My first impression of Caleb Daniloff is that there is nothing of the Kentucy-Fried-Chicken-bloated, slogging runner he describes himself as early in the book Running Ransom Road.  Daniloff strides into the Commonwealth Avenue coffee shop where we’re meeting, a lean athlete, his solid 8-minute-mile pace evident even in street clothes.  The skin across his cheek bones is taught, a runner’s complexion.

My second impression is that there is not one flicker of the addled addict, the young man desperately living only to bury deeper who he is beneath one more bender, to perhaps scorch his famous father, Nicholas Daniloff, the UPI Moscow correspondent arrested by the KGB in an international incident in the 1980‘s.

 

In his running/recovery memoir, Caleb observes his father almost always from away - from away at boarding school, from the finish line of his father’s own first marathon, from the other side of the glass in the Moscow prison where his father’s being held; the son always sees a small, gentle intellectual with heavy black-rimmmed glasses, an aloof man who assembles life in facts and deadlines, with whom the troubled teenager believes he shares nothing.

In fact, sitting calmly across from me in his denim shirt, gray-blue eyes as direct and examining as lasers behind wire-rimmed specks, his voice surprisingly tentative, Caleb Daniloff seems to be just like that quiet intellectual he had tried so hard with drugs and alcohol not to be.  Caleb courteously asks me if I found the place ok.  Whether it’s speaking of his wife (the relationship for which he became sober) his daughter, or even his parents, the man’s thoughtfulness pulses softly.  It’s easy to see how demons could easily have had their way with this gentle personality.

Running Ransom Road is Daniloff’s Dantean journey through the streets of the cities where addiction ruled him, where, almost always stoned and loaded he did terrible, awful, nasty things to himself and others.  The marathon route is Daniloff’s Virgil.  The exhaustion mile nineteen imparts is the lens through which Daniloff views Boston, Burlington, Mt. Hermon, Moscow and Washington, the cities where he was that other person.

Here’s just one of those loathsome tales:  At his boarding school, after years of warnings from authorities, Daniloff disappeared just before graduation to a motel room to get stoned with who-knows-who, sending the school into a panic search for a missing student, and finally giving them no choice but, on graduation day, to expel him.  Guess who was the commencement speaker? - celebrity journalist, Nicholas Daniloff.

That’s just the beginning; the stories are painful:  barely ever sober at the University of Vermont.  In graduate school at Colombia, waking up alone in his apartment on Tuesday, the last he remembered it had been Friday.

Daniloff says that through the dense fog of gone-ness there was always writing.  He was writing poetry all along.  It shows here in the book.

About mile twenty in Burlington, Daniloff writes, “My spit was so thick I could chew it and my legs felt like frozen sides of beef pummeled by a boxer.”

Back in Vermont, newly sober, he says, “there was a lot of empty space between now and then, and most of the time I felt like a plastic grocery bag skittering across a desolate parking lot.”

It’s a beautiful read of an incredibly bad Holden Caulfield.  But Catcher in the Rye ends before the self-awareness and the honesty.  In Running Ransom Road, Daniloff skewers himself on the honest blade again and again.

Daniloff has written for Vermont Public Radio, NPR, "The Boston Globe" and often in "Runner’s World," where he wrote a piece about his own experience with disordered eating, when a runner takes the numbers game to meals, maniacally counting calories and carbs in the name of lighter and faster.  Daniloff tells of hoping the dirt he is showering off his legs from the morning run will bring him down to the magical 157 pounds, the weight he is sure will allow him to break the 4 hour marathon wall.  He’s always aware that running as “a sobriety tool” is often about trading one addiction for another.

I’m a runner, but that’s the least of why the pages turned in Running Ransom Road;  there’s voyeurism, there’s Schadenfreude - don’t we all like a recovering addict story? -  but mostly I read because Daniloff’s self-examination makes each of his marathons a heartbreaking novella of frailty and hope.

Here’s a favorite pre-race meal from Daniloff.  I’ve made it twice now;  in my house it’s simply a favorite, although I’m sure I run better the next day when this is for dinner. Daniloff likes Costco pesto; I confess I make my own, leaving out the garlic.

 

Pasta Daniloff

serves 4-6

Ingredients

1 package Trader Joe’s apple chicken sausage

1 large clove garlic, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup pesto, or more to taste (Daniloff likes Costco’s brand)

1 pound spaghetti (I used penne)

1 heaping tablespoon salt

Instructions:

Heat a large skillet to medium.  Add the olive oil, and let it warm. Put in the garlic, and toss around until it just begins to brown.

Slice the sausages into 1/2 inch thick disks.  Add to the pan, tossing occasionally until both sides are nicely browned and the garlic is getting crispy.  Daniloff says not to worry if the garlic burns just a little.

Bring a pot of water for the pasta to a boil.  Add the salt, and then add the pasta.  Cook until al dente, approximately 12 minutes, and drain.

Stir in the pesto, and toss well.  Add the sausages and garlic, and toss again.  Serve immediately.