Why I’m a runner

Often when I tell someone I am a runner, they respond with something along the lines of: “But running isn’t really a sport.”

But actually, running really is a sport. In fact, to any skeptical athlete reading this: our sport is your sport’s punishment. Keep in mind we have no sidelines. We have no timeouts, no water breaks. Those moments, when you’re on the field, playing as hard as you can, exhausting all the breath from your lungs and the coach calls you to the sidelines, subs you out, calls a time out? We don’t have those.

Our sport is built off of that peak of pain that you feel out on the field. When that feeling comes, we know we’re doing something right. Those moments of pain are what we thrive off of.

Call me crazy, and I’d agree with you. You can’t not be crazy as a runner. You can always go faster; you can always push yourself harder.

I lack an appreciation of boundaries while running. I challenge them. I fight against them. I tell them I will win. On the cross country course, my boundaries begin to become more clear. They tempt me, but I prevail.

So why do I run? Why put my body and mind through such a tolling task; why endure something so stressful? I run because I am addicted to the sport. I have questioned it. I have wanted to give it up, to walk away from it, take up something less taxing.

I thought that enduring injuries this year – when the amount of running I did increased sizably from high school – would be a nice break for me. I would get to breathe, relax. I could not have been more wrong. Two weeks or so after I had been told that my femur had a stress reaction and I was out for the season, I profoundly missed lacing up my sneakers and jogging 10 miles along the banks of the Charles. I missed finishing a hard workout knowing that I had just grown that much stronger.

As a runner, one will find that the pain of the sport is countered by the inexplainable feeling of crossing the finish line. Dead, for sure, but powerful, fearless, unconquerable. And, best of all, surrounded by 34 other girls who underwent the same pain of wanting to give up, and thinking they couldn’t do it, yet who soldiered on and are now confronted by that similar feeling of euphoria that comes along with such a profound accomplishment.