Everyone knows the saying “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
That’s true for an Ellicott City, Maryland, man who found the going get really tough in 2016, when he lost his wife to cancer, leaving him to raise two children on his own.
He knew he couldn’t stop, since life itself wouldn’t stop. Instead, he kept going.
In 2019, WTOP introduced Phil Pinti as he got ready to run the Marine Corps Marathon. In fact, the ex-Marine runs the ultra marathon every year now that it’s an option.
He says that running has been his savior, and often times his metaphor for life, so it’s no surprise that he’s beginning a new challenge on Friday. He’s running , which is technically 308.6 miles through the southern Arizona desert. He’ll have one week to do it all.
The first question that had to be asked was, why?
“I get asked that a lot,” admitted Pinti. “Why would anyone do anything? I think that we need things in our lives to strive for, to give ourselves motivation. We have perceived limits of our physical strength, emotional strength, our resilience. And I’m looking forward to pushing myself beyond those perceived limitations,” he said.
Pinti said running is what got him through the multitude of emotions that come with becoming a widower at the age of 33. He was feeling things and thinking things that would cause anyone to struggle, but with a four-year-old and a two-year-old at the time, taking care of them would outweigh everything else.
His fears and frustrations would get pounded into the pavement. That was true then, and it’s true with the ups and downs of life today too.
“Sometimes in life, we’re faced with a choice, and it’s not always going to be left or right or right or wrong,” said Pinti. “But we know that we need to do something to get ourselves out of where we currently are. We may not even know what that looks like or what we need to do.”
That’s one reason why he admits the person he was 10-years-ago would think running a 300 plus mile race would be a ridiculous proposition. But when you’re forced to endure challenges that are bigger than your own life, finding and embracing new challenges bigger than life seem easier, and even a bit enjoyable.
“I’m never gonna place at a race,” he admits. “I do it because I like the way that it makes me feel.”
Ever since he started running, Pinti hasn’t stopped. And life hasn’t either. Eventually, things got better too. Today he’s engaged to be married again, and last year he and his fianc茅 Kellie welcomed a baby boy to the world.
“I found myself on a path in life that I’d rather not been on — a pretty lonely or lonesome path,” he said. “But I knew that I didn’t want to — I wasn’t going to stay there.”
Sometimes the going gets tough, uncontrollably tough even. But what Pinti has learned through a period of unimaginable grief and despair is that the limitations, both good and bad, are more mental than people might think.
Not everything is controllable, but how we react to it is, and with the strength of that comes perseverance.
“What’s in your control, take charge of those things,” said Pinti. “Because at the end of the day, whether it’s running or life, we’re the sole person that’s responsible for the outcome.”
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