October 10, 2021
“It’s not that I haven’t been running, I’ve just taken 60 rest days in a row.”
That’s my favorite snarky joke about my running habits, and I think it certainly applies right now. I went for a few morning runs during a rough week in September, but I can’t remember the last time I ran more than two miles – maybe August? July? Who knows. I don’t feel good about this. It’s not that I don’t feel like I don’t get enough exercise – between the StairMaster at my gym and my hikes with the Maudie Dog, I do ok. I don’t even think it has to do with my weight – I’ve found some peace and grace for myself concerning the ~5 pounds I’ve put on my small frame since I went back to work after the shut down. I’m a 31-year-old woman and my body is going to be a 31-year-old body (see my post called ‘Famished’ for more on this topic). When I don’t run, some of the reasons I feel incomplete are less pragmatic than missing the physical benefits of the exercise. I think hitting that pavement day-after-day has become my life’s symbol for strength, mental toughness, fierce friendship and support systems, self-love, perseverance, and independence.
I turned to running for the first time when I was in grad school and I got my heart broken by a Canadian dreamboat. I was lamenting the whole situation to my friend Katie (Katie was a professor at my school, who would later serve as a member of my dissertation committee) and her solution was an invitation to a running club at West Sixth Brewery in downtown Lexington, KY. We ran a couple of miles and then came back to the brewery for beer and soft pretzels. I sat at a table with Katie and her new friend, Shawna – and out of the ashes of one of those atomic bombs of sadness I was talking about in a previous post, a Wolfpack was formed. Katie and Shawna became my two, tiny, twin pillars of strength. We went on countless runs together, stalked each other on the Runkeeper App, and they became my family in Lexington. Years later, on the day I successfully defended my dissertation, I was mentally exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go straight to bed. My Wolfpack refused me my nap, and demanded that we celebrate with a pack run. I’ll never forget when I met them at the UK Arboretum on a beautiful fall day (much like this one) and they handed me a t-shirt that said “Dr. Crouch” on the back, with a statistics joke on the front (‘I like you a lot, but you’re not normal’). Then we ran. I knew that I was loved by these women, and that I loved them, and we all loved to run.
Before the pandemic began last year, I was still in the habit of running, but never more than a few miles at a time. The shut down took my already lonely and closed-off life into a state of implied solitary confinement. I can remember crying myself to sleep at night – feeling like any hope I had of building the community I wanted, like the one I had before I moved to the DC area, was fading with each passing hour of quarantine. How I wished I could go back to warm evening runs and taco parties with my Wolfpack – how I wanted to be in the same room as another person and get a hug from someone who loved me. The only option I had at that time was to love myself. This idea has been cliched in dozens of songs and self-help books, but it’s one of the hardest concepts to turn into actionable steps. The form of self-care I chose first, was my old friend – the pavement. I ordered a new pair of Sauconys from Amazon, and started training like I never had before. Every time the loneliness reduced me to tears, I laced up my shoes. Every time the walls started closing in on me, I put my fanny pack on and hit the trail.
The externalities of time on the trail go so far beyond self-care and time to decompress and think clearly. Calorie deficits result in weight loss and shredding – I’ve never been so close to having abs as I was during the shut down. Intense cardio brings you into a state where you feel like you have the most bad-ass pair of lungs on the planet. It seems odd to say things like “damn my lungs feel good today” but it’s an amazing feeling – you get to the point where you feel like you could run for days if only your knees and feet would cooperate. It made me wish that my lungs were visible to the outside world, so men could be like “dude, did you see the pair of lungs on that chick?!”
As a result of all of the physical changes, confidence builds by default. Knowing for certain that you can basically run as far you want with ease makes you feel powerful and independent- you start to feel like your feet can take you anywhere you want to go. Training alone and completing the race alone is such a test of mental toughness – when I finished my first half marathon all by myself in Old Town, Alexandria, I felt like a wonder. Sometimes on my laziest days when I can’t get motivated to do even simple things like fold laundry or take a shower, I can remember the Saturday I woke up at 5:30 am to run 13.1 miles by myself. Getting faster and stronger every day is intoxicating. Measuring that success with the technology of an Apple Watch or Fitbit, is like having your own personal report card to take home to yourself after every workout. Instant feedback, instant gratification. I also began to use my time running as a tool to battle disordered eating and body dysmorphia. I started running in skimpy clothes and trained myself to not worry about anyone else’s opinion on my body, which helped me start to worry about my opinion on my body a little less. I started noticing my fellow runners on the trail and admiring bodies of all shapes and sizes. These small steps toward redefining the little pathways in my brain that result in thoughts and feelings, were instrumental for my recovery from eating problems and improvement in body image.
I don’t know why I stopped running. I think I got comfortable in my happy life, and busy with my move and work, and frustrated with knees that would ache during every run. I miss running. I miss it the way I miss my Wolfpack, and my best friend and my parents and my sister and her kids. I miss it the way I miss ‘normal’ life. But the thing is, this old friend of mine doesn’t have to be so far away unless I choose for it to be. Today, I went to a running store to get a pair of shoes that will hopefully ease my knee pain. Tonight I laced them up and threw on my old lady compression sleeve and ran two miles – hey, that’s a start. Tomorrow I’ll go a bit further, and I’ll persevere and chip away at my goals one mile at a time. So tonight I’ll raise a glass to my new magic shoes, and I’ll believe that they can take me anywhere.
Cluelessness is the Mother of Invention 