Runner's Corner: Chasing the Runner's High

In the cold predawn, I wake up before my alarm—as in, two hours before my alarm. After some fitful tossing and turning, I realize that I will not be getting back to sleep any time soon. A seven-mile run looms before me, and I will have to do it on just a few hours of sleep.

The biggest battle of the day is sometimes that moment where I try to talk myself out of bed into the cold darkness of the bathroom to put my running gear on. By the time I am done setting up the team water stop, I am just beginning to not hate the fact I am awake. I may even catch myself feeling hopeful as I watch packs of runners pass me on the road back to our team meeting point. I imagine myself to be more like them—faster and more graceful.

But this particular Saturday will be the worst run I’ve had in a while. All runners have bad days I tell myself as I struggle to keep moving. I am on a new diet. I am PMSing. I am tired. I give myself these excuses to explain why I am dead-legged, out of breath and just plain miserable. Anything to avoid the truth: I am out of shape.

I am miserable the entire time, and also very self-conscious about it because I am running with a team. Not only that, but I am supposed to be mentoring this team. I am supposed to be upbeat and tireless with unending energy—not this huffing and puffing mess. Luckily, the team is not as hard on me as I am with myself, and the running camaraderie of the morning helps ease the intense disappointment I feel about my own sorry performance.

After four years as a runner, I am in the middle of a slump. I can go six weeks without running and really not miss it at all. (I know—don’t tell my running friends!) Which means that lacing up my running shoes has been quite the battle lately.

I miss how I feel after a run. I miss the sense of accomplishment. I miss the fitness. But I don’t know that I miss the act of running. And slogging through a seven-mile run of shame certainly doesn’t help matters.

Of course, I am a stubborn soul. Just ask my husband. And so, I refuse to give up so easily. In fact, my entire running career has been an exercise in stubbornness more than anything else. I have spent more time as a runner injured than not.

So the next day, a sunny-and-60s Sunday, I decide a short solo run will set things right. And I am wrong. Still dead-legged, I spend a very long hour fighting high winds and hills just to get four miles in. (Yeah, I know. Don’t remind me of my pace, as I am very aware of the math.)

After back-to-back disasters, I made the hard decision to defer a half marathon I was supposed to run in Houston this weekend. And then I went out and bought new running shoes just to confuse myself.

But one of the things I absolutely love about running is that you can only have so many bad running days before you are blessed with an absolutely wonderful one. 

I saw a quote once that I haven’t been able to find again, which said that there are no bad runs because you learn from them all, and the difficult ones make you stronger. (Imagine a quote much more poetic than this paraphrase.)

And today was an absolutely wonderful sunset run. The weather was my idea of perfect running weather—chilly and dry. It was short, it was fast (for me), and it was oh-so sweet. Most of all, it gave me hope. And it gave me a place to start again.

Runner's Corner: Running, You've Lost That Loving Feeling

At the start line with Wrath of the Tetons for the Grand Teton Relay

Anyone who has ever been sidelined by injury probably understands the new perspective you gain after a forced hiatus from an activity you love. You realize how much you took for granted, and you long for just a few minutes back out on the track (or the field) doing what you love. So when I was given the go-ahead to run again after six months on the bench, I promised myself—no more excuses. There wasn’t going to be a day too rainy or windy or cold to put my feet on the pavement.

As a direct result, 2013 has been a big running year for me. And no, I didn’t PR. In fact, ever since I suffered a stress fracture last year, my running times just haven’t been the same. And considering I am a Corral K girl to begin with, that fact has been more than a little discouraging.

But it has been a year of several “firsts.” My first time fundraising and mentoring with Team in Training, my first 25K, my first midnight race, and my first 180-mile relay. Then last month, in Monterey, California, I completed my tenth half marathon. It was my second time running Big Sur, and it remains my favorite race to date.

Midway through the Big Sur half in November

Those of you who read my Why I Run: A Novice Runner’s Manifesto back in 2010, may remember that I have only been running since 2009. When I completed my first half, the Rock n Roll Mardi Gras, in 2010, I barely limped across the finish line and swore never to do it again. But then something happened, and for some unknown reason, I kept running.

It took me a long time before I was even comfortable calling myself a runner. Whenever my newfound hobby came up in conversation, and friends would tell me how much they hate running, I would say, “Oh I do too, but....”

But what? But when I ran, I felt stronger. First it was just one mile and then one loop around the park and then five miles and ten. And then I believed I could take on other insurmountable things in my life. I turned myself from an undisciplined, nonathletic non-runner into an undisciplined, nonathletic runner. And it felt great.

So last week, when the words “burnout” passed my lips, I felt ashamed. The idea that I don’t want to run seemed impossible to me after this year. In fact, any year but this year makes more sense. And yet, there it is. I have lost my desire to run, which is very inconvenient, since I am supposed to be running the Aramco Houston Half for the fourth time in less than five weeks.

Back in August, during the second leg of the Grand Teton Relay, I had a crisis of faith. I had expected to start later in the day, and so I shivered in the cold, predawn in my shorts and t-shirt waiting for our teammate at the transition point. I had only about an hour of sleep, and the sun was just peaking out over the mountains ahead. My dead Texas legs were going to have to carry me a 1,000 feet up to the Targhee Outlook (elevation 7961’), but I didn’t know how.

I cursed my decision to run the relay, and the person who decided the only girl and the only Texan should complete this monster climb, and then I cursed my decision to run at all, and probably at some point, my very existence. I was, in no uncertain terms, completely unprepared for that moment and for the existential angst that came with it. But eventually I sputtered and cursed my way to the top and to one of the most spectacular sunrise views I have ever seen … fueled by my own anger and stubbornness.

With my husband and uncle at Targhee Overlook

The questions from that climb are still hanging on me. Why do I run? I am not in better shape or faster than I was a year ago, so what am I doing? Is it just self-punishment or some sort of perverse willfulness? And is it possible for me to reconnect to the joy of that first sunny seven-mile run around Audubon Park where running and I first began our love affair?

Last year, my husband Richard bought me a necklace for my first Big Sur half. “Run” it says simply, and on the back is etched “Try Easy.” Try Easy is a mantra I adopted from a yoga teacher several years ago. It’s a reminder to embrace what is instead of fighting. Trying hard is hard work—it’s forced effort. Instead, why not adopt an attitude of ease and flow instead of wasting energy on forcing a result? The tap of the necklace on my chest as I run says, try easy, try easy, try easy.

Maybe that advice is just as valuable right now, with the necklace resting quietly with me in this moment of stillness.