Testosterone is having a moment. RFK Jr. talks about the president’s testosterone level like it’s some kind of credential. His own assistant secretary of health has been on TRT for a decade and says it’s why he can do his job. Now Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who has built a whole media identity around his workouts, wants to start testing troops for “low T,” men and women both.
Interesting, because that sounds like gender-affirming care, which this administration rails against. But I digress.
Funny thing about Hegseth demanding a standard: The Atlantic just went through his workout videos with military fitness experts. They gave him failing marks. His push-ups don’t go all the way down. His pull-ups turn into kipping. A retired general who used to grade these tests said none of it would have counted. He built his whole persona on standards, but doesn’t meet his own.
That’s a good tell, but I don’t get to leave it there. Pointing at Hegseth, or at the guys in a recent New York Times piece doubling their doses to feel like men again, is too easy. I’ve got my own number.
I train for what I hope will be a fast mile time, and that number can become the exact same trap. Punish the body and get the finish time. Treat aging like an enemy instead of a fact. Compare myself to who I was at 17 or 27, come up short, and let that feeling run the show. That’s not a healthier version of what “Todd” is doing in the Times piece shooting up more T to boost his his testosterone level. It’s the same structure with a different unit.
I wanna be clear: the distinction is not that “running is clean and TRT is dirty.” I’ve stood at that edge myself. And running itself isn’t why I stepped back from the edge. Why I turned back has almost nothing to do with my legs.
Example: This winter I was hurt while training. My instinct was to push through it. Grit your teeth. That’s what manliness looks like, right?
But what actually happened was I backed off. The physical decision was easy, my body was clear about what it needed. The hard part was sitting with what backing off meant about me. That I wasn’t as tough or as good as I wanted to be. That the time I wanted might not happen at all. That I had to make peace with a version of myself that wasn’t hitting the number. None of that happens on a track. It happens in your head and your heart when you’re lying awake at two in the morning.
That’s the actual task, and it isn’t physical and no injection or cream gives it to you. Todd, in the Times piece, gets to a testosterone level of 1,200 and calls it winning. I understand the appeal. Chasing a number is easier than doing that other work. A number gives you something to point to, and no uncomfortable questions. Todd can point at his T level and say look, objectively, I am winning.
There’s no chart for the other thing. Nobody hands you a lab result for sitting with disappointment and dealing with it like a grown ass man instead of running from it.
I’m not past the temptation. I feel the pull toward the number all the time, the same pull Todd feels. The only difference I can point to is that I catch myself reaching for it as a way to avoid something harder, and I make myself do the harder thing instead. That’s not a permanent state. It’s a thing I have to do again basically every time I catch myself. Every day. Forever. Damn, it would be so much easier if I could just get an injection. But I’m not going to reduce myself to that.
Reductive masculinity sells you a number and lets you stop there. What I’m after isn’t a healthier number. It’s noticing the moment you want to substitute a number for the actual reckoning, and choosing the reckoning anyway, even though nobody’s grading it and none of it will ever look good on some social media feed.
Hegseth wants to check the troops for low testosterone. I’d rather he check whether he’s got the guts to sit with a bad result without needing a supplement or a rigged rep count to make it feel okay. I want that for us all.
Mile update: As a result of the injury and emotional work I mentioned above, I decided to postpone my race a few weeks. Initially, I planned to race in July. Well, July ends this weekend. But, lucky for me the track meet series I plan to race in goes on through August. So, right now, sore achilles and all, I plan to race the meets starting next week. I’ve also had a ton of trouble running 800s, 1000s and 1200m in practice. My body just can’t clear lactic acid as fast as it produces it over that distance. I keep crashing and burning after 1000m. So, I’m doing a lot more of that difficult middle distance stuff to see if I can move the needle. It’s been frustrating to drop a dozen 200m repeats (splits from this morning below), know I’ve run 50 miles at respectable paces, but not be physically able to let it rip for one little ol’ mile. But I’m trying. I might have to settle for a 1500, because each week they alternate between the mile and the 1500, but close enough. And nothing says I can’t keep training and find a one-mile race somewhere else or later in the fall.
