Reclaiming race weekend: one man's journey back from the edge

John Shep was 6'1" and weighed 135 pounds when he collapsed in a bathroom at the Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend Expo in May 2007. His head struck the floor hard. The fall could have killed him. For years, it marked the lowest point of a man quietly drowning in an eating disorder and substance abuse.

"I was just slowly killing myself, to be honest," Shep said in a recent interview.

The collapse was catastrophic but clarifying. It forced a reckoning Shep had been avoiding for years. In the years that followed, he rebuilt himself—not quickly, not in the way recovery is often framed in motivational narratives, but steadily, with professional help, community support, and an almost stubborn refusal to return to the person he'd been.

Now, nearly two decades later, Shep is set to run the Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend—not as a spectator, not as expo staff managing logistics from the sidelines, but as a registered participant crossing the finish line on Queen Elizabeth Driveway.

The symbolism isn't lost on him. The event that witnessed his collapse is now the stage for his recovery.

Speaking about his journey, Shep is matter-of-fact rather than triumphant. He talks about the eating disorder with clinical precision, the way someone might describe a disease they've studied intensely because they needed to understand it to survive. He describes the substance abuse not as a moral failing but as a coping mechanism—a way to numb the discomfort of a body at war with itself.

The turning point wasn't a single moment but a series of small decisions. Seeking help. Staying in treatment when it felt hopeless. Accepting that recovery wasn't about returning to who he was before—it was about becoming someone new.

Running, he discovered, became part of that reconstruction. It reconnected him with his body not as an object to control or punish, but as an instrument of strength and capability. Training for Race Weekend has given him a concrete goal, a finish line that represents something far larger than athletic achievement.

For the city's running community, Shep's participation carries quiet significance. Race Weekend draws tens of thousands of participants, most running for personal reasons—a timed goal, a fundraiser, the simple pleasure of moving through the city with thousands of others. But Shep's race carries the weight of survival and the hard-won belief that transformation is possible, even from the deepest places.

This weekend, when he crosses the finish line, it won't just be a race result. It'll be a checkpoint on a longer journey—one that began with a collapse on a bathroom floor and has led, improbably, back to the very event that nearly defined the end of his story.