Character Studies is an INDY series about familiar faces around the Triangle—and the stories you may not know about them.
If you frequently drive through downtown Durham or run around Duke University’s East Campus, you know who Josh Morin is. He’s that guy who runs while punching a ball that’s attached to his head by an elastic string, and the first thing he wants you to know about him is that he’s not crazy or hostile.
Morin feels compelled to say this because upon seeing his routine for the first time, many people react negatively to it. They’ll yell at him from across the street or cuss at him from the open windows of a passing car.
“They’re just insecure,” he said, musing on the source of the animosity. “Or they don’t how to process it. Or they feel like I’m some kind of threat.”
The idea that someone might be intimidated by him made Morin laugh. “I’m 130 pounds,” he said. “My girlfriend’s dog is only 10 pounds less than me.”
Several years before COVID, Instagram’s algorithm took note of Morin’s fondness for Ultimate Fighting Championship videos and began steering him toward ads for reflex balls, which help boxers improve their hand-eye coordination and accuracy. But the reflex balls advertised on social media tend to be overpriced and gimmicky, including unnecessary extras such as a computer chip that counts the number of times a ball’s been hit. Morin buys his on Amazon, where you can get four balls and a headband for less than $15.
No matter their price, all the reflex balls Morin has tried share a similar defect—the string that attaches the ball to the headband is so weak it quickly snaps. His girlfriend solved the problem when she found some stronger string online, which Morin uses to replace the “wimpy” string the balls come with. After hundreds of punches, the string tends to carve a hole in the ball’s Nerf-like material. Upon seeing Morin’s “go-to” red ball worn down this way, his girlfriend joked, “Oh, you’re making clown noses.”
Morin’s initial public appearances with a reflex ball took place at the YMCA at American Tobacco Campus. He’d pull one out whenever the heavy punching bag he wanted to use was unavailable. Running with a ball was a logical, if not completely smooth, next step. He recalled several spectacular wipeouts but happily reported he’s only lost a ball one time. After his string snapped at Duke and Main streets, he watched helplessly as his ball rolled through the intersection and down a storm drain.
Morin occasionally leaves his ball at home when he runs, but it’s rare. “It’s weird running without it,” he said. “It doesn’t make that much sense to me because it’s more of a workout to do both.”
He usually runs every day, regardless of the weather, calling it “an itch I need to scratch.” How long he runs depends on which playlist he chooses. The ones he’s made typically range from 50 to 90 minutes and include an eclectic mix of bands such as Alice in Chains, The Cure, Hiss Golden Messenger, and the Mississippi rapper B for Better. When the playlist he’s listening to ends, so does his run.
“It’s like the DJ’s your timer,” he said.
The route he chooses is equally variable. He used to gravitate toward downtown because he likes how hilly it is, but he noted a recent preference for East Campus, where he doesn’t have to “watch out for cars.”
The way Morin pronounced the last word—“cahs”—revealed his origins. He grew up an hour south of Boston in Taunton, Massachusetts. He moved to Durham just over a decade ago, and for the majority of that time, he’s lived on West Chapel Hill Street and worked as a butcher at the Whole Foods on Broad Street. One of the reasons he enjoys running with a ball is that it “opens up your back muscles, your scapula, and your shoulders,” providing a therapeutic counterbalance to his job, which often requires him to stand hunched over a table.
Between work and his daily run, Morin, who recently turned 40, often logs several 25,000-step days each week. He doesn’t plan to cut back his running routine anytime soon, but lately he has found a competing interest—pickleball. Frustrated by how busy the courts at Piney Wood Park get, he primarily plays at Pickles and Play in Chapel Hill.
As much as he enjoys punching a reflex ball while he runs, he’s surprised it hasn’t caught on with other runners. On rare occasions, he’ll see a runner mimic his movements, pretending to hit an imaginary ball, but the pastime remains hopelessly niche. His advice for anyone trying it for the first time?
“You’re definitely going to hit yourself in the face, but you’re only going to hit yourself in the face so many times,” he said. “Just keep moving. It’s like swimming. It’s super therapeutic once you get the hang of it.”
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