Stephen Tokarski finds balance through running
Describe what running means to you.
I grew up in Montana and started going to road races with my Dad when I was 9 or 10, which led me to joining my school’s Cross Country team when I was in Junior High. Being a teenager was not an easy time for me (is it for anyone?), and running gave me an identity, a little tag to put by my name – “Steve the runner,” which I’ve been able to carry with me ever since. I think that people can go their whole lives without finding something like that, and I feel very lucky to have found it at such an early age.
My Uncle Steve was a runner too, and when my Dad kind of checked out of the whole “being a Dad” thing, I developed a really close relationship with my Uncle that was centered around running. While I was in high school, my Uncle and I would take a road trip once a year to a “big city” to run a half marathon. I’d never really been to anywhere bigger than my hometown, so going to Seattle and Phoenix and Vegas was really cool for me. So I’ve always connected running with an opportunity to explore new places and experience a city in a different way from everyone else.
My wife is also a runner, and it’s a big part of the reason we connected. It’s been a way for us to spend uninterrupted time together and to get the boys out in the fresh air from a very early age. It’s hard to overstate how important it’s been to meet someone who has the same daily priorities as me. We both agree that a day is not complete unless we’ve gotten outside and sweated at least once.
Nowadays, running has an immeasurable stabilizing influence on my life. I’m pretty lucky, but it’s hard to be witness to the world around me and not feel the precarity of everything. It all feels so shaky. So it’s hard to not go through a day without asking some pretty big questions, like, “What kind of world are my kids going to grow up in?” Or, “What level of violence is going to be necessary to dislodge the status quo?” And then there’s the wildfire smoke, the heatwaves, the ongoing global pandemic, the human suffering on display in the streets all around us. It’s this kind of constant vibration of uncertainty, of trying to balance the world that I was told I was going to live in with the one that I’m actually witnessing in front of me. Running is my way of settling those vibrations, of keeping them at a low hum so that I can focus on what’s in front of me – which is, first and foremost, being the best possible Dad I can be.
What's your favorite running memory?
When I was a Senior in high school, we won the boys Class A State Cross Country championship in Montana. I wasn’t the fastest runner on the team, but I was team captain and our middle dude, and even made All-State that year. I was never really fast enough to run at the collegiate level, so that was my last real experience competing as a team.
I’m not one of those people whose best memories are all in high school, but this one’s hard to beat. We worked so hard that year and the preceding years, we out-strategized the team that was supposed to win, and we didn’t know that we had gotten first place until they announced the winners. It was so damned cool! We hooted and hollered and hugged and jumped around so much that one of my teammates got a bloody nose and didn’t feel a damned thing. Pure euphoria.
How did you find out about RCTC?
On a whim last summer, I decided to run the Garlic Fest 10k in North Plains. It was my first organized race since before COVID, and I won! Sort of. I was the first place male, which is not something that happens to me very often, to say the least! But during the race itself, there were three very fast ladies in front of me who were wearing matching singlets, and I was convinced that I was going to catch up to them at some point. But they kept getting farther away and kicked my butt pretty handily. And they were very kind to me when I chatted with them after the race! So I looked up their whole deal and decided to join.
You recently ran a half marathon on a track. Why?
This is a very difficult question to answer. I guess the easiest thing to say is that this is the first time I’ve put together my own training plan for a marathon – and I put the BATH (Bill Aronson Track Half) on it because I ran it last year. The thing is, I’m VERY rigid about sticking to my training calendar – I don't find excuses to change things up at the last minute, even if what I’ve put on the calendar is very stupid. So once it was in the plan, I didn’t have a choice. And goddammit, I did it! And got last place in my age group, just like last year. But it was pretty cool to have so many RCTC folks show up to cheer me on and pace me.
Any goals that you'd like to share?
I’d like to run a PR at Boston, which I know is hard to do! I’m also registered to run the Mt. Hood 50-miler in July. I think finishing that would be a pretty nice feather in my cap. I plan on eating an entire pizza on the way.
Tell us about your job and other hobbies!
Well, first of all, I’m a high school teacher down in Oregon City. I teach history and English. It’s not the easiest profession to be in right now but I’m grateful to be able to be a public servant in a union job, with a whole bunch of dedicated people around me.
As for hobbies, parenting has sidelined a lot of them and running has taken up the space that they used to occupy. When the kids are a little older, I’d love to get back into backpacking, do more camping, and get back to travelling (preferably by train) to different places and exploring the running possibilities that they offer.
How do you balance running with other priorities?
For me, running IS my balance. My kiddos and job take up such a huge chunk of my life, and are fully non-negotiable, and I have to figure out what to do with the remaining 10%. And after 5 years of being a parent, I can say quite simply that there’s absolutely nothing that compares to the satisfaction payout of running a bunch of miles amidst the constant chaos that comes with having two incredibly active little guys in my life.
That being said, I have to fit running around a lot of different things. So I’ve trained myself to be able to run very early and very late, probably more often than most people. So lots of my runs end up being at the ass-crack of dawn or after dinner time. It’s kind of funny how running at night didn’t even seem like an option before I became a parent but now it’s a regular feature of my life. So I’ll go on a run at 8 or 9PM, which probably doesn’t seem “balanced” to a lot of people but feels kind of perfect to me, especially during the summer (crickets are neat). And that first beer tastes so much better after a late night run.