Dear Running – letters from my heart

we all have pieces of our identity that drive us in different ways into the world. One piece of my identity was being an athlete, but more specifically, a runner. I have been running for 10 years of my life, and many decisions I made regarding how I interacted with certain things and certain decisions heavily depended on this piece of my identity. I think that in the ways we interact with our environment, its crucial to hone in on the pieces of ourselves that make us whole enough to advocate for ourselves. To know ourselves, and to love and accept ourselves can lead us to accept and advocate for others. That being said, there are pieces of us that evolve and grow into other forms, and can look different. How I have known myself as an athlete is passionate, hard-working, resilient, tough, persevering, compassionate and stubborn. These qualities I cultivated and grew during my time as an athlete continue to carry over to all the pieces of myself. In these letters to the piece of myself that is an athlete, I aim to grapple with how this part of myself is changing, and how that will affect how I move in the world and what I care about.

(Written on July 6, 2023)

Dear running, 

I have always had a complicated relationship with you. From the beginning i remember wanting to go faster and faster, and when realizing i had the talent to, i pursued the art of maintaining endurance and speed through the sports of cross country and track and field. 

You have been such a big part of my life, and i don’t know where i would be without you. You’ve caused me tremendous joy, laughter, friendship, longing, sting, pain, and remembrance. You’ve carried me through hard times, showing me the lighter things in life, and weighed me down with uncertainty and self-doubt. I love you running, but sometimes i hate you. 

I guess thats how it is with any relationship however, there can’t be always loving feelings all the time. But you’ve shown me how to persevere in the hardest of times, and showed me how important it is to never give up. Whether i take you as a lesson that applies to the rest of my life, there can always be analogy. But most importantly, i have grown so much as a person because of you. Through ups and downs in friendships, romantic endeavors and family struggles. 

I found you when i needed you and you showed me there was a lighter side to life. I could employ you when i was feeling down or constrained or when i wanted to feel confident or proud of myself. To give myself a talent to make me smile or cast away the bad feelings i had growing up in a tumultuous environment where anything could change in an instant. I could run in all the sports i played, but i secretly loved you the most. I will always remember the first ever practice i attended at AOS when the runners around me were all impressed and surprised by my talent, but i wasn’t. Because you have always been there for me when i wanted to be confident, you showed me how! 

But when i started using you in the sport, i lost side of why i loved you so much in the first place. I had you for myself and it wasn’t something to do with glory or fame or recognition (although i did like getting attention for it). It wasn’t ever something that i had to hype myself up to do. It was simply something I did. And I loved to race and feel the adrenaline and rush as I passed people and proved myself to myself. But as I grew older, it morphed into something else. 

After a while, I did not recognize you or myself anymore. I pushed the limits but did not view what it was doing to myself over time. I began to not use running for myself anymore but for others. I wanted fame, glory and all the attention i could get. I wanted validation from others and i loved the type of rush i could get from running. It was no longer something to free myself but something that had entrapped me into a cycle of highs and such lows that i wondered how i had gotten myself into the sphere of competitive running. 

If i could go back to a time in my life concerning you, it would be the time i ran a mile in michigan under 6 minutes for the first time wearing blue jeans. I would hug my little self and tell her that she was amazing just the way she is and to keep loving running as it is. Because as i am into a higher stage in my running career, i realize that it becomes so much more technical and so much more about numbers and the little things, when i used to just run free and not care about what happened afterwards. 

I am on a journey with healing my relationship with you running, and I know the path will not be straight and i will encounter many obstacles and doubts and slipping into bad habits sometimes, but i truly want to connect back to when I started it all. Fly told me that in order to connect back i need to reflect and run for the sake of running, which I have been trying to do. And sometimes i do slip and I do start to overthink and compare myself to others training. 

But when it all began, I did not even know the concept of training! Of course things are different and the situation of putting in the work is a real thing, but i want to be more light hearted about it. I want to learn to let go of the past and build for a better future that contains both of us in equal standing. And to gain back control over what happens between me and running. 

