Run

Run

People often describe runners as sort of smug. For instance, someone may casually slip in during a conversation, I've finished three half marathons. For me, that's actually true. I did finish three half marathons. You wouldn't know it to look at me because I don't really look like a runner. I look more like the wacky best friend in a rom com.

But I have finished three half marathon races. Notice, I say "finished" them rather than "run" them. There is a distinct difference. What I do is not quite running. It's described by bystanders as a “slog,” or “narrowly escaping the scene of a crime.”

Running skills aside, it really is hard to keep myself from bragging. I think I’ve earned a little bragging rights. I put one foot in front of the other one and ran those distances. Especially when put together, that’s a pretty long way. Although I am told you are NOT supposed to put them together and say you have finished one-and-a-half marathons. According to real runners, that is “misleading”, even though the math checks out if you ask me.

I do have a friend who is an actual, accomplished runner named Jody. Unlike other runners, she is not smug. She is far worse. She's optimistic. She says kind things to me like, "You can do it!" and "You'll be fine!" which is true for her. She can do it and she will be fine. Me on the other hand?

Jody is so athletic she looks like a gazelle in a Disney movie who made a deal with a witch to become a princess. She’s both beautiful and fast. I believe birds land on her shoulder when she runs. She tells me all the time, "You can do it, I believe in you!" despite a lot of evidence to the contrary.

After I had run two of my three half marathons and hung up my long-distance racing shoes forever, Jody called and asked me to run the Cowtown Half Marathon in Fort Worth, Texas with her. It is a historical race that snakes through rustic downtown Fort Worth, Dallas's cowboy-boots wearing sister city. My initial reaction was, "Under no circumstances will I do that." I had not trained. I was not hydrated. There are videos on the internet of people crapping their pants when they run races unprepared, and I didn't need any help in the pants-crapping department.

But Jody was insistent. "You're amazing! You have already finished two half marathons. How is this any different?" I still said no.

"You'll get a medal," she offered. I remained unconvinced. "Plus, they have chocolate milk at the finish line."

This I considered. Somewhere in my misguided brain, I convinced myself that it would not be that hard. After all, I had finished two other races this long. Surely that meant I could I run a half marathon with no notice, no training, no water, right? I had done it twice before. I would later learn that just because you’ve done something before does not mean it’s a guaranteed positive result. It would be like if your grandfather agreed to get into a fist fight just because he took out some Nazis back in World War 2. Maybe there were some legitimate acts of valor way back when, but now the valor has been replaced with delusion.

Nevertheless, I agreed to do the race. When it came to race day, I found myself standing in the 13-minute mile corral with the other hopeful runners. Because I was delusional, I told myself I could keep that pace. Jody was way ahead in the 7- or 8-minute mile zone, rightfully so.

Then, the gun went off, and the race started. I looked around, and I was doing it. I was killing it, trucking right along at a 13-minute-mile pace. I kept it up for three whole quarters of a mile. So far so good. Suddenly, everything from the neck down just gave up. I was surrounded by cheerful, nice people, including the pacer whose job it is to run with the pack and keep everyone on pace to finish at goal time. They're also like personal cheerleaders. When my pacer saw me start to falter, she tried to cheer me on.

Already defeated this early on, I told her, "Go on without me." Soon, she and the rest of the group disappeared over the horizon up ahead.

Another pace group went past, then another and another. In short order, I ended up at the very back of the pack with the walkers. Much like the zombies of the same name, walkers totter along, arms outstretched, hungry, confused, and dead inside.

Everyone at the back of that group was just trying to finish, and I fit right in. To my credit, I never quit. I made it to mile 3, then 7, then 9. It was right around that time that the whisper that my body had been making, saying Stop! Just stop it and save yourself, became a blood curdling scream of, If you don’t stop right now, I’m going to do something dramatic. It turns out my body can be just as much of an asshole as me under the right circumstances.

Although my brain said, “We are buckling down and doing this,” my body disagreed. I knew just how my body felt because that is when my foot broke. Just a little bit. It was only a small bone, but according to the doctors I saw later, your foot is full of those, and you actually need all of them.

