Reflection: My Marathon Body

Gratitude in a time of pain

I am a runner.

Though I started running in high school and never stopped, it would take me nearly a decade before I thought of myself as a runner. It would be even longer before I could make a public declaration like the one above.

My ownership of this identity began on a five-mile run along the Kauai coastline with my best friend. She was training for yet another marathon, a race I informed her I could never do.

“Of course you could,” she said. “You just have to believe that you can.”

They were the right words from the right person at the exact right time. I came home and immediately signed up for my first marathon.

I fell in love with the race. It was brutal. The training was worse. But I fell in love nonetheless. So much so that I’ve done a marathon every year since. Up until last week, I was training to run another.

Then everything changed.

I got injured. Badly enough to make training instantly stop and to necessitate conversations about when or if I’ll run again.

It’s disorienting to have your plans change so suddenly. Disorientation gives way to panic when the mechanism you use to cope with hardship is no longer available. I’ve been a mess. Last week I found myself in a spiral and leaning on my other coping mechanism: writing.

Page after page filled up as I poured out emotions. There was a lot in there, but most of it was grief. It felt like an odd emotion for the (hopefully) temporary loss of a hobby. But when I dug into it more I realized that running marathons isn’t just a pastime, it’s an experience that has healed me.

In this time of physical and emotional pain, I want to redirect my grief to gratitude for all that running has done for me. I hope that I’m just momentarily stepping away from something I love (a practice I’ve never been good at), but no matter what comes, the lessons of running will remain.

So, if you’ll permit me, I want to tell you how running marathons changed my relationship to my body.

Before marathons, running was mostly an efficient way to burn calories. It was an enjoyable way to lose or maintain weight.

Falling in love with running started when I had children. After carrying them, giving birth and breastfeeding, I marveled, for the first time since my own childhood, at what my body could do, not how it could look. Yes, I had gained weight and ballooned in places I never imagined, but those were such small things when measured against the literal miracle all that change wrought.

It was in this state of reverent awe that my best friend found me in Kauai. If marathons depended on belief, there was no time like this one to fuel me.

Despite my years of running, I began training with a healthy dose of humility. Your first marathon is an exercise in asking things of your body you never have before with zero proof that you can do it. All you have is this crazy dream and your own wild hope that it can come true.

My body did what I asked of it. I started to rack up more miles in one run than I’d typically do in a week. As I did, a familiar voice crept in. This voice counted calories burned and tallied them against calories consumed. Surely, it said, you’ll lose so much weight while you train. How could you not, with all this cardio?

About halfway through the eighteen weeks of training I stepped on the scale, prepared to be astonished. I had not lost a pound. At first I was confused, then frustrated. I sat with that feeling a long while.

Even though I was mad at it, my body kept showing up for me. I had a hard time returning the favor. All my flawed programming around beauty standards told me to restrict calories. I wanted to lose weight, so I thought I needed to eat less. The trouble was, when I ate less, I ran slower. Sometimes I’d even have to stop running because I was lightheaded from lack of fuel. It was then that the goal of completing the race became more important than the desire to lose weight.

So, I begrudgingly ate. A lot. My mile times got faster and covering long distances wasn’t just attainable, it was fun. I settled into a détente with my scale and vowed not to look at it again until after the marathon.

Then race day came. I ran 26.2 miles through the rolling hills of Napa, California. It was hotter than I expected. I didn’t bring enough water. At one point, I was so dehydrated that I was sweating salt. My muscles cramped. My lungs burned. But I did it. I ran across the finish line and sobbed in the arms of the woman who first told me to believe.

I cannot properly articulate the sense of accomplishment that came over me. I was more drained than I had ever been before, yet I felt invincible. Sure, runners high is a real thing, but what I experienced that afternoon was more like true empowerment. It was almost exactly the way I felt after giving birth, but this time, I had done an incredible thing just for me. This accomplishment was mine alone and there was something so intensely glorious about that.

The next day, I was gingerly dressing (sore muscles now had a new meaning) and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I had never seen my legs — a body part I’d always wished was thinner — so sculpted. My arms were thicker than ever before, but now had clear muscle definition. I stared at my half-naked form a long time then whispered to myself, “I am a marathon runner.”

The body I saw in the mirror was strong, not slim. It was capable, not light. The body I once deprived and punished had shown up miraculously to give me the greatest emotional gift I’d ever received. In that moment, I didn’t care what my body weighed or even how it looked. I cared what it could do.

I have never lost that feeling. Since that day, I have been continually humbled by my body’s capabilities. I prioritize giving it fuel to enable its potential. Do I still have lingering body image issues? Of course. I’m a woman who came of age in the 2000s, after all. But what has changed are my priorities.

I am no longer interested in forcing my body into a shape or size it’s not meant to be. I’d much rather treat it well so it can help me accomplish great things.

In the years since that life-changing moment, my body has done so much. For that I am deeply grateful. I know that I am lucky to have had the chance to push myself. It is a privilege I never took lightly. It’s a privilege that I am even more aware of now.

As I stare down the barrel of a very long road to recovery, I am trying to remember the lessons of that first marathon. I will honor my body and give it what it needs. Right now that’s rest. Someday soon it will be effort. Eventually it will be grace. I will miss its magical ability to transmute my pain into joy through movement, but I can give it time to heal.

This all began because I believed that I could astound myself. I still do.

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Here at Heartfelt Fiction, I mostly share, well, fiction. Even if a story is written in the first person, it’s a fictional point of view. But every now and then, I want to tell the story of my own life. Thus, the Reflection series. These are little love letters to the people in my life or the moments that matter most. If you never want miss one, be sure to subscribe.