This summer has been a summer of growth so far and one that has made me reflect a lot and think about things that have happened to me over my entire running career. And there have been so many downs and ups. Where there is a lot of highs there are sure to be some lows, and I have definitely learned that. This low that i have experienced my freshman year had a particularly different sting, because of so many factors but mainly the fact that I had tried to use you to gain status and attention and friendship. And that was a mistake admittedly because friendships borne out of status and achievements are not true friendships. 

Running, i truly want to be great and I truly want to achieve many things in life regarding you. But more importantly i want to actually enjoy the journey and not get so hung up on the end. And I want to feel like you are a part of me but you are not me. 

I believe that I can learn to connect back to my roots and my beginning, because if i do not know where i came from, i will never reach my destination.

…….

(Written on July 7th, 2024)

Dear Running,

I haven’t addressed you from the deepest places of my heart in a long time. What you have symbolized to me and what you have done for me in actuality of touch, connection and senses has been so significant in my life. for my development and my safety. I wanted to tell you that on February 15th of this year, I decided to quit my collegiate track and field team and remove myself from the organized sport of running. With that, I disconnected myself from the action of running itself consistently for quite some time and in this note to you I hope to not only try to connect with you again, but to grapple with my own feelings of disconnect with myself.

because inherently, you have been such a large part of my identity that leaving, cold without a transitional period left me hanging on the precipice of a dream. The edge of a way of existence and thinking. Because no matter how disconnected to the action of running i felt towards the end of my days on an organized team, it was so ingrained within me that it regulated not just my body but my heart. And because of this, my heart was suffering.

Being on an organized team that did not align with my values regarding moral and behavioral support, as well as team culture began to navigate me in ways I did not hold in my heart at the beginning of our journey as I know that you felt. I am sorry that I didn’t fight for you more. For myself and for you. It is a not a sorry out of regret or wishing I had stayed on the team. It is a sorry out of mourning my dreams for us. I dreamed that we could spend time with each other every day and that we could gain community for us. It is a sorry out of putting you in a position to be harmed. for the essence of you to be harmed.

I did not hold a lot of joy in the days that I contemplated leaving my track team, and my sophomore year of college was the period of time I felt most lost. days stretched on not knowing how to feel clear in my mind and clinging to the hope that I would feel like myself again. But I realized that I was shutting off the other pieces of my life and giving you too much grief, hope, fear, excitement, too much pressure, anguish, expectation, longing and isolation. I isolated you in hope that you would flourish and elevate my existence by giving you all the attention in the world. But in this way, I only hurt you and myself. And I am sorry. I clung on to the dream long after I forgot what my dream was.

The truth is I miss you. And not for the purpose of glory, winning, or receiving accolade for what you would bring me. I miss having fun, feeling the rush of the wind and the crunching gravel under my feet. the rising sun and the feeling of moving out of a sluggish existence into an exuberant and alive feeling. I can do it! I miss that. I miss my dreams of making it to the big stage. Of us walking up together to the track and showing everyone what I was made of. I lost myself for a little bit there. But leaving behind the team I found myself again. I found my joy, my passion, my compassion, the things that I loved to think about and do. And with these unbridled and awakened pieces of my life I left unturned because of the sport, I cultivated emotion, and connection to myself. It might seem contradictory that I felt disconnected too but that is where you come in, running.

I want to heal the relationship I once had with running. I want to heal that piece of my identity and heart for myself. I want to heal it so that everything within me can feel okay.

It is really hard for me these days to address and think of you without feeling a tremendous sense of loss, but I’m trying I really am. And it’s a mess I know, but running taught me so many things that I hold dear in my life and that I am not ready to let go.

Just because I let go of my organized sports team doesn’t mean I have to let running go. But it means I have to work hard to heal my relationship and get to know myself again as a runner. With grace and with forgiveness and with vulnerability. I am ready to try.

…..

A continuation of my process to better understand myself and better understand the things that drive people in the world will allow me to truly advocate for myself and others.

Even if it may not seem so, everything is connected.

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