Have you ever kept moving because stopping felt more dangerous than going? Pat knew that feeling better than most. He filled his life with travel and sport and constant motion, not because he loved being busy, but because stillness was where his hardest thoughts lived.
Then on an ordinary foggy morning, a wave put him face-first into a sandbar at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. He broke his neck. He stopped breathing in the water. And somewhere between almost dying and being pulled back to shore by his friend John,...
Have you ever kept moving because stopping felt more dangerous than going? Pat knew that feeling better than most. He filled his life with travel and sport and constant motion, not because he loved being busy, but because stillness was where his hardest thoughts lived.
Then on an ordinary foggy morning, a wave put him face-first into a sandbar at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. He broke his neck. He stopped breathing in the water. And somewhere between almost dying and being pulled back to shore by his friend John, something in him reorganized completely.
This episode follows Pat from a childhood that taught him to hide what he felt, through years of outrunning himself across more than fifty countries, into a hospital bed where he had to relearn how to move his own foot, and finally into the life he lives now. One built, day by day, on a phrase he still says to himself. Even when it's bad, it's good.
What You'll Hear:
- How a childhood built on toughness taught Pat to hide what he was really feeling
- The accident at Ocean Beach, and the minutes he spent saying goodbye to the people he loved
- What it was like to be rescued, revived, and told his neck was broken
- How he found gratitude inside a body that had to relearn how to walk
- Why he now works with young people who carry the same silence he used to carry
- What it means to finally live in the present instead of always running from it
Guest Bio:
Patrick Yalon is a San Francisco-based deputy probation officer, high school basketball coach, endurance athlete, writer, and the author of the upcoming memoir Still Here. In 2024, he nearly died in a catastrophic surfing accident at Ocean Beach, where he broke his neck, drowned, was revived on the beach, and underwent emergency spinal surgery. What followed was a long and uncertain recovery that forced him to rebuild not only his body, but his identity and sense of purpose.
Since then, Patrick has used endurance, reflection, and writing as part of that rebuilding process, including taking on the Moab 240 ultramarathon. He writes and speaks about trauma, resilience, meaning, and what it means to live fully after nearly losing everything.
iRunFar article: https://www.irunfar.com/still-here-running-the-moab-240-mile-after-a-near-death-surfing-accident
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near death experience, surviving trauma, spinal cord injury recovery, learning to be present, outrunning your feelings, gratitude after tragedy, second chance at life, healing from silence, masculinity and emotion, finding purpose after trauma
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