The first run came without much of a plan.
In the months after Justin Britt’s NFL career came to an abrupt end, he would hop on his Peloton bike and churn. The former offensive lineman dropped weight. He tightened his diet. He tried to pedal through the dark cloud hovering over him. Still, something was missing as Britt tried to grasp who he was without football. Who he was without something to chase.
“The more I was out of it, trying to figure out who I was,” he said, “it felt like it wasn’t the way I wanted it to go. It wasn’t the way I wanted it to end.”
Then, on a warm Houston day in June 2023, Britt’s wife suggested he go for a run. Following that advice spawned “an accidental love story,” Britt said, one that creates more peace every time he presses start on his watch’s timer and hits the road.
It just may not have been love at first stride.
“I couldn’t even complete one mile,” he said of that first run in the thick Texas heat, “and I’m about to collapse.”
On Sunday, a little more than two years after those first grueling steps, Britt will take on 26.2 miles as he arrives at the starting line for his first marathon in Chicago. He won’t just be there to finish, either.
“The A-plus goal for Chicago is to run sub-3 (hours), which is averaging under a 7-minutes-a-mile pace,” said Emily Venters, a professional runner who has coached Britt during his months-long training block for the marathon. “That’s just incredible to think he’s doing that, and he’s only been running (long-distance races) for like a year. I’ve just been amazed at how fast he’s getting.”
Britt will chase the clock, but his journey through the streets of the Windy City will represent something deeper. It will celebrate the climb from the darkest moment of his athletic life to what will undoubtedly be one of the brightest.
“Running has been huge for my mental health,” Britt said. “That’s why I stepped away from the game. It had spiraled downhill, and this has spiraled me back up.”
The Seattle Seahawks drafted Britt in the second round of the 2014 NFL Draft. He started in the Super Bowl as a rookie, then developed into one of the league’s top centers while spending six seasons in Seattle. But in 2019, Britt tore his ACL, the first major injury of his career. He rehabbed with an eye on returning for the 2020 season. The Seahawks, though, acquired another interior lineman in that year’s draft and cut Britt the next day. Britt signed with the Houston Texans ahead of the 2021 season after working out on his own in his garage during COVID-19, optimistic about what the next stage of his career would bring.
“I felt stronger than ever, healthier,” Britt said. “I felt like I was 26, 27 again. Then, someone fell on my right knee and tore like 80 percent of my cartilage.”
Britt began having fluid drained from his knee weekly. He spent all of the offseason rehabbing in an attempt to return for the start of the 2022 campaign. The Texans held Britt out of most of training camp and all of the preseason. His first action in months was Week 1 against the Detroit Lions. When he thinks about his 70 snaps at center that day, he does so through the lens of a spectator more than a participant.
“It felt like an out-of-body experience as the game started to go on,” he said. “It was almost like Madden when you’re playing and looking at it from above and just seeing the characters go. A lot of the decisions and quick reactions and things that I was doing, I’ve never done in my career. Whether it was like moving the ball and twitching, I’m just like, ‘Why did I do that?’”
Britt arrived on the sidelines that day and caught an earful from coaches. Being chewed out was nothing new, part of life as a football player. But this was different. The feeling scared him.
“I had never felt so small,” he said.
Britt exited the locker room after the game without even showering. He grabbed his wife without saying anything and went to their car. When the doors closed, Britt cried for what felt like 30 minutes. He returned to the facility the next day as the Texans reviewed the tape of their 20-20 tie against the Lions.
“We took notes, and I can see the coach yelling at me, but I don’t remember pretty much the whole day,” Britt said. “But I still have the notes from the day. So we go home and I’m just sitting in bed. My wife would say I was empty with emotions. She said, ‘What’s wrong?’ As soon as she asked, I just needed her to see me, and I just broke down. I said, ‘I’m not OK.’ ”
Voicing it brought relief. His mind needed him to step away from the game, even if the unknown that waited on the other side was “terrifying,” Britt said. Sports had always held a central role in his life. He was a standout athlete at Lebanon High School in Missouri. He landed a football scholarship with the University of Missouri as a junior, a disappointment to wrestling coaches who wanted Britt to compete for them after he went undefeated and won a state championship as a senior, often squaring off against heavyweights who were 30 pounds or more heavier.
