After the September 11, 2001 attacks displaced Gwendolyn Bounds from her lower Manhattan apartment, she found herself in a small Irish pub tacked on to a general store in the Hudson Valley hamlet of Garrison. The pub had its “regulars,” distinctive rituals and a vibe that intrigued Bounds, then a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

What could have been a quirky, one-time experience with Guinans Pub turned into a meaningful season of Bounds’ life. In her 2005 book “Little Chapel on the River: A Pub, a Town and the Search for What Matters Most,” she chronicled how she became a part of the “congregation” at Guinans, learning its language and moving with its rhythms.

The experience transformed her and she moved to the Hudson Valley.

In 2016, shortly before her 45th birthday, Bounds overheard an older man asking a young girl the question children constantly get thrown at them by strangers—“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The question unsettled her.

After a night fixating on it, she realized why. In middle age, she thought, no one gets asked that question anymore.

That revelation sent her down a rabbit hole of midlife-crisis-related questions. The next morning, she began to Google one of them, “What are the hardest things you can do…” which led to a dropdown suggestion, “What are the hardest physical things you can do?”

One of the answers led Bounds on a journey into the world of competitive obstacle course racing (OCR). She chronicles this journey in her latest book, “Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age.”

Her first Spartan race, one of several OCR platforms, was in 2018 at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. Bounds had spent the previous two years, in fits and starts, preparing. In addition to the physical training, she used her skills honed from twenty-plus years in journalism to gather data and stories about the sport.

That carried her to the starting line at Citi Field, where a hype man yelled, “Who’s ready to RACCCCEE?” Then he lowered his voice an octave and intoned, “Today you will embark on a quest like the legends of old.”

Bounds wrote, “I look around to see if people are laughing. They aren’t.”

I became acquainted with Gwendolyn (who goes by Wendy) in 2006 after she visited Waco to promote Little Chapel on the River for a citywide reading initiative. We have remained connected through social media and recently spoke over Zoom about “Not Too Late.” I asked her about that first experience and whether it felt reminiscent of her entering the world of Guinan’s Pub for the first time.

(I have slightly edited portions of our conversation for length and clarity.)

“It occurred to me,” she said, “ that as we age, we stop pushing ourselves toward ‘firsts–’ whether trying something new, like a sport or activity, or even just engaging with a new group of people. We become somewhat caught in this cycle of ‘same.’ Same groups of friends in the same restaurants, in the same conversations, and the same routines.”

“Something powerful happens mentally and sometimes physically when we step out of that cycle. At the Citi Field race, I was an outsider, much like when I first stepped foot in the bar. It was all new. It felt like there was a secret handshake everybody knew except for me. In both cases, they had an ease with the situation that I didn’t have. But there was something mysterious and interesting, where I was both a little fearful, and I also wanted to be a part of it.”

She did more than become part of it. After numerous races around the world, including several age-level podium finishes, Bounds has become an unofficial ambassador for Spartan races. She is now fully enmeshed in its culture, language and rituals.

In “Not Too Late,” Bounds shares her experience of being diagnosed with skin cancer not long after her second Spartan race. After a surgical procedure to remove a lesion, a nurse insisted that Bounds use a wheelchair to leave the hospital.

She writes: “‘I don’t need it,’ I tell them. When the nurse starts to protest, I say firmly, ‘Really, I can walk.’ I’m not entirely sure that’s true. But I don’t want to say what I’m really thinking, which is: I am a Spartan. A Spartan would walk out of the hospital. I don’t say it because it seems like a silly, drug-induced musing, especially from someone who’s only run two races. Still, it’s the first time I attach myself to this new identity…” 

In our interview, I suggested this felt like a plot point in an outsider-to-insider story arc. 

She responded, “When I was in the hospital, it was interesting how quickly this new identity was something I latched onto in order to pull myself out of a difficult time.”

It was a “bridge moment,” she said, when she began to feel connected to the Spartan community, like it was lifting her. 

“That’s the essence of what community can be right,” she said. “When the chips are down and things are hard and you can lean on it.  I was already leaning on it by that moment with the wheelchair, and I had only run two races. Then you flash forward to however many races down the road, it suddenly feels like home.”

She continued, “That was the same thing I felt about Little Chapel on the River. I went from ‘Who are these people?’ and ‘Are they ever going to let me be one of them?’ to ‘This is my home.’”

“I think that is the trajectory people find when they first come to a community. If they stick with it and are willing to embrace the newness and feel a little odd and often out of place for a while, they can eventually have this powerful sense of home.”

I doubt Bounds intended “Not Too Late” to be a field guide to belonging. But amid her descriptions of course obstacles, the latest research on health, aging, and overcoming mental models that keep us stagnant, she offers an invitation to new avenues of home and community.

During much of the book’s timeframe, Bounds was Vice President and Chief Content Officer for Consumer Reports. She now serves in a similar role at SmartNews, a startup platform that seeks better ways for users to receive and consume news.

I asked her about the privileges afforded to her by her career, which allow her to train, travel and compete in OCRs. She didn’t shy away from the question.

“There is certainly privilege in being able to make a decision to invest in yourself,” she told me. “I’m not going to deny or defend it; I’m going to be grateful for it. But movement, which is important for our physical and cognitive health, is available to almost all of us.”

She is beginning conversations with Spartan Races on ways to give those who haven’t had the same privileges and opportunity to run their first race.

“Not Too Late” was released in June and can be purchased wherever books are sold. More information on Gwendolyn Bounds can be found on her website.  

Senior editor at Good Faith Media.