“I hate running!”

You don’t get extra credit for doing things you hate. And I used to hate running…more like loathed and despised it. The evolution of my relationship with running is an odd one. As I already mentioned, I didn’t love running, and now, somehow, it is the brightest spot in my day. Let me take you on my journey with running. 

I started playing basketball in 5th grade. I loved basketball. I had dreams of playing in college and then professionally one day. I was going to be the female Dennis Rodman…but this is also the earliest memory of me not enjoying the running part of basketball. I didn’t loathe it at this point, but I remember feeling dejected each time we had to run suicides or backboard taps. But I did it. 

From 5th grade until 9th grade, basketball was my only sport. Once I entered high school, I started playing lacrosse to be with my friends. Now this is where my relationship with running really took a negative turn. Our high school was number 1 in the nation for lacrosse for many years. So I was walking into a very competitive program. And with any competitive program, the training is much more intense. We would start our practice with a mile or two warm up. Then we would have some sort of running in the middle, such as 120 yard sprints. This was on top of scrimmaging during practice. Sometimes we would also end with some sort of conditioning. We trained hard, but we also didn’t train smart in hindsight. Knowing what I know now, we should have properly warmed up and we should have been incorporating mobility and strength training. My body definitely paid the price later from training this way. 

Also during high school, each sport started with a timed one mile run. This is when I started having anxiety around running. I could run fast for short periods and I could run slow for longer periods, but I couldn’t run fast for longer periods. So I not only psyched myself out before timed runs, but I also, either just barely met the time, or just barely missed the time that I needed. So, my earliest memories of running were not that great. But, I did them. I would do what I was told. 

Enter college. I went on to play Division 1 lacrosse. We were already competitive for high school, but being competitive in college was a whole new ball game with running. Here is one example that was lovingly referred to as the Gauntlet…it was a timed up the ladder, down the ladder type of run. From what I recall, because I tried to black this out, we would start with 100 meters, then 200 meters, and build up until we would be running a mile. Then we would go back down the ladder until we got to 100 meters again. My troubled relationship with running continued for many years. Running was always a requirement, and most often a timed requirement. College trained us better by including strength training and mobility work, but my body was already pretty wrecked. 

I stopped playing after the first half of my junior year in college. I had transferred after my freshman year, and I never really recovered from that transition. So began a new journey for me. I had to workout without anyone telling me what to do. You may question why I felt that I had to workout and that is a valid question. Exercising was ingrained in me. I hated it with a passion, but I was either working out because I was told or I was working out to stay in shape or lose weight. So once I stopped playing, my focus for working out was solely about losing weight. I had gained quite a bit in college so It was much harder to run. I would go to my college gym and just be lost. I would try the treadmill but I didn’t know how long to run for, or how fast to run. Do I run sprints? Do I run long distances? Do I do both? I didn’t have a clue because I didn’t have someone telling me what to do. For many years I would attempt a new workout routine, join a new gym, start working out and then stop. I was lost.

Then, one year when I was in graduate school, my sister was getting married, and this was the time I decided I was ready to lose the weight and get back in shape so I could look good at the wedding, vain I know, but the truth! Whatever the catalyst, we all start with a catalyst.  I started with just jogging daily for 20 minutes on the treadmill while I watched an episode of Sex in the City on DVD. I found that I actually didn’t mind this running. I wasn’t dying yet it was just enough to feel like a workout. And by watching a show, it went pretty fast. I lost weight and continued running because I enjoyed it. And now I am about to shock you, I started signing up for races!  Can you believe it? Someone that used to be so anxious about timed running was now willingly signing up for races to try and win medals. Well, at first my intentions were not to win medals because I knew I wasn’t that fast. But once I started, I did start winning medals in a few local races. This started my new passion for running races. I didn’t necessarily love running the races while doing it, but I definitely loved it after. 

