How to Become a Runner (or anything you want). Again.
“Starting again” has been on my mind a lot lately. It seems like there’s just a whole bunch of stuff right now that I’m doing over, or picking up after having put it down for a while. This “stuff” is ranging from small habits to big life changes, from personal to professional, from ordinary to “omg who do I think I am trying this again?” Starting from base camp when you once upon a time were atop the mountain is humbling, certainly.
One of those “starting agains” I’m wrestling with right now is running. I can’t say for sure if my last time running really was October 2022 (my habit of keeping solid track of my fitness log is another in a long line of “starting again” habits I’m trying to conquer), but I feel fairly confident in saying that I’ve run only a handful of times at best since I finished the Marine Corps Marathon in October 2022. I was only about 2/3rds as trained as I should have been to run that race and I had - predictably - the slowest and most painful run in my 13-time marathon finisher history. I was proud that I got across the finish line standing up, but also knew I had a heavy re-think to do before ever running another marathon (or as it turns out, running any distance) again. In the days and weeks after the marathon and my mind would wander to, “Should I go for a run?” I immediately felt sick. I had an emotional hangover from running. I was burned out and in need of a break, and so in a very un-Stephanie like way, I actually took one.
I just didn't expect it to last 10 months.
But in the last few weeks I started to feel like maybe, just maybe, my daily three mile walks should become runs once again. On a recent Saturday I felt the pang of jealousy when I drove by runners out there on the road, churning out what I guessed was a long training run for a fall marathon; that pang of jealousy used to keep me running on days I didn’t want to. Now, I realized, it may be the thing that would get me to come back.
Or not.
The idea of starting - again - to become a runner after a pretty miserable marathon which was preceded by few years of slogging out slow, endless miles just to “get it done”, while seeing lessening return on that investment (the whole “your body becomes more efficient and you have to mix things up to see results” bullshit is, unfortunately, not at all bullshit), was hard to get my head around. A small part of me wanted to run again. The rest of me thought the idea of starting from Day 1 to try to get back into running shape was (insert whatever an “emotional hangover” emoji would be).
Turning my coaching skills inward and using them on myself, I knew I needed to change my thinking first and foremost. I came up with the thought, “Just run one mile, then walk the rest” to get me off my couch and back into my running shoes.
And my brain promptly served up the super useful thought of, “What’s the point of going one mile?” I’m a former marathoner. I’m healthy and injury-free and am not THAT far out from my last run…one mile?? There was once a time where I actually said, “I wouldn’t get out of bed for a 5K” (God, I can be an asshole sometimes). And yet here I was, trying to negotiate myself into running 1 mile? I couldn’t get myself to see the point, at all. I was sure I could run a mile but the harder thing to imagine was that I’d actually motivate myself to do it when it was so far from my former self’s fitness levels….How did I fall this far?
And right there is the problem with “starting over”. Comparing yourself to your past self is the best way to ensure you’re going to run right into a huge steaming pile of mental garbage. I was so defeated that Current Me couldn't easily do what Past Me could, that I was ready to wave the flag on the whole endeavor (sacrificing Future Me along the way). The problem, of course, wasn’t the fact that I couldn't easily hop off the couch and crank out a 10K run like I once could. That was just a fact - and there are no problems when we’re talking about facts. The problem was what I was making that mean. Me not being the runner I once was, was something I’d turned into a huge fucking tale of woe that is more dramatic than a Folklore lyric (all love to my queen, TS). It meant:
I will never be a runner again
I’ve gone too far to the other side to come back
I’ve fallen into that “I’m too old for this” trap that I swore I never would do
It will take so much work to get back there that what’s the point?
I’ll never be fast again
There’s something actually wrong with me which is why this is so hard (I have cancer…I have Alzheimer's….you know, your basic nightmares)
It’s over for me
Etc etc….(the drama, right?).
An unchecked mind is like a moody teenager (or Taylor Swift after a broken heart) - it can spin out at any moment into the most ridiculous roadways (especially if your moody teenager brain also has a touch of anxiety disorder…it’s me, Hi, I’m the problem).
The thing is, none of these thoughts that were flooding my brain were facts, and they certainly weren’t useful. They weren't going to get me off the couch and into my running shoes the way Future Me wanted.
What was? Well, a bit more coaching to start (you knew that was coming, yes?)
I started by realizing that the idea of “starting again” was not only unhelpful - it was inaccurate. I wasn’t starting again, because who I am today is not who I was when I ran my last big race in October 2022. Nine months later, I was a different person. Life had changed, and subtly or not, I had changed. So I took stock of what was different for me now when compared to nine months ago.
In the last nine months:
I left my job and struck out on my own, full-time
I ramped up care-taking for a family member with an incurable illness
I (and the hubs) finished adoption certification
I started going to [solidcore] 4 - 5 days per week as my primary workout (strength > cardio)
I did 75 Hard and now walk outside 3 miles/day and drinking a shit ton more water (going from a baseline of “as little as possible to survive” to “a lot more than that”....see the comment on my need to improve habit tracking, above.)
I took steps to manage my once-crippling cluster headaches and now have them under control for the first time in over a decade
I started reading (books!) regularly again
The list goes on and there’s deeper shit as well which I’ll share another time, but you get the picture….life moves fast, especially as we get older, and we’re just not the same person we were last week or last month or last year. So “starting again” or “starting over” is a fallacy because you can’t start again when you’re starting from a different place. And you are in a different place, in one way or another, than you were nine months ago. And so am I.
So with that “duh yeah” moment, I decided to drop “starting again” and re-branded this whole running endeavor to “starting here”. This is where I’m starting from. Current Me is here, not having run in a while and not totally confident I can do it, and she wants to be there, where running a few miles a day at a strong pace is second nature, and running a marathon in a time I’m proud of is the overarching goal.
To get back to doing something that you once did, the most important thing to remember is that it’s not actually about getting “back” to anything. And it’s not about doing anything “again”. It’s about reminding yourself that I’m here now, and I want to be there…..and then focusing on the steps you need to take to make it happen.
In my case, those steps just happen to be literal.