Returning to Running

It’s a Wednesday morning in the middle of June in Arizona… and I’ve decided today is the day to return to running. After years of having kids, growing businesses, being generally overstimulated, and battling a weird relationship with health and fitness (YOLO, but also, my clothes don’t fit right), I finally laced up my shoes simply because I wanted to run. As Forrest Gump said, “I just felt like runnin’.” As my feet fell into a familiar cadence and the yearning of missing this feeling settled in, my brain began to analyze why I gave up running to begin with.

While I flirted with running much of my life, in fall 2014, I decided it was time to take my relationship to the next level. As my first marriage moved into dissolution, I desperately wanted to commit to something else – a bonus if it helped me manage my emotions through the process. In my search, I found runDisney’s Disneyland Tinkerbell 10k race and registered without thinking too hard about it. The race was scheduled for the following spring, which felt like ample time to work myself into running shape and gave me something else to obsess about while I unpacked my boxes in my new apartment.

In my training months, I was supported by everyone around me. Friends asked me how running was going. My boss made sure I stuck to my training runs. The support made this race feel monumental – like a big, important thing. I wouldn’t let myself or others down. And with all this energy behind me, I found myself in the best shape I’ve ever been in my life. Unfortunately, that quickly turned unhealthy.

As the glow of finishing the 10k wore off and the training schedule disappeared into thin air, the seemingly harmless but truly destructive self-talk crept in. I had to get back into it so all of my hard work didn’t go to waste. My body was starting to get “soft.” Time to get back on a diet. Maybe if I worked out twice a day, I could make up for anything I lost. Maybe I needed more motivation. I know – I’ll sign up for a half marathon!

Over the next few years, my relationship with running was one with numbers. Faster pace. More medals. Higher mileage. My obsession was about how my running would be viewed – not about how it made me feel. And it quickly reminded me – it could hurt me.

I suffered a string of injuries, from knee problems to a partially slipped disk, that deteriorated my relationship with running. The final straw came when I was pregnant with my first kiddo, and my knee gave out on me. It scared me enough to swear off running.

But not without a grieving process. I felt so betrayed by my body for not allowing me to be one of those super-fit running moms. I rationalized that running was a lot of work, and I never wanted to work that hard again. The relocation from San Diego to Arizona also gave me the perfect excuse – it’s too hot to run outside most of the year and I didn’t like running on a treadmill. Who needs running? Pfft. Not me.

In the past year, I’ve tried to rekindle the running romance. I started jogging on the walking pad in my office, which led to straining my left knee. I attempted a few runs outside, which led to a terrifying yet comical allergic reaction to pollen from a nearby farm. But every return felt forced. Honestly, I just wanted to run because I was feeling heavy, and, well, next to medical intervention, running is a great way to drop the weight – wrong motivation, crummy results.

So imagine my surprise when I woke up and thought, “I’m going to run today.”

Still a sucker for data and out of habit, I opened the Runkeeper app. But I knew I couldn’t let the lady in the app make me feel bad about my run – so I turned her off, tucked my phone in the lumbar pocket, and left it there for the duration of my outing.

And I just started running. I laughed at myself for breathing heavily, waved hello to the people walking their dogs, and internally remarked that it was sooo nice out (at 75º at 6:00 am, it actually wasn’t too bad.) I let my mind wander to the nonsense my kids have been trying to pull lately, the project we’re working on for our business, the email I never responded to, how much I love our dog, that every time I run, I think of the scene from What Women Want when they come up with the Nike slogan “No games, just sports” (literally, genius.) Each thought floated in and out with much regard or concern. It was the type of meditation that only comes to me when fully engrossed in propelling myself forward and not falling into oncoming traffic. After about 20 minutes, the heat was creeping up, and my body was laboring too hard. It was time to head back in.

As I sat in my living room, trying to cool down, peeling sweaty socks off my feet, and allowing my heart rate to lower, I wondered why I gave this up. Remembering all the ways my love of running went sideways, I could only sum it up one way… I expected too much from it. I asked running to do too many things for me – give me a distraction, heal me, keep me healthy, give me purpose, don’t hurt me, make me fit. I asked too much and assigned it too much meaning.

So, like an ex crawling back for forgiveness, I’m returning, tail between my legs, hoping it will forgive me and allow me to try, yet again, to enjoy it simply for what it will be for me that day. And today, it forgave me.