After a few years of this, I was hit with, what felt like, a brick.  I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (UC). I was getting married in a few months and it felt like my body had “failed” me. It was out of the blue. I went from being completely fine to having stomach pains and having to know where bathrooms were at all times. My journey with Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD) was a tough one. I couldn't really workout for a while. It wasn’t until I started prednisone that my symptoms calmed down enough and I felt strong enough to attempt running again. Up to this point, my longest run was a 10k. I felt so proud of my body for being strong enough for me to run again. I still shock myself when I think back to how much I despised running to now being so grateful to be able to run again. I joined a local chapter of the Crohns and Colitis Foundation and signed up to run a half marathon to raise money for IBD research. The support I received from family, friends, and even strangers drove me and motivated me. But, as the months of training went on, I started having a lot of issues, from patellar tendonitis to IT Band Syndrome to piriformis syndrome. I would sometimes be unable to even sneeze without my whole body seizing up on me. Somehow, I managed to make it to race day, but due to all my injuries, it took me over 3 hours. I tried not to be upset with my performance and just be happy that I crossed the finishing line, but I was mad at my body for what I felt was letting me down once again. 

After this race, I took time off to recover. Then I got pregnant with our first child. During the pregnancy, my UC went into remission which can happen for some. For others, it sends them into a flare the entire time. After the birth of our son however, my body went into a flare I would not recover from. I ended up deciding to have a total proctocolectomy with ileal pouch-anal anastomosis (IPAA) or more informally referred to as J Pouch surgery. This surgery removed my colon and used my small intestine to act as a reservoir like my colon did. The surgery was successful in getting rid of my flare. It was a two part surgery, so for three months, I lived with a colostomy bag. It was a hard time in my life, but after three months of that, I went back for the second surgery which,by far, was easier, where they removed the colostomy bag and hooked up my new parts. During all of this, I was very weak so I hadn’t been able to run at all. It had been a very long time. 

Once I started getting my strength back, I started running again. But it was harder than before due to not only my surgery, but also from just having a child. I never knew how important your pelvic floor and a strong core were to not just being a strong runner, but to avoiding injuries. I was so happy to be back to running again. Running made me feel successful and proud. Slowly though, I started getting into a routine where my mood was dictated by whether I ran or not. If I didn’t get a run in, it would consume my thoughts all day. I would quietly berate myself. Not the best mindset for sure! So, when my injuries started getting worse and I was once again sidelined from running, I started taking core training and mobility seriously. With guidance from my physical therapist, I would spend more time core conditioning and doing mobility work than I actually did running. I would also supplement this with dry needling, which truly helped in my recovery. Now I am in a maintenance routine, where I get dry needling every two months or so. 

The injuries lessened, but still occurred. I was stubborn and still suffering from my prior athlete's mindset of either you workout or your day wasn’t a success. My PT would look at me like I was crazy.  He didn’t understand why I would push my body so hard knowing it wasn’t ready yet, and then an injury of course would follow. It was like playing ping pong with my body. I would resolve one injury and then another one would flare up because I would compensate. 

I am not exactly sure where the shift in mindset actually occurred. By now, I had three children total so maybe it was from the frustration of trying to take care of three young kids while being injured, but it finally clicked that I did not need to kill myself every workout in order to feel good about my workout. But I knew that getting some sort of sweat in was key to my sanity as a mother. My mindset had shifted from a focus on physical results to a focus on mental results. I started realizing that I felt better mentally when I sweated, but it didn’t matter if the sweat occurred because I had run 3 miles under 30 minutes or if I just simply ran for 15 minutes…a short time frame that I would never have been ok with years ago. Previously it was either I did a 30 minute run (if not more) or I didn’t run at all, and then bonus, I would beat myself up all day if I didn’t run. So now, I was ok with doing a 15 minute workout if that was all I had time for. It was enough for me to feel like I had accomplished something and enough for me to feel positive about my day. I stopped just running and started including biking, strength training, and even run/walking. All of this was easier on my body. 

And this is where I am currently. I fit in what I can and I don’t beat myself up if there is a day where I don’t fit it in (for the most part...I am always a work in progress). My journey with running is a complicated one. I am 41 years old and it took me this long to find a healthy relationship with running, but better late than never. My key takeaway from my journey is to be kind to yourself. It is hard, especially if you are an athlete, to navigate a healthy outlook on working out. In the end, we only have one body and one mind. And from someone who has had times where my body has “failed” me, you need to respect what your body is telling you. Mindset matters! If any of this resonated with your own journey, please reach out and share with me. If you are on a similar journey and have questions, please reach out!