How Hal Jankowski Started Running

How A Hard Conversation Sparked Hal Jankowski’s Running Life

When you see photos of Hal Jankowski grinning on Instagram, it’s easy to think he’s always been “a runner.” That’s not how this story goes.

Hal talks about his running journey as having “two lifetimes.” The first was a brief stretch in college. The second started after a tough talk with his wife, Stacie, when life felt heavy, his body was giving him warning signs, and he needed something to change.

That second lifetime is the one that matters here, because it’s the one that might help another Hal out there whispering, “Can I really do this?”

Hal’s answer is yes. But it took a treadmill, a turkey, a pub run, and one very honest spouse to get there.

Two Lifetimes Of Running

In college, Hal was what he calls “a pretty sedentary guy.” He decided he had to get healthier, dropped a lot of weight, and “put his toes into running.” There weren’t apps or social media coaches back then, just the campus gym, a treadmill, and the occasional 5K at the University of Kentucky.

“I remember thinking I’d run forever one day,” Hal laughs. “I went back later and drove the route. It was like two and a half miles. In my head I’d built it up as this huge thing.”

Then adult life showed up with a laptop and a stack of tax returns.

Hal started his career as a CPA with Deloitte. Busy season hit, long hours piled up, and running slid right off the calendar. Over the next years, weight came back and strange health issues showed up: migraines, numb hands, a racing heart, crushing stress.

“I thought I might be having a heart attack,” he says. “So obviously I did the logical thing and drove myself to the ER. My wife was like, ‘What are you doing, you dummy?’”

It wasn’t his heart. It was anxiety. But nobody had named it yet.

---

ADVERTISEMENT

---

The Conversation That Changed Everything

Looking back, Hal can see the pattern: the numbness, the racing heart, the days he couldn’t bring himself to do anything. The year he spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s on the couch, so shut down he “outright deleted” his Facebook account on a whim just to avoid people.

“I never really had the thought ‘I want to die,’” he says, “but I did think, ‘This would be easier if I just weren’t here.’”

That’s when Stacie stepped in.

“At some point, my wife was like, ‘Dude, something is wrong. You’ve got to go talk to somebody, go figure out what is happening with you because something isn’t right.’”

It wasn’t a soft, cozy conversation. It was hard and confusing. Neither of them had the words for what was going on. All Hal heard at first was, “Something isn’t right.” But that sentence pushed him into action.

He went to his primary care doctor. They ran tests, checked hormones, talked about sleep. When Hal mentioned that his wife had been wearing earplugs for ten years, the doctor gently suggested a sleep study. They adjusted meds. He started therapy.

One session in particular stuck.

“I told my therapist, ‘When I go to work out, something happens.’ She said, ‘That’s your lizard brain. You’re tricking your brain into thinking you’re running away from the thing that’s scaring you.’”

Suddenly the last twenty years made sense. Moving his body didn’t just help his health markers; it gave his mind another way to cope.

“That’s kind of how I really started with this current round of fitness,” Hal says. “Once I addressed my hormone issues and my sleep and started getting active and paying attention to what I ate, I lost like 80 pounds.”

And then, on Thanksgiving 2022, running came back.

From Thanksgiving Treadmill To Finish Lines

Like a lot of folks during COVID, Hal and Stacie had bought a treadmill. It had mostly turned into an expensive laundry rack. On Thanksgiving of 2022, Hal decided to climb on.

“I’d been doing the spin bike,” he says, “but I was like, ‘You know, I used to run. I used to like it. Let’s see what happens.’”

What happened was 29 minutes on a treadmill at a 14:30 pace, with an average heart rate of 163 and a very honest reaction.

“It was terrible,” he laughs. “But I thought, I can do this. And I know I can get better if I put effort into it.”

In January he said the thing that changes everything: “I’m going to train for a 5K.”

“I said it enough that I was like, ‘Okay, now I actually have to do something about it.’”

He used the Nike Run Club plan, looked at other tools, and finally hit “register” for the Flying Pig 5K in Cincinnati. This wasn’t like college. He actually showed up and trained. He crossed the finish line.

That’s where the story of one man’s health project turns into a story about community.

After Pig Weekend, his wife’s cousin spotted him in Costco. They talked about running, and Hal got an invite that changed the direction of his running life.

“Hey, this run group has these pub runs every Tuesday night. Why don’t you come out?”

The Scary First Pub Run (And Why He Went Anyway)

If you’ve ever hovered outside a run club meet-up wondering if you belong, you’ll understand what came next.

“That first pub run was scary,” Hal says. “I only knew my wife’s cousin. My easy pace was about 13 minutes per mile, and I knew I’d be one of the slowest people there.”

