Dear Mary, Advice Column #1

Dear Mary,

For the past ten years I have always enjoyed running, while not my best it is my favorite part of triathlon.  I have always used running to kind of escape real life and enjoy the friendships it has brought me and the clear mind.  However I have never felt like a runner.  If people ask if I am a runner I am quick to say I am a swimmer or triathlete.  This makes no sense to me (Yes, I sometimes make no sense to my own self).  I can identify myself as a swimmer, cyclist and triathlete but no matter how much or how fast I run I can't identify with being a runner.  I feel like this inability to indenitify myself as a runner hurts my confidence when I toe the stating line of a run race.  When I toe the line of a run race I do not have the confidence to say to myself "I got this" like I do the other sports.  I want and feel like I need that confidence and same agressive style to be truly successful at running.  Please tell me the running secret!

Sincerely,

Wanna be Runner  

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Dear Wanna be Runner,

The other day I was skimming through updates on Face Book. A friend had posted an inspirational quotation about running on his page. 

What defines you as a runner isn't how many miles you've run or how fast you run. What defines you as a runner is the decision to lace up your shoes, get out the door, and run. 

My first thought was Oh! Just for Wanna Be Runner! There it is!

But then I thought... Oh PLEASE. What bull. I find it interesting how often I find a quotation like that at first inspirational, and then, practically in the next moment, I find it hollow.  I'm not just a runner because I lace up my shoes and head outside to run. I very MUCH think that the miles I've accrued and the pace at which I run defines me as a runner! And it defines you as one too, Wanna Be Runner, even if you don't feel like you can define yourself as such--as a true runner--as a runner who deserves to be defined as a runner.

Although I found the quote hollow it did get me to think about how we define ourselves, and also how we allow our perceptions of what the outer world believes about us to define us. This, as you know, is something I've written about many times; it's a real obsession of mine. How do I define myself with and without the labels I have used to describe myself--mother, teacher, triathlete, reader, writer? How does the world view me, and is my definition of myself in line with how the world perceives me?

 So I totally get your problem, Wanna Be Runner. I totally get how you can define yourself first as a swimmer, cyclist and triathlete, and not at all as runner, even though you spend a lot of time running and have run for many years. I get it because how we define ourselves often has little to do with what we actually DO on a daily basis, and more to do with who we have been, who we hope to be, and who (we believe) the outer world says we are.

I remember when I first started running I did not own a running bra. I also didn't own running shoes. I decided one day that I would try running... and as I ran it occurred to me. Hmmm. It is certainly not comfortable running in this under-wire bra. And when I got home from my 9 minute jaunt I noted that the skin trapped underneath the underwire had been rubbed raw. It was my first experience with chafing. What did women do about this? And then there was the problem of shoes. I knew at once that the very old tennis shoes I had used for this inaugural run would not suffice if I were to take up running in earnest.

 I asked my mother soon after for a running bra and running shoes as a Christmas present. (Being a rather poor college student at the time, I didn't not have the means to buy such things with my own meager savings.) She got me a pair of Reeboks which she learned from the clerks at Lamey Wellahan were designed for running, and an extremely unattractive, white, grannyish bra that fit more like a girdle than anything I had worn before or have worn since.  I wore those shoes and that ugly, granny-ish bra for a full year before I invested in another bra and another pair of running shoes. I'm not sure I realized at that point that runners replaced their shoes often, or that real runners had many more than ONE running bra.

Do you remember, Wanna Be Runner, your first running bra? Do you remember your very first pair of bona fide running shoes? And where are they now? Do you remember your first run--the run you took before you became a runner? Do you remember how, early on, you couldn't escape the shin splits so common to those who have just taken up running? Do you remember the very first time you ran more than 3 miles and realized, DEAR GOD, I just ran 3 miles? Do you remember? Do you remember finishing your first 5k and the feeling you had that WOW! I can do this! I ran a race!

