Born with that mindset, as a young boy, I did sick stuff to myself that earned me a lot of ridicule from my peers, like running around the lake I grew up next to (about a half-mile around) ten times without stopping. My devotion to the without stopping principle was militant.

On occasion, the splitting pain in my sides (a well-documented phenomenon that long-distance runners experience) was so intense that I found myself crying and running simultaneously, unable to see the path before me clearly through the tears in my eyes.

Once, at summer camp, while doing the masochistic running routine, the other children laughed and called me "Forrest Gump," the movie having just come out sometimes recently at that point in the mid-90s.

But I pressed on through the social derision and, at times, searing discomfort.