Sometimes running isn’t the answer. Sometimes running isn’t enough. Sometimes, running is even the problem. But I don’t know how to function any other way.
A couple of weeks ago, I hurt a rib. My partner and I were packing up from a weekend away, and had just finished our morning run. I had worn his shoes out to the car to load our duffel bags and jokingly told him he could just carry me back inside so I could leave the shoes in the trunk. Of course he took me up on this. He picked me up over his shoulder, sack-of-potatoes style, and was carrying me toward the house when I heard an audible pop. It was followed by a flash of acute pain.
My mind didn’t go to a doctor or a recovery timeline. It went immediately to the one question that governs my life: can I run through this?
For the next week, I tried. I continued to run even though I couldn’t stand up, lie down or even breathe without a sharp reminder that something was wrong. I went to a chiropractor hoping for a quick fix – a magic adjustment that would grant me permission to keep going. It didn’t work.
To me, the timing seems disastrous. I am 10 weeks out from an early May marathon, and I have my eyes set on a Boston Qualifier. For the last couple of years, I’ve hit the qualifying time but have always landed on the wrong side of the cutoff. It is a heartbreaking buffer where you are fast, but not fast enough to actually earn a bib.
I am primarily a trail runner. I thrive on long days on technical terrain, which is my happy place. But I use a spring marathon every year to build speed and aerobic capacity, and to test myself. I do it to get out of my comfort zone, because running fast on pavement still scares me. It is not my forte, and it takes a lot of work to get to that level (and work that I don’t necessarily enjoy, but that’s the point). I have set my heart and my stubbornness on it. I want to get to Boston. This year, I will move up in my age group. So, if I can run the same time as last year, I will finally be in.
It should be my year. Instead, I am facing a hillier course, an earlier race date and a rib that screams every time my heart rate climbs.
Despite the pain, I have been trying to white-knuckle my way through the schedule. I’ve attempted the long runs, the half-marathon repeats and the 10k-paced midweek workouts. Last week, I was out for an easy run with my partner. His easy pace borders on my threshold effort, and as we moved, a sudden, stabbing pain forced a cry from my throat. It hasn’t stopped hurting since.
I know what a rational person would do. A rational person would take two weeks off and let the bone knit back together. Instead, I’ve decided on a compromise. I’ll drop the intensity, but I will keep the mileage high.
I know it’s stupid. But here is the dark secret many runners, especially us ultrarunners, carry: we don’t just want to run, we need to.
Like many in this sport, I found running during the wreckage of a previous life. I was navigating a brutal divorce while acting as the sole provider for my three-year-old, finishing a master’s degree and teaching full-time. My days were spent worrying about the future. In the short term, I wondered how I would finish my degree between work and parenting. In the long term, I wondered what kind of damage I was inflicting on my daughter during her formative years.
Once a week in the summer, I posted up at the local coffee shop because I couldn’t afford internet at home. I would hammer out assignments while my daughter, Dot, went to childcare for that one day so I could work. And then spend an hour or two running before daycare pick up.
In that season, running morphed from a hobby into a lifeline. I had regularly joined friends on runs to share gossip and get some exercise. I had done several half marathons and even one full, my first Grandma’s Marathon, right as my marriage truly fell apart. But a year after that first marathon, running became the only place I could begin to quiet my racing mind.
I remember the first time I realized that when I was running, I wasn’t performing. I wasn’t plastering a smile on my face for my coworkers, or faking positivity for a classroom of fourth graders, or even feigning interest in the fairytale I was reading to my daughter. I was just allowed to be myself. I would speed up until my lungs burned and my legs ached, and when I couldn’t hold that pace any longer, I cried. I would straight-up ugly cry, sobbing in rhythm with my footfalls.
Nothing was resolved in those miles. I still left those runs feeling broken. But it was the only space where I felt like I had any type of control. It was the only time I truly had for myself. I ran to think, to feel and to let go. I would find myself bawling through one mile and smiling through the next. It was cathartic and I was hooked. It was working. But like any drug, the dosage had to increase to keep the demons quiet.
I wish I could say running was just a healthy outlet. The truth is more complicated. Before I was a runner, I turned to much more self-destructive habits. I used physical pain to offset the mental and emotional noise I couldn’t handle.
If you ask my family and friends about me, they’ll tell you I am easygoing and strong. Outwardly, I have portrayed those traits since I was young. But my childhood was tumultuous. My parents loved us, but they had their own issues: addiction, codependency and fiery tempers. Our home was a place of chaos, secrecy and a great deal of shame. To avoid adding to their stress, I learned to hide the ugly parts of myself. I strived to only show the good. I hid my thoughts, my emotions and any desires that didn’t align with theirs. Pretty soon, the act of hiding became a desperate need to actually be good. Every minor infraction, whether it was a negative thought, an unkind word or a loss of patience, became a sin I had to atone for. Unfortunately for me, my Catholic upbringing only reinforced this.
I carried this into adulthood, entering relationships that were just as unhealthy and chaotic as my childhood. The emotional pain became so intense that I turned to cutting. Having a physical release for the sadness, having some control over the pain, became something I relied on to get through the day. Soon, I realized I could keep track of my infractions and use a razor to punish myself. I would tally everything I did wrong throughout the day, often counting thirty or forty wrongdoings to carve onto my body. I made tallies on my ribs and carved words into my thighs.
Then I started running. In a perfect world, I would have run that first marathon, been cured and stopped the self-harm immediately. But in the real world, it took years and many more miles to reach a state of equilibrium.
It wasn’t until I trained for my first 100-miler that I finally found the mileage required to dim the other vices. I discovered that if I average 50 miles a week, I could stay level. I’ve used those miles to survive the deaths of loved ones, job transitions and the end of relationships. Therapy, EMDR and medication have all had their place, but nothing has ever been as effective as lacing up my shoes and heading out for an hour. When my lungs are screaming and my mind is finally quiet, the darkness retreats.
So, here I am. I know it’s unsustainable to run through an injury. This time it seems to be working, but I realize there will come a day when I am actually unable to move. I know it’s unhealthy to be this dependent on a sport. But when I try to back off, the underlying melancholy returns with a vengeance. Without the miles, I’m not just resting; I’m caught in a riptide, struggling to keep my head above water. I can usually manage one day without a run, but after 24 hours, I feel it in my body – that familiar ache in my chest, an anxious tightness in my throat – and I know it’s only a matter of time before I’m pulled under.
I am trying to find the compromise between my physical and mental health. I’m logging the miles but keeping them easy. I am staying entirely in “Zone 2” to keep the rib from becoming too angry. I’ve talked with other runners, the ones who run for simple enjoyment or physical health, and they don’t understand why I don’t just take a day off or switch to a bike. And it feels impossible to explain that I can’t.
Running through injuries and illnesses isn’t just about stubbornness or a commitment to an arbitrary goal like Boston. It’s because I am scared of who I might become without it.
I know I should be healing my body. But when running is the only thing that heals your mind, how do you find the balance?
*If you’re struggling, visit Bigger Than the Trail, a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization that uses trail running as a platform to advocate for mental health.