North Central teacher Craig Lee dropped out of high school at 15. Now, he teaches world geography to high school students.
“I never had a teacher that cared, and I thought to myself, just if I’d only ever had that it would have made such a big difference,” Lee said.
The shortcomings of his teachers push Lee to not take his job for granted.
“I get to learn every single day from my students, and I get to play a role in helping kids develop some of their talents, and it’s something that I really enjoy doing,” Lee said.
But the most important lessons he can teach his students wouldn’t come from a map, and they didn’t start in a classroom. They’d start back in his hometown of northwest London where an injury forced him to quit soccer and search for other ways to stay in nature. Lee hit the ground running, and found treatment in the trees.
“What I realized was running for a long time in the woods was like a healing agent. It was like therapy,” Lee said, “I realized it was better than any medicine any doctor had ever prescribed me, and it was right there.”
His exceptional stamina and love for nature allowed Lee to begin to run ultramarathons, any distance that exceeds a standard 26.2 mile marathon. Since then, Lee has become a student of himself.
“I think from doing ultramarathons, there are so many other things I’ve done that I never would have thought I could do, but it’s just learning so much about my mind and how it works that it enables me to kind of do that,” Lee said.
In the 15 years that he’s been running, Lee has completed three 100-mile ultramarathons.
Besides running, Lee spends his free time rock climbing and kayaking. But of course, just kayaking wasn’t enough for Lee. He’s paddled the west fork of the White River by himself, in seven days. He broke the previous record, set by a group of two kayakers, by two days.
“It’s a real challenge, and overcoming that challenge where everything is saying ‘Stop’ is something that really brings me confidence and enables me to learn about myself,” Lee said.
It’s when Lee is at his lowest point that he is able to learn the most about himself, and what he can do.
“It’s usually inevitable that when you run for, say, 24 hours, that your body wants to give up, and your brain is basically saying, ‘Stop, stop, stop.’ Yeah. I love those moments, because when that happens, it’s an opportunity for me to learn things about myself I never knew,” Lee said.
Lee’s lessons of pushing himself past his limits extend past miles. Ultramarathoning helps him show his students that they can overcome big challenges and do a lot more than they think.
“It has taught me that when you get to a moment in a situation where you think you can’t do something, and your mind and your body is saying stop, and it could be losing a friend, losing a family member, that there is a way that you can get past these things,” Lee said.
When not teaching, Lee looks forward to continuing pushing the limits of his mind and body. He is set to run his first 150 mile marathon this upcoming October.
“When you run that distance, it takes a lot of effort. You got to have the right attitude, you have to have a sense of humor, but you have to have self belief and realize that you can overcome it,” Lee said.