Mid-race, I thought I would be fine. When I took another step, though, I knew I was out. I sat on a curb and took my shoe off to survey the damage. Wholly focused on my broken little foot bone, I didn't notice anything going on around me. This is how I missed the ten-foot-tall sheriff in a cowboy hat who approached me.

“You all right, little lady? You almost sat in a pile of horse shit.” Because it's Fort Worth and of course I almost did.

Out of nowhere, a frail older man ran between the sheriff and me. He was basically a skeleton in a fanny pack and a tank top. He was trucking along, ahead of the walker pack.

At first, I thought, Good for you, dude. Then the sheriff said with a chuckle, “I guess you’re going to let that old geezer beat you.”

My body said, “Yeah, I am going to let him beat me because I am too busy dying here. I am going to throw myself off this bridge and into the river below and let it take me away.”

Ever the optimist, my brain said, “No, we are not going to let him beat us. Get up!" I listened and shoved my shoe back on my broken foot. With a renewed resolve, I stood up and fixed my eyes on the back of the grey head in front of me.

Perhaps he was someone's grandfather, a lifelong husband and love of someone’s life. Maybe he was a war veteran or a titan of business. I didn't care. I wanted him to eat my dust.

I put a target on the back of his head and thought, If I can run faster than that man, I will feel like I won. This, of course, wasn't true. It wasn't even rational. Instead it was the combination of my bruised ego and good old fashioned jealousy. Still, at the time, it seemed like the answer.

I ran as fast as I could right at the older man and managed to pass him. I was shocked that I actually passed him then disappointed that I wasn't immediately showered with roses. With him in my rearview, I was forced to now drag my leg beside me, right past the 12- mile marker. A half marathon is 13.1 miles, which I’m sure you know if you’ve ever been cut off by a Subaru in a Whole Foods parking lot.

I still had a little over a mile to go, and I felt in my stomach I couldn't make it. I believed it was time to call the wagon. The wagon is a truck that they pile all the lifeless corpses into then wheel you back to the parking lot and give you a kids-size jug of chocolate milk. I decided that the next race official I saw, I would gesture that I needed help and officially tap out.

That is when I saw a woman running toward me, salmon-style, up the race course. She had a banana in one hand and a medal in the other, yelling, "You can do it!" It was my Disney princess, Jody. She had already finished the race, claimed her post-race snack of a banana, and turned around to make sure I also finished.

When she got up next to me, my body really started to give out. With every step, I accepted the inevitability of my death. I would perish on the race course, becoming roadkill for the yuppie elite. They would bury my body in the Stockyard, a service officiated by a rodeo clown, casket pulled by show horses. Though I was prepared, I couldn’t stage my dramatic death - I had a little bird on my shoulder, whose voice sounded an awful lot like Jody's, telling me that I could finish and that I shouldn't give up.

“You can do it,” she said again. “Come on, we'll do it together.” This enthusiasm to run again came despite the fact that she had already finished the race, much faster and more gracefully, I imagined. The race photos later confirmed it. Still, she was ready to re-run the final stretch just to make sure I’d make it myself.

When the finish line was in sight and with Jody by my side, I began to cry. I cried because my foot hurt, of course, but I also cried because I was grateful. How lucky I was to have a friend who finished the race then willingly exercised again just for me. I was also grateful that despite the set backs, I didn't give up. I also cried with relief because I knew I was never going to run a race that long again.

And most of all I cried with joy, because I crossed that finish line. The gentleman who had no clue I even existed may have finished before me, or maybe a few steps after. More important was the person beside me, my human gazelle and one-woman cheer squad.

I let out a relieved, “Woo!” when they handed me my medal as I crossed the finish line The medal was nice, but the real prize was something more. The real prize I found inside. That is, inside the nearby tent where I was given the chocolate milk I was previously promised. I raised the jug to Jody then turned it upside down into my mouth and drank it down, so cold and sweet, feeling so glad to have won.

***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.

Someday Today

(TW: Eating disorders)

“Don’t go in there!” I hollered after my fiancé, Paris, as he headed into our bedroom. He didn’t listen, charging in to see four piles of clothes on our bed at least as high as his head.

“Making progress?” he asked.

“I have a system,” I said as he walked through the room and into the bathroom to find yet another pile.

Yes, I do have a system. But I also have a problem. A clothes problem. The fact is I just have too many of them because I never get rid of any.

We recently got a brand-new bed and mattress, which required me to clean out the under-bed drawers from our old bed. With those drawers now gone, and a closet already bursting with both Paris’s newly added clothes he brought in the move and my existing archive of every item I’ve owned since the year 2000, something had to be done.

One day after work, I stopped thinking about it and just started doing it. There are a lot of organization methods out there, currently the most trendy being KonMari/Marie Kondo and The Home Edit. In response to these powerhouses of getting your life in order, I have developed a few methods of my own that you are free to use. The first is the Stop Waiting to Fit into Clothes and Just Buy New Clothes That Fit You method. The next is the You’ve Held Onto That So Long That the Designer has Gone Out of Business and Had Enough Time to Later Reopen method. Finally I present to you the That Outfit is From the George W. Bush Administration, So You Have to Donate It Now method.

Among the many items sorted for donation, I found a brand new, never worn pair of jeans that I bought in the year god-knows-when. I would guess it was probably around 2004 when these jeans were in vogue. Not the magazine. These jeans were more likely to be seen in Us Weekly and People than Vogue. They’re Kitson brand, the favored label of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears when they weren’t sipping Starbucks in their Juicy Couture velour track suits.

I think I got them at Nordstrom Rack, just as the trend was on its downward swing. I didn’t fit into them at the time, but I had a lot of faith in myself. Someday I would fit into them, I vowed. Sure, they were about three sizes too small. Sure, I had no firm plans to exercise or eat fewer calories. Nevertheless, the jeans were a symbol of what I would be someday. Thinner, and by thinner, better.

They hung, unworn, on a hanger, first in my closet in Dallas, then in Chicago, then back in Dallas. They went with me between apartments and eventually to my house, hanging stalwart, tag still on, ever ready. They hung around longer than any romantic relationship, a reliable reminder as the years passed that my someday would come.

I kept a few other items, too. But unlike the Kitson jeans, these were items I had previously worn. Most treasured were my white shorts. In my family, we’d call them “coochie cutters”, but those in polite society may refer to them as short-shorts. They were Arizona brand, no doubt purchased from JC Penney, in juniors size nine. In my glory days (aka the lowest weight I have ever been except when I was born), I wore them proudly with fun t-shirts from Urban Outfitters, like one that read “Pirates Arrrrgh Awesome.” What can I say? I was nineteen.

Honestly, though, I looked hot in those shorts. As my mom says when she sees pictures of herself in the 1970s – I was young and firm. You know what else I was? Miserable. I was eating 1000 calories or less per day. I was running myself sick and doing 100 crunches a night. I was crying myself to sleep with an empty stomach suffering from undiagnosed depression.

Even so, my ass looked great in those shorts.

Over the past 15 years, I told myself someday I’d go back to that. Someday I could fit back into those white shorts. I kept them in my dresser drawer, like a surprise guest in the wings, waiting to spring on stage when they heard their cue. That cue? Me losing the equivalent weight of an entire fourth grader. The only issue was the cue never came. I stayed roughly the same size, yet I just couldn’t bring myself to give up on the promise of those white shorts.

For over a decade, they stood as a symbol of something I foolishly thought I could get back – my youth. I wanted it back so bad because I had squandered it away when I had it, wallowing in misery and self-harm. I spent years convinced I was inadequate. As I grew older, wiser, and relatively happier, I yearned to go back to that time with the wisdom I had gained. I wanted a do-over. A takesies-backsies.

But that’s simply not possible. I kept learning and kept growing. Now I’ve accepted that there is no going back. Cleaning out my closet, as I held the white shorts in front of myself, I accepted that they will never have the pleasure of gracing this ass again.

Even if I could go back, I wouldn’t. There’s too much good around me now. I am confident enough to wear shorts in my size that adequately cover my bathing suit area. I was forced to clean out my closet for the very good reason of making room for my fiancé and his clothes. I got to empty the drawers under our bed because we upgraded to a new grown-up-looking king size bed. I feel grateful that my life has become bigger than those shorts.

During those in-between years, I had left behind the painful days of my early 20s but hadn’t yet found the everyday joy that feeling comfortable with yourself brings. Don’t get me wrong – I still have hard days. Some days that decades-old voice come back and tries to tell me I need to lose weight. It tells me I need to “get back” to that size. It tells me that I’m not worthy until I do.

It has taken me many years and lots of therapy to realize I am worthy just by virtue of my existing. What I have to contribute isn’t made more or less by what my body looks like. What is important is taking care of my body, enjoying life, and being kind – both to other people and to myself. It also helps to be with someone who, when faced with complaints from me about how my body looks, responds with, “I would marry you today, right now, this minute, because I love you just the way you are.” Yeah, like I said last week, there’s no way he’s real.

So into the donation bag both the jeans and the shorts went. I hope the new home they find is a happy one. I hope the cheeks they eventually hug feel beautiful and worthy and look as good as mine did (or would have, if I’d ever put those Kitson jeans on).

Just before slipping them into the donation bag when I held those white shorts for the last time, I brought them up to myself in the mirror. I had to laugh. Even if I were thin enough to fit into them, they are absurdly short. My laugh turned to a smile, grateful that I don’t need to hold out hope that someday will come. Someday has already arrived. It’s here, better than I ever imagined. And I don’t need to squeeze into a pair of coochie cutters to enjoy it.

***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.

Run-ishment

(TW / CW / Idk exactly what these mean, but I know you put them at the beginning of a thing to warn people about upsetting stuff: eating disorders and exercise as self-harm.)

I started running initially because I hated myself. That sounds dramatic, but it’s true. I was around 15 years old, the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school. I had only recently begun hating myself because I had only recently learned that I wasn’t, by the standards of the early 2000s, good enough. Turns out, I was not good enough because I was fat.

It all started with a conversation in the library. A few months earlier, I had confessed to a friend that I had a crush on a guy at school.

“Oh no,” she said gently, trying to save me from the guarantee of my future dashed hopes. “He really only dates a certain kind of girl.”

“Certain kind? What kind?” I asked.

She paused, searching for the right word, wanting to be kind. Her brow furrowed and finally she decided.

“Soccer girls,” she said. “You know, girls who look like soccer girls.”

I knew what soccer girls looked like. Thin, lithe, thighs separated by negative space and the swish of their shiny shorts. I was crushed because I understood perfectly what she meant but chose to save us both the embarrassment of saying it out loud.

I did not look like a soccer girl. I was fat. And so I ran.

I loaded up my pink iPod mini with illegally downloaded music from LimeWire (the statute of limitations on that crime has run, right??), threw on whatever footwear I had that passed for gym shoes, and took off through my neighborhood. I had no speed or stamina at first. It was also summer in Texas, which meant the outdoors felt like standing under the heat lamp that kept the fries hot at McDonald’s. 

I always chose to run at the hottest, most punishing part of the day on purpose, believing if I sweated more, I would shrink away and become thinner. It worked. I lost 50 pounds over the course of a few months, coupled with incredibly strict dieting that bordered on anorexia. 

I mean, I was technically eating. Just not a lot. And nothing fun. It was all grilled chicken, ground turkey, vegetables, and very few carbs. Nothing to drink but water or unsweetened tea. No sugar. No salt. No fat. It was the kind of restrictive regimen that would maybe be ok for a week or two, but I did it for a long stretch of around 9 months. 

Eating better was fine and all, but where I really felt like I was making the most progress was on the pavement. When I lost motivation during a punishing run, my inner voice wasn’t saying, “Get back out there and try again, champ.” It was like, “Of course you can’t run that far or that fast, you’re a big fat piece of crap.”

To put it plainly, my inner voice was a dick. 

It stayed that way - rude and loud - throughout high school and well into college. Running wasn’t a fun, endorphin-providing adventure I could enjoy. It was self-imposed lashings set to pop music. 

I spent my freshman year of college — the second half where I was actually in college in New Orleans — eating the bare minimum in the school cafeteria then running mile after mile at Audubon Park across from campus. The running trail, known as the Audubon Park Loop, is a gorgeous 3.4 mile stretch that takes you under incredible live oaks and beside the famous Audubon Zoo. I have what I believe to be a clear memory of a giraffe poking its head out over a fence, but like a lot of memories, this could just be wishful thinking that has snuck its way into my subconscious.

