On Being an Athlete
If you'd asked me 18 months ago if I'd ever attempt to run 50K, I'd have responded with my go-to quip: "I only run if I'm running away from something."
I never considered myself an athlete. Or, more accurately, I didn’t consider myself an athlete until recently. I didn’t understand sports when I was a kid. The “cool kids” did sports. I watched the cross-country runners and skiers in high school and wondered if it might be genetic trait which allowed you to do such things. I was a dancer, but I didn’t think of it as athletic. That is, until I stopped dancing. Around my sophomore year in college I set dance aside and it was then I realized that I needed to start … exercising.
But. Exercising. What IS that?
Over the years, I went through a myriad of things. Those things you see on TV, you know… like, the GYM. To my profound shock, and with a massive case of imposter syndrome, I even found myself playing on an indoor soccer team for a few years. I tried running once or twice, only to feel mortified as my face turned so red it appeared as though I’d certainly have a cardiac arrest. I watched my sister run her first marathon, bike hundreds of miles, hike with a heavy pack, and thought: “I suppose she got that exercise gene and I got the Irish skin. Seems fine. I’ll focus on music, instead.”
When I discovered Crossfit in 2017, a lot of things changed.
But ... RUNNING. Every Crossfit workout with a running component, I would lament: “I hate running.” I would see runners on trails when I’d hike, and wonder: “Why would you do that? What a great way to ruin a hike.”
Then the pandemic hit. The gym closed. And one day in March of 2020, I said to myself: I guess I better figure out this running thing. I got my first pair of running shoes, and those people I passed on the trails? I became one of them. I even read “Born to Run”, the end of which moved me to tears, and considered moving to Mexico to find my running ancestors. Luckily, I slept on that one. (I did get rid of SO many shoes after I read that book, though.)
But, still. I didn’t feel like an athlete. I wondered if there was some thing that would change that.
Then, on one of our many hikes in the summer of 2020 in Alaska, Martha looked at me and said: “What do you mean you’re not an athlete? I’ve never understood the way people use that word. You’re a runner if you run. You’re a swimmer if you swim. You’re an athlete if you do athletic things.”
That was the day it hit me. Being an athlete is a mindset. It doesn't matter if you're running, hiking, biking, walking, swimming, dancing or doing yoga. If you are doing something that challenges you physically; that feels hard in way that you must ask your mind to tell your body: "keep going!"; that physically encourages you to be persistent, humble, and vulnerable ... you are an athlete.
Fast forward to last weekend. In unprecedented heat, intense sun, no shade and with an insane amount of climbing, I found myself staring at my first 50K trail race. Around mile 12, I was fairly certain that it wasn’t my day to finish. The heat and intense sun were humbling, and my pace wasn’t likely to get me to the 40K cutoff in time. But, I was determined to get to mile 15 and make a final decision there.
With her amazing sense of humor, the universe took care of the decision for me when I went off the course somewhere between miles 12 and 15. By the time I realized it and backtracked (I did actually GO 15.6 miles), the course flags had been removed (which I didn't know at the time) and I bought myself a ride with ski patrol. Talk about humbling.
Martha also made the choice to stop at mile 15 due to heat and sun. Jesse finished the entire course in a blaze of glory (he was actually a sweaty, dehydrated, exhausted heap after almost 11 hours in the crazy heat, but it was glorious in its own way) and the thrill of supporting him across the finish line was one of the happiest moments of the day. (That's also something wonderful about being an athlete.)
Other highlights of the weekend include: a horse loose on the trail that almost bowled Jesse over; an armed man blowing passed Martha on the trail alerting everyone that there was a bear in the area; and the AC in my car dying in Hermiston, where it was 112 degrees, which bought us an afternoon in a hotel followed by the hottest three hour drive in a wind tunnel surely born from the 9th circle of hell.
I couldn't have asked for better companions on this nutty journey, who spent breakfast the morning following the race talking about "next time", and I'm grateful for a life full of adventure and stories to tell.
It won't be the last time I attempt to run a 50K. And next time, I will finish. Because the beauty of being an athlete… of being a human… is that from each experience, you can choose to learn, and with each day you are given the gift of waking up, you have a choice to begin again.
