I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how multiple things can be true at once: how many things are actually “ands” instead of “buts”.
I can want to fight like hell to keep getting to start lines, and be tired as fuck of patching together/fighting with my body.
I can still want to be fiercely competitive at age 40, and be realistic of my current level.
I can be optimistic that my best days of running are ahead of me, and be sad that I never quite got the glorious comeback from injury/eating disorder recovery like I hoped I would.
I can be frustrated with where I am, and also proud of how far I’ve come.
I can take a pause, and also know that it’s not a good-bye.
It’s been a year since my (almost catastrophic) femoral neck stress fracture, and five years since I opened up about my eating disorder to the public. Anniversaries like this are always imbued with melancholy and self-reflection.
While I don’t think I ever admitted it to myself, when I entered eating disorder treatment five years ago, I hoped it would set me up for an epic comeback story of “World Champion athlete overcomes eating disorder and years of injury issues to return to world championship ways and never get injured again.” We all love a good comeback story, myself included. They give us hope: hearing stories similar to that partially inspired me to go back into treatment in the first place. We’ve seen some epic stories in running in the last few years around that and I am so happy for those athletes.
I am not necessarily one of those stories.
Sure, I’ve had some good races in these past five years, but they’ve also still been plagued with injuries (though fewer than before!). While I’ve enjoyed the sport immensely, I never lived up to my own expectations in my head. As a high-achieving perfectionist, that stings. But the constant drive to compete, to see if I can defy the years of abuse I inflicted on my body and beat the odds, have propelled me forward.
Forward through training cycles and races and injuries and mind-numbing cross-training and rebuilds from injuries. Forward through feelings of joy and elation when running strong and pain-free, and feelings of failure and shame when I’m injured.
It’s not quite a trainwreck, but a rollercoaster, and one that has left me exhausted.
I’m in one of these rollercoaster moments right now: while a lower mileage build up to High Lonesome left me a bit nervous for how I would fair, I was healthy and ready to rock until COVID knocked me on my ass and I made the difficult decision to withdraw. In starting up running again, my body went into complete rebellion and I’m working through a few issues right now that are tough to pin down.
Of course, I wanted to immediately use that fitness I built for HiLo and focus on another 100, so the reality of having to take a beat and triage the body again is beyond frustrating.
In a fit of frustrated tears the other day I suddenly stopped and ask “why?” Why am I working so hard, feeling like I’m up against some arbitrary deadline that I must race a 100 miler every year (or even race at all!), that I must continue to collect Hardrock and Western States qualifiers, that I must continue my training plan laid out so perfectly on a weekly basis?
I don’t have sponsors breathing down my neck, I shouldn’t feel like I have other people’s expectations on me: I am doing this solely for me at this point in my athletic career. So my “why” is that I enjoy it and it gives me structure, purpose, and a sense of community. I adore it.
But it’s also not going anywhere.
So I’m stepping off the rollercoaster for now.
I cringe writing that because it feels like I’m giving up, like I’m throwing in the towel, which is the furthest thing from my nature as a person. I excel at holding on for dear life, at toughing things out when they no longer make sense. I’ve been on the merry-go-round of injury, recovery, rebuild, self-flagellation, etc., for YEARS at this point in the name of performance and competition.
There has to be a better way.
I took my first steps towards finding that way in building back from the femoral neck stress fracture, reducing my running volume to 4-5 days a week, keeping mileage below 50mpw, seeing if I could successfully train for a 100 miler on that.
Physically, I think that was plenty to be prepared (and I *almost* had a shot to find that out). Mentally, I think I needed more time to build trust in my body and run without the pressure of a training cycle or a race on the horizon.
For the past 13 years, I’ve always had a race I’m working towards, or an injury I’m working back from. Even in times when I’ve been injured or when I was at Opal for eating disorder treatment, I never once took my foot off the gas: there was always an end goal.
But with an “injury” like this, there is no set path forward. I’ve come to know the predictability of bone stress injuries: you unload the thing, the bone will heal, and you’ll be back running in a few months. That known and certain pattern of healing is comforting to me. When I don’t even know what I’m healing, I struggle mightily with the uncertainty of what that timeline could be. So I’m left banging my head against a wall trying to figure out what is wrong and how I can fix it.
Running and race goals give me purpose and I find joy in the process of achieving them. The thought of not having one to focus my efforts leaves me feeling a bit untethered. I’m not sure what to do with myself without that structure, but my gut is telling me that I need to see what it’s like.
As much as I hate it, I’m taking this as a flashing neon sign that it’s time to let go for the time being. I’m not sure how long this pause will be, but I’m holding onto “maybe” and leaning into the uncertainty the best I can.
The beauty of our sport is that it’ll always be there when I’m ready to come back to it. It hurts like hell to let it go, and I take comfort in the fact I know I’ll out there again.
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Note: I’m not intentionally being vague here as I’m usually pretty upfront about what’s wrong with me. If I had an easy answer, I’d share it, but still trying to sort through it. For now I will call it the “inflammatory and compensatory cascade of bullshit” involving knee, hip, back and debilitating nerve pain.
I put this in quotes because I don’t even know if it’s an injury. I have no diagnosis, just something that is annihilating my body enough that running, and even day to day activities, are not feeling good.