
Your support meant more than I can express.
If nothing else, the gratitude is real. That has to be enough for now.
The only photo I have of my ridiculously scraggly goatee near the end of the month (and Alyssa smirking at me…LOL)
What Comes Next
I do not have a grand revelation to close this article. No grand takeaway. No heroic message about triumph. The truth is simpler than that. I am tired. I am grateful. I am unsure. I am proud of parts of what I did and disappointed in others. I am sitting with questions about my future. And I am still trying to make sense of a month that asked a lot of me without giving clear answers in return.
Sometimes you finish a journey and understand immediately why it mattered. Other times, you finish a journey and realise the meaning is still somewhere on the trail behind you and you might need to walk a little further before you find it.
That is where I am.
And whether this month was worth it or not, I showed up. I moved. I spoke. I told the truth. I covered 510.42 km. I raised meaningful funds for a meaningful cause. And I did not quit, even when I cried in a McDonald’s over a hash brown.
For now, that will have to do.
Movember Fundraising
My Movember fundraiser remains open for a couple more weeks if you would like to contribute. We’ve raised $1,716 of my $2,500 dollar goal, and every contribution supports prostate cancer research, testicular cancer initiatives and men’s mental health and suicide prevention.
Facebook Fundraiser:
https://www.facebook.com/donate/4327774960878267/
Movember MoSpace:
https://movember.com/m/15369756?mc=1
You can also read the full Movember article series here: