Com­mer­cial fish­ing is a man­ic endeav­or, boots-on-deck busy when we’re in ‘em, and plen­ty of book devour­ing down­time when we’re not. “You should post some reviews of what you’re read­ing,” Cap’n J’s mom urged. Sound­ed like a good idea. There’s an abun­dance of beau­ti­ful­ly-writ­ten Alaskana and nau­ti­cal tales, gen­res that might appeal to Hooked’s audi­ence, that I’d like to share with you all. But this inau­gur­al review is devot­ed to some­thing dif­fer­ent, a mem­oir espe­cial­ly close to my heart.

Sec­ond Wind: One Woman’s Midlife Quest to Run Sev­en Marathons on Sev­en Con­ti­nents is sum­ma­rized thus­ly: “The sto­ry of an unlike­ly ath­lete and an unlike­ly hero­ine, a woman edg­ing toward midlife who decides to take on a chal­lenge that stretch­es her way out­side of her com­fort zone. That chal­lenge presents itself when an old friend sug­gests she go for a run to dis­tract her from the grief of her recent divorce. Excit­ed by the clar­i­ty of mind and breath­ing space run­ning offers her, she keeps it up — albeit slow­ly — and she decides to run sev­en marathons on sev­en con­ti­nents; this becomes her vision quest, the thing she turns to dur­ing the ups and downs of a new romance and dur­ing the hard months and years of redefin­ing her­self in the after­math of the very restric­tive, reli­gious-based mar­riage and life she led up until her divorce.”

Let me be very clear: I am not a run­ner.  Uneasy with my body and unwill­ing to exert it in front of oth­ers, I was the kid who spent all of mid­dle school forg­ing notes to get out of gym class. If you’d sug­gest­ed a book about marathons, I’d have shrugged indif­fer­ent­ly. Meh… Not my thing. Then I glanced at a read­ing sched­ule for the local book­store last Novem­ber, and saw that Sec­ond Wind was authored by Cami Ost­man. Her name jumped off the page, and I made imme­di­ate plans to attend the reading.

A decade ear­li­er, Cami and I had worked togeth­er in Seattle’s home­less youth scene. I gained a quick admi­ra­tion for her, a trained ther­a­pist who sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhanced our ser­vices and encir­cled kids and cowork­ers alike with com­pas­sion. She left the neigh­bor­hood a few years before me, leav­ing a deep absence.

So I went to the read­ing. It was a packed house, an evening that show­cased her gifts: fun­ny, reflec­tive, absolute­ly present with her audi­ence. I bought a book and stood in the long line for her auto­graph, fig­ur­ing that even if I wasn’t into “the run­ning thing,” it was cool to sup­port an old colleague.

Turned out, I couldn’t put Sec­ond Wind down. Told with Cami’s sig­na­ture blend of self-effac­ing humor and naked hon­esty, I mar­veled that the nar­ra­tive voice was so rec­og­niz­ably that of the woman I’d known. As wel­com­ing in the writ­ten word as in per­son, she shared a jour­ney unique­ly hers, yet made it com­plete­ly relat­able – even to a sloth­ful non-run­ner like me.

There were life par­al­lels I hadn’t con­sid­ered. “Train­ing for the marathon gives a per­son the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn things about the self that, I would argue, can be learned only through hard phys­i­cal train­ing. How much pain can you take? Can you tol­er­ate being alone? How long can you enter­tain your own thoughts and real­ly be with just your­self? How many times can you repeat the same motion with your body, the same mun­dane activ­i­ty, and still find val­ue in it?”

These are some of the very ques­tions I’ve posed to aspir­ing deck­hands. It’s no coin­ci­dence that boats here boast names like Endurance, Per­se­ver­ance, Tena­cious, Con­stance. Worn smooth as a tide­line peb­ble by our com­plete vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to nature’s whim­sy and anx­ious depen­dence upon our bod­ies’ con­tin­ued alle­giance, my faith is woven from com­mer­cial fishing’s sleep deprived haze. I keep my head down and trudge on to the season’s fin­ish line, car­ried forth on the con­vic­tion that the work will set you free. Not so unlike the faith of the marathon, I learned.

As I found a unique point of con­nec­tion with Cami’s sto­ry, oth­ers will, too. Fit­ness enthu­si­asts will enjoy the race reports, the strug­gles and tri­umphs each marathon presents. Trav­el­ers will con­nect with the glob­al adven­tures and cross-cul­tur­al friend­ships. Those exam­in­ing their belief sys­tems will relate to her quest to craft a spir­i­tu­al iden­ti­ty that empow­ers, rather than restricts, per­son­al growth.

Cami wrote, “ These pages hold not only tales of the races and the trav­els, but sto­ries of inspir­ing, inter­est­ing peo­ple around our globe. I hope that once you are done read­ing, you will want to take a look at the ‘shoulds’ that may hold you cap­tive and that wher­ev­er you have got­ten stuck in your life, you will see a way to break free and find your sec­ond wind.”

And that’s pre­cise­ly the last­ing gift I got from Sec­ond Wind. In awe of my friend’s courage to re-cre­ate her­self, then expose that vul­ner­a­ble jour­ney on paper for oth­ers to learn from, I thought of the years I’d sur­ren­dered, too frozen by fear, self-doubt, and lazi­ness to write the sto­ries that were increas­ing­ly insis­tent about being shared.

Beyond a book rec­om­men­da­tion, this is a post of grat­i­tude. Thank you, Cami, for your sto­ry, and for being such a pow­er­ful men­tor and advo­cate of mine. I wouldn’t have had the courage or com­mit­ment to final­ly dive into this blog or the mem­oir with­out your exam­ple and unyield­ing encouragement.

(You can find Sec­ond Wind through your local book­seller, and learn more about Cami Ostman’s con­tin­u­ing adven­tures through her blog, http://7marathons7continents.com/.)