“A lot of his wins just came from confidence,” said Randy Roark, Britt’s high school wrestling coach. “When he stepped on that mat, he knew he was going to win. There were a lot of matches I wasn’t sure. But he would go into it thinking he had an easy one.”
That first run in Houston, though, didn’t inspire confidence. It bruised the ego. Britt didn’t run again for another nine months. He doesn’t remember exactly what inspired run No. 2, but this time, as he breathed in the more forgiving spring air, something stuck.
“I’ve run pretty much every day since,” he said.
Soon, Britt signed up for his first 5K race. He went out “guns blazing,” and threw up afterward. He was hooked anyway. He was drawn to the jitters at the starting line, the energy the community of runners around him provided. It felt like game day again.
“When you leave a professional sport, I think you always need to have another goal to chase and something you stay competitive at,” said Venters, who also is racing the Chicago Marathon on Sunday. “Running is now that for him.”
Britt kept signing up for races, intoxicated by the environment around them and the opportunity they gave him to push his limits. Richard Sherman, the former star cornerback who was teammates with Britt in Seattle, was back in the Northwest last year to watch his son run the Spokane Speed Games track meet, which featured runners from middle school through adult master’s divisions. Britt was there to build the speed that could help him in longer races.
“I walk in, and he was there running an 800(-meter race),” Sherman said. “It was hilarious. I didn’t know he was there, and I didn’t know he was running at all at that point. … I got to see him run and compete and challenge himself, and it ended up being really, really cool.”
Britt won’t be the first former NFL player to tackle the marathon distance. Former New York Giants star Tiki Barber has run more than a dozen marathons since retiring in 2006. Alan Faneca, the Hall of Fame offensive lineman, ran a marathon in New Orleans on Super Bowl Sunday in 2014, drawn to the “you versus the road, you versus the pain” nature of training. He, too, got sucked in by the buzz that accompanied a big starting line when he went to Las Vegas to support his wife while she ran a half-marathon.
“The whole competitive energy in me, I had just kind of tucked it away and put it in the closet,” said Faneca, who retired in 2010 after 13 decorated seasons in the league, mostly with the Pittsburgh Steelers. “When we got out there and thousands of people are getting all amped up to do this race, I kind of got the energy and the vibe.”
When Britt left football, he said, “It just got quiet.” In running, he has found community. He recently founded “Run the Race,” a group that aims to help other pro athletes make their post-career transitions and address the uncertainty that stage can bring.
“I’d love to grow into a group that is supportive of people who feel that way,” he said. “They step out and, drastic or not, they feel that moment of being alone, and it’s quiet and you don’t know how to transition or what to do. Trying to build that and let that be kind of an expression of what I had to go through. I’d love to eventually have one of my own (race series) where we can travel and go to NFL cities and get these alumni players or current players to come out and cheer on the runners because they’ve spent their lives cheering you on. It’s like, let me introduce you to the community so that whenever you step away, it’s like, ‘We’re here to open our arms.’”
Britt opens his social media feed every day and sees the way that support can be impactful. A handful of former Seahawks teammates like Sherman and DeShawn Shead often post their own workouts on Instagram, tagging each other and offering words of encouragement, a kind of virtual run club.
“The hardest part is the locker room and the camaraderie and the brotherhood that you miss as much as anything,” Sherman said. “That’s our way of connecting with one another and encouraging one another and showing that brotherhood. I don’t think it was anything we planned to do. We just wanted to stay connected and, again, it’s that competitive nature and trying to push ourselves to another level. But Britt’s on an insane pace. I think we’ve given up trying to keep up with Justin.”
Britt laughed recently when thinking about how he viewed running as an offensive lineman.
“I’d always complain about 40-plus-yard sprints,” he said. “I’m like, ‘This isn’t a good play if a lineman is running this far.’ Now, we’re out here running 20 miles in a day and enjoying it.”
On Sunday, Britt will run 26.2 more miles. He’ll chase a better version of himself alongside thousands of new friends all doing the same.
“Finding the running community,” Britt said, “there is no moment of being alone.”