I ask you to remember because I think your answer to whether you can consider yourself a runner resides in the answers. My guess is that you have now run through dozens and dozens of running shoes, and that you have far more than one, lonely, grannyish running bra. My guess is that not only do you have more than one lonely bra, that each week when you do the laundry you have to wash several running bras, because you have gone on far more than one silly run. My guess is that you have been irritated, at times, that your favorite bra is not clean for your long run, or that you've lamented that they have discontinued (as they always do) your very favorite pair of running shoes. My guess is that it was a long time ago that you realized, with joy, that you could actually complete 3 miles. My guess is that when you run 3 miles now, you think of it as a short little run.

The fact that you have this history with running means that if nothing else you have done your fair share of running. And isn't that, in the end, what should define you as a runner? That you have run, that you still run, that you will continue to run, barring catastrophe, in the future? That, just as the platitude says, you lace up your shoes and run out the door? You have done that for years--you have accrued miles and miles and miles. Yes, Wanna be Runner, there is no doubt you're a runner.
 But it seems that what is more at issue here is not whether you are a runner, which you are, but whether you a runner who feels she deserves to define herself as such.

And so you must ask yourself, what would it take, in your mind, for you to DESERVE to be defined as a runner? What kind of speed does it require? What kind of mileage per week? Do you need to be a person who can run a 5k in a certain amount of time? Do you need to be a person who has run a marathon? A person who has earned a BQ? What, when asked whether you are a runner, is CAUSING you to recoil and then not allow yourself to say--Why yes! I am!

Perhaps you are thinking, but that's just it! I don't know why I do not allow myself to say I am a runner -- to believe I can run! But it's in there, Wanna Be Runner! Somewhere, at some point, you got in that head of yours a particular definition of what a runner is and should be. You are holding yourself to that standard, even if you currently can't even say what that standard is. You are holding yourself to that standard and it is sucking the energy out of your otherwise confident racing self. You are taking away your running power by not granting yourself the status of runner--a status you can only earn by meeting the standard you have in your head.

So the first thing you need to do is to figure out exactly what that standard is that defines you, at least in your head, as a runner or not. After you figure out what that is you have to decide, am I going to try to talk myself out of that standard, or am I going to try to SLAY that mofo of a standard? For me, the standard was running a marathon. I remember distinctly sitting in my bedroom in my little apartment on Nottinghill Road in Brighton thinking, Now, if I could run a marathon.... THEN I would be real. I would be a real runner. If I could run a marathon I would be the real deal.

It took me several more years before I did run that marathon. I ran Boston as a bandit in the spring of 1997.  I remember how astonished I was every time I did a long run leading up to Boston that I had actually made it that far---10 miles, 14, 20. But it was not until I crossed the finish line of the race that I actually believed I could run that far--that I could be a person who ran 26.2 miles.

I also remember that after the race I felt strangely unsettled. I had done it! I had run 26.2 miles! I WAS a person who WAS a runner! But yet... I was still me. I was the same Mary I had always been. My friends and family, my boyfriend (Andy) who had run the final miles of the marathon with me, all viewed me as .... Mary. Just Mary.  I had not magically transformed. I did not wear a label that said, LOOK! I am a person who can run a MARATHON!

And then I knew... I hadn't run that marathon so that OTHERS would view me as a runner. Or maybe I had--but others, especially those close to me, would not think of me differently if I ran a marathon, or two, or ten. I would still be... Mary. I had run that marathon to show me that I was a runner. I had to do it to prove to myself that I had it in me. I had to slay that mofo of a standard. And then I would allow myself to call myself a runner. Only then.

Is there something like that for you, Wanna be Runner? Is there a standard you need to conquer before you allow yourself to define yourself according to your running? Because the secret to running, which I think you already know, is to believe yourself a runner. In my eyes, and in the eyes of others, you already are one. But what will it take for YOU to believe you are one? My advice is to figure that out. Figure that out, and then go for it. Figure that out, conquer it, and then return to the starting line, knowing that you are the real deal. Go out and prove that you are the REAL DEAL--the real deal that, ironically, you already are.