So why did he show up anyway?

“It was the invitation,” he says. “It came with a friendly face. And I knew if I wanted to make this more than just about myself, if I wanted to get better, I had to get out of my own head and just do it.”

He stuck to the three-mile route for about a year.

“For a long time I only did the three-mile route because it was the only way I felt like I could get back in a reasonable time and still meet people,” he says. “Three miles used to feel huge. Now I look at double digits and go, ‘Okay, whatever.’”

Community came next. Someone at his pace showed up and introduced him to run-walk intervals and heart-rate training. Hal joined the Tri-State run group. A seven-mile long run turned into a nudge from a friend:

“If you can run seven, you can run 13.”

Hal’s first reaction was what most of us think: That’s almost double. Get out of here.

But he also knew he wasn’t doing it alone, and he had time to build.

“If she had said, ‘You can run 13 next weekend,’ I’d have said no way. But with enough time, I could add those miles. So it made sense.”

He trained through the winter, ran his first half marathon, and then another. He’s done the Flying Pig “three-way with cheese” challenge (mile on Friday, 5K and 10K on Saturday, half marathon on Sunday) and the Detroit half. Now he’s looking at his first full marathon.

“I’ve run six half marathons and that distance a bunch of other times,” he says. “It’s time. I know I can give the time, and I know I have the capability. It’s just time to take that next step.”

How Running Shapes Life Off The Course

Running hasn’t only changed Hal’s training log. It’s changed how he shows up as a husband, dad, and leader at work at the University of Cincinnati.

“I’m a lot more even-keeled now,” he says. “A lot calmer.”

Running, combined with therapy and better medical care, gives him a way to move stress through his body instead of letting it sit there and ferment.

“It helps me channel nervous energy or that heavy, low feeling,” he says. “Depression and anxiety are two sides of the same coin. Having an outlet helps moderate that. I’ve become a lot more tolerable.”

He laughs when he talks about his family’s reaction.

“At the beginning it was kind of like, ‘Oh, you’ve got running,’ with an eye roll. I’d say, ‘Listen, do you want me to be grumpy again?’ Now it’s, ‘Oh, you’ve got running,’ but in a good way.”

At work, the lessons from long runs show up in how he manages people and stress.

“I’m more patient,” he says. “Therapy helped me ask, ‘What can I actually control? What can I influence?’ That’s what I focus on. I can’t control everything other folks will do, but I can control my response.”

The spreadsheet brain still shows up, of course. Hal tracks mileage and intensity in color-coded rows so he can see patterns and prevent injury.

“One summer I looked back and thought, ‘There’s too much red. Not enough easy.’ And sure enough, that’s when I got hurt. So I use the numbers to help me plan, not to boss me around.”

---

ADVERTISEMENT

JOIN THE EVERYDAY ATHLETE CLUBHOUSE AND SAVE 20% ON YOUR NEXT PATH PROJECTS ORDER

---

Advice From Hal: Consistency Over Perfection

For the person reading this and wondering if running or any endurance sport is “for them,” Hal has simple advice.

“It’s consistency over perfection,” he says. “Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good. It’s much better to show up and do what you can.”

Some days that means changing the plan.

“There are times I don’t have it in me to do the full workout,” he says. “But I might have 20 minutes. So maybe it’s a 20-minute run or a 20-minute bike. I still do something. It’s consistency, not constancy.”

He also wants people to understand that progress can be slow, especially if you start without much fitness in the bank.

“I did nothing growing up except for that hot six months in college,” he says. “So I was starting from ground zero. Gains are slow, but when I look back at that first treadmill run and then look at where I am now, I can see it. I can run faster at a lower heart rate for longer. That comes from all the work.”

Most of all, Hal hopes his story helps someone ask for help sooner than he did.

“I really hope people won’t be afraid to ask for help,” he says. “If they’re hurting, or they can’t figure out what’s going on, I want them to feel okay saying, ‘Can someone talk through this with me?’ We don’t talk about how mental health shows up, especially in men. I probably suffered way too long because of that.”

On the running side, the lesson is clear: keep showing up, learn from each race and run, and trust that small steps add up.

“Every run, every race has a lesson,” Hal says. “You can’t get so caught up in always trying to go faster. There’s always something you can improve—distance, pacing, fueling, how you handle conditions. There’s always something to learn.”

And that’s the heart of why he keeps going. Running has given Hal a way to take care of his mind and body, connect with people, and grow into a calmer, more patient version of himself.

Somewhere out there, another person is staring at a treadmill or a run club flyer, wondering if they belong. Hal’s answer is simple: show up, do what you can, and keep coming back.

ADVERTISEMENT