Meet Ty
From the moment I woke up, every interaction, plan, and movement was measured against the pain it would cause me.
- Tyler Clayton
Everyone around me keeps asking Why are you doing this?
It’s difficult to put into words. Especially why it’s so important to me to risk so much to accomplish something as large as a 7500km where I will be testing myself under pressures that most people can hardly understand. But here goes nothing.
The harsh reality is that as a child and teenager, I watched my mom move through life in agony with this condition. It took years to understand why she would be hit with massive, completely debilitating waves of pain. I remember times when my older brother and I were home without my dad, watching her weep, unable to move, with no idea what to do. We just stood there in shock and watched her suffer.
She lost the ability to work. She became bedridden. She struggled to show up for her own life. I watched my parents’ relationship crumble while they both fought not to emotionally drown. And eventually, I watched my mom become exhausted with her own existence.
Then, at 14, I started having mysterious pain of my own and quickly learned I had the same condition. It’s very difficult to share, and I don’t know if I can fully describe the depth of hopelessness I felt as a teenager and young adult. The culmination of what I saw growing up happen to my mother. What problems it created for my parents. The emotional toll it had on our family. Having my own body be in pain every day and have it progressively worsen. Having doctors and specialists tell me this was my reality forever, while looking sad for me. Becoming addicted to the opiates I was prescribed. Losing the ability to focus on goals, direction, or a future.
Every single interaction. Every plan I made. Every movement, from the moment I woke up, had to be weighed and measured against how much pain I would be causing myself. The list of challenges was agonizingly long. It consumed my entire life.
Like the inverse of having cancer and fighting to stay alive, as morbid as it sounds, I struggled to see why my life was worth living. Where my peers saw dreams, relationships, or even a simple future, I saw only pain. Physically and emotionally. For myself and for anyone who got close to me. For about 3 years, I consistently found myself face to face with suicide.
For those years, when I sat alone, I would always gravitate to sitting in front of a computer searching for a role model. I desperately wanted to see someone. Some thing, anything, that proved that someone as broken as me could overcome the physical and psychological weight of this condition. But there was no one. All I ever found were images of hunched, deformed backs, forums filled with despair, and stories of unbearable pain and medication side effects.
After I had a psychological, drug induced, manic episode at the age of 20, I realized I had to stop looking for hope and start trying to create it for myself. Because no one was coming. Nothing was going to change. And over the past 15 years, I’ve thrown everything I’ve had at my health and kept pushing myself. I’ve messily progressed to the point that I didn’t think was possible. I’m more physically and emotionally capable than I could have dreamed. And as I’ve been on this path, I’ve kept an eye out every year, still wondering if that person on the internet would show up. And every year, I’ve been disappointed that no one has.
In 2024, I evaluated things and realized I felt healthy enough to help others who might be struggling with AS. I started a remote support group and had one-on-one Zoom calls with people all over the world. What I discovered was that my deepest, darkest struggles weren’t unique at all. People of all ages and stages of life shared the same pain, and nearly all of them spoke about suicidal ideation.
After hearing this. And after getting to this point that I have desperately been pushing to get to for so many years… I realized maybe I needed to try and be that role model that I have always looked for. And to be honest, I don’t think I could live happily throughout my life with success I’ve found, if I didn’t try.
So I hired coaches, sold my business, drained my savings, bought a pile of running shoes, and started training, with no way of knowing if my body could tolerate training like a semi-professional athlete. Somehow, I’ve been able to endure it.
As I go through this attempt to run from the Arctic to the Baja, what I want people with this condition to see throughout this expedition is someone ordinary. A down-to-earth goof they can recognize themselves in. Someone who proves you don’t need to be aggressive, militaristic, or extreme to be exceptionally tough and survive incredibly hard circumstances.
With that being said. This isn’t a pity tour for people with arthritis. It’s the opposite. It acknowledges the reality of being afflicted with it, then shines as bright a light as possible on how to succeed with chronic illness.
I’ll be sharing my story across North America in schools and rehab facilities, not just to explain Ankylosing Spondylitis, but to teach how I overcame what I was burdened with. How I had to generate my own hope. Change how I had to think. Build resilience at my weakest points. Push through tremendous physical and psychological discomfort. And to help others, particularly our youth, how to carve a path when they feel alone, misunderstood, or without guidance.
My goal during these talks is to briefly educate, then provide a roadmap. Actionable steps to manage and succeed through overwhelming challenges, whether people are facing them now or will inevitably face them later. I want to validate deep suffering, especially for young people, while leaving them feeling more prepared and hopeful about their futures.
The reason why I want to raise $1 million for arthritis research is because as much as I think this run can help inspire individuals, they are the ones chasing a cure. The medications they’ve developed are changing lives. They give functional hope at scale. And I want to pour as much gasoline on that fire as possible.
