Meet a man with a powerful addiction — to running. Caleb Daniloff says he believes the sport saved him from addictions that were far worse, and he's written a new book, called Running Ransom Road: Confronting the Past, One Marathon at a Time, about his experiences.
Daniloff has run some familiar marathons — New York and Boston — but he's also been to a place not famous for outdoor running: Moscow.
"The water was rationed, when we were running," Daniloff tells NPR's David Greene. "What happened is that there was also a 10K race, and so, they didn't want the 10K runners drinking up the marathon runners' water, so no one got water until after the 10K ... until after six miles." Farther along, Daniloff passed a water station along the race course offering not water or energy supplements, but black bread, salt, and hot tea — not exactly what marathoners need as they pass the 22nd mile.
Greene and Daniloff met in a more domestic spot — Washington, D.C.'s Hains Point, a grassy spit of land near the Jefferson Memorial. It's a popular place for runners who are getting ready for the Marine Corps Marathon, another race Daniloff has run.
"One of the things that really stands out to me about the Marine Corps Marathon was the number of wounded veterans that were running," Daniloff says. "Young guys with no arms or one leg, or family members who had the iron-on dress portraits of Marines with the birth and death dates on them. There was sort of just this huge feeling of ... there was a lot of damage that had been done, and there was a lot of healing that had taken place ... it's just very nice to see running as a way to sort of move through that."
Allegra Boverman/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Caleb Daniloff is a writer and graduate of Columbia University's creative writing program. Running Ransom Road is his first book.