I do truly believe some people are born runners. But I also believe there are what I call “born again runners,” meaning that people are born runners in their second lives. For some, a second life begins after a divorce, or in college, or after giving birth, or maybe after watching a really kick ass documentary. Not all people want to be runners, even if they have the natural talent for it, but it’s important to me that everyone realizes that they can be.
Now that I’ve competed in several races, from 10 to 150 milers, and now that I can count my running journey in years, rather than months, I sometimes worry that new people I meet think I’ve always been like this. I’m not being modest when I say that I was not athletic growing up. I remember my first life, when I was intimidated by my high school varsity classmates, when I felt nauseous just thinking about the mandatory sixth grade track meet, when the word “athlete” seemed so far away. Though I was a super skinny child, I remember watching the numbers on the scale slowly and steadily climb as I made my way through adolescence, one (or three) cokes at a time. When I started college in Boston, cokes were replaced with beers, late night pizza, and not enough sleep. I remember one semester I battled a cold nearly 18 out of 20 weeks. How funny that I didn’t think there was a underlying cause of this problem.
I don’t know if you remember, but Nike came out with the first version of Nike +, which included a little sensor you put in your running shoe that would tracker your mileage. I remember buying the shoes, going to the campus gym, and struggling to run one or two miles on the treadmill. I think a few times I got to three miles and thought I was really making progress. Eventually, I moved to Austin to go to the University of Texas, where the (unbelievably good) food and partying continued even more. It’s funny now when I think back, but I used to go to the bars Wednesday through Saturday nights…I have no clue how I did it.
Anyway, this is the part of the story where I tell you that I read a life changing book or met an inspiring role model and picked up my shoes and started running and never looked back. But here’s what really happened…
I'm going to tell you a secret. I think three people in the world know it. When I was a junior at Texas, I signed up for the Color Run - a 5k race where participants throw neon colored powder on each other. It’s the ultimate fun run, not at all to be taken seriously. I had signed up in January for the March race, as part of a student organization I was part of. I had intended to train for three months to be ready, but my, uh, lifestyle had gotten in the way. Anyway, the race weekend approached, accompanied by terrible thunderstorms. The night before the race, the Color Run sent an email saying that they would make a call in the morning about whether or not the race would continue. Sure enough, at 5 am I received an email that the race was still on. Here’s the secret - I didn’t go. I didn’t go because I was afraid…of a 5k.
I told my roommates later that day that I didn’t go because I was afraid of getting injured on a muddy course. After all, a twisted ankle would’ve really made it difficult to walk from bar to bar. It’s funny now, thinking about all of the terrain I like to run on - mud, sand, rocks. I’ve sprained my ankles so many times I think they are incapable of being sprained anymore! And nowadays, I’m just starting to find a groove 5k into my run.
That’s the thing about hindsight. Sometimes you look back and you can see yourself so clearly but also wonder who on earth you were and what on earth you were thinking. That’s why I classify myself as a born again runner. I have no idea who that girl was - and I was her for like twenty-two years.
These days, I’m in bed between 9:30 or 10. I still quite enjoy drinking beer or having a couple glasses of wine while watching Saturday Night Live, but they are things I look forward to after a good run…they taste so much better. The physical weight, like the old habits and less becoming personality traits, have slowly sloughed away like old bark on a tree. I don’t really know when the transformation or rebirth happened but I think it happened slowly and when I wasn’t looking.
I still have never returned to complete a Color Run, but you never know. After all, there’s a first time for everything, and it can be whenever the fuck you want.