I’ve been running since I was 14. I got started when I found out that you didn’t have to try out for the cross country team and if you went to summer practices you got to go to Myrtle Beach for a weeklong trip with the boys team.

A few years ago, I started calling the most critical voice in my head Tammy. The name didn’t really come from anywhere in particular, just spawned from the recesses of my mind one day when I felt particularly beat up inside.

If you were to look at my Year Compass from around 1994, which I didn’t complete because it didn’t exist, but if it had, I would have said that one of the most influential songs of that year was one by Sammy Kershaw called She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful.

It’s no secret that I suffer from depression, like approximately 280 million of my fellow humans worldwide, but I have noticed that it gained a devoted accomplice in the last couple of years. I personally thought my depression played well enough as a solo act, but it decided that it needed a hype man to really execute a showstopping performance as it aged alongside me.

There are rules.