Even there, in one of the most incredible cities in the world, at one of the most historical times ever — just six months after the city was ravaged by Katrina — on one of the city’s best running trails, I still had a singular focus during my runs: pain. What should have been a pleasant daily trot through an incredible atmosphere was a punishing, head-down sweat fest with a VERY emotional soundtrack.

You ever heard of the band Blue October? If not, let me save you some trouble. The songwriter of the band struggled with mental illness, drug addictions, and broken relationships, and the music is pretty much only about that. It’s what the characters in the film High Fidelity called “sad bastard music.” That record, featuring the joyously titled single Hate Me, was the audio backdrop for my daily self-flagellation on the trail. 

That was 2007. Over the next fourteen years, I went back to that well of pain and punishment at various times in my life as a form of self-control. When I finally admitted to myself it was harmful, I quit altogether and went for stretches of months or even years without ever lacing up my shoes.

It’s been hard to strike a balance between doing something I genuinely enjoy and doing that thing until it hurts. But thankfully, with time and healing and therapy, in recent years, my inner voice has retired. Maybe he’s died all together, I'm not sure. Either way, I no longer hear a barking drill sergeant with an acid tongue between my ears. Instead, it’s been pretty quiet up there. Perhaps he’s been drowned out by my more upbeat running playlists.

Today I ran eight miles at a pretty good clip. There were zero times on today’s run where I felt the need to hurt myself or punish my body. In fact, I used a guided run from the Nike Run Club app with a gentle voice that guided me through the workout to make sure I paced myself properly. In between the coach’s pointers and pep talks, I took time to enjoy the feeling of my feet on the pavement and take in my surroundings.

I originally planned on running the White Rock Lake Trail, but once I arrived, it was PACKED. Instead, I found an offshoot trail labeled “SoPac.” So named for the unused Southern Pacific rail bed that once ran its length, the trail was quiet and mostly empty, save for a few families and zooming cyclists that clipped past me.

It’s tree lined and has a gentle grade, so it made for a perfectly lovely running spot. It’s no Audubon Park. I saw no giraffes. But I did notice an unspooled VHS tape that had been drug like a ribbon along a cluster of trees. Beside that was a McDonalds bag and several sandwich wrappers. I imagined someone had reclaimed an incriminating video of themselves, maybe an embarrassing student film or some unsavory footage of a night they’d like to leave behind. Tape in hand, they came to this quiet spot to destroy the cassette and celebrate with like five or six McChickens. 

Good for you, I thought.

I did 4 miles out and 4 back, which means I got a second shot to admire my surroundings on the return trip. I took in a small playground adjacent to some apartments, an abandoned pink bike, a man in a khaki trench coat sitting on a bench with a suitcase. It wasn’t exciting with giraffes poking through the trees, but it wasn’t boring either. It was nice.

The run coach had me kick up my pace in the final few miles, challenging me to run a few hundred yards at my faster 5k pace, then a few hundred more at my even quicker one-mile pace. When I got to the final few steps, my legs were tired, but I couldn’t stop. I made it off the trail and into a nearby neighborhood. I passed two kids buying ice cream from an ice cream truck. 

The first kid clutched his ice cream bar in his hand, squishing the package between his fingers. The other little kid was still finishing his transaction.

The first kid pushed his glasses up on his nose and cheered, “Come on!”

Likely he was rushing his friend, but instead, I imagined he said it to me. 

After a few more yards, my watched buzzed, letting me know I finally crossed the 8 mile threshold. I slowed to a walk and let my lips curl into a smile. I shut off the noise from my headphones, quieting both the running coach and Taylor Swift, and walked circles around the parking lot cooling down. 

Across the way, a family had propped up their toddler on a blanket beside a tree. Mom and dad stood by, throwing a frisbee to a bigger kid who alternately tucked his hands into his tiny Gap sweatshirt. Another couple chattered as they walked to their car with their Irish setter, discussing dinner plans and how cold it had gotten since the sun went down.

I could hear cars zooming by on the nearby road. Music from a speaker strapped to the handlebars of a passing cyclist reached past me and into the trees. I heard the honk of a horn as someone locked their car.

Then somewhere, between my slowing breaths, I could hear a small voice in my head, a voice that sounded a lot like mine, whisper, “Great job.”

***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.