Expectations, Doubts and a New Identity
By Betsy Lee
The redness of this track paints my shoes.
I kept repeating this to myself. It was my mantra, my pep talk. The red rubber that covers the track has stained the sides of my most beloved piece of apparel. This was my house. I trained here for three years and this culminating race was nothing more than a glorified practice.
I told myself this. It wasn't true.
The buses had arrived. Athletes from conference schools spilled out of them like ants, colonizing my home. They laid their blankets under the stands where I used to reflect after practice. They ran in the lanes where my team has sweat and groaned and thrown up. Their parents and friends filled the stands. It felt like a takeover.
Workers placed the awards stand at the center of the football field. My friend Danny Burns manned the microphone, calling out winners and announcing upcoming heats. His words were a strange comfort to me, a very loud and familiar voice in the midst of all the chaos.
I tried to stay calm, tried not to make too much out of the upcoming race. But it was all I thought about.
In the upcoming hours I had so much to lose. After 14 years of competitive running, I had come to define myself as an athlete. But, in a few hours, I wasn't going to be one anymore. I wasn't sure what I would become.
This was my last chance to be a success.
In the back of my head, there lived two children, only a year apart in age.
There was the 13-year-old optimist who ran a 5-minute mile and firmly believed that she would walk into an Olympic stadium and walk out with a medal.
She thought I would find victory at the conference meet. Even though I'd been sick, my lungs filled with thick white mucus, she thought my legs would find superhuman strength: that a 4:30-mile would just come out of me and I would go off to the NCAA national track meet ranked one of the best in the country.
Then there was the 14-year-old pessimist. She brought to my attention all that I had to fear. "Your parents are coming and they expect you to win," she said with delight. "Everybody else is faster than you. You'll end up in an ambulance."
I started running competitively at 8. My parents decided it was time to get me involved in track when they caught me timing laps around the house. During the first year of competition, my idea of success was finishing the 400-meter dash without getting the pity clap.
But I loved it. Even the diagnosis of asthma didn't dissuade me from pursuing the sport. I loved the sweat, the heat and the feeling that my body was being used in a way it was designed to be used. Even then, I felt that running was animalistic. It is pure and primal, something all mammals do at one point or another. Running requires no bats, sticks, balls or any other type of special equipment. All runners need is the sidewalk or the dirt or the grass and a pair of good shoes. Some people don't even need those.
At the end my first season, I won a medal. It was just a thin piece of cheap metal, tinted in bronze, but I couldn't keep my eyes off it after I descended the awards stand. I took pictures of it on the car ride home, holding it up to the window. The blurry photographs from second grade serve as a reminder of the euphoria I felt when I rounded the track and barely earned third place.
But I didn't need a reminder. The feeling became part of my blood.
From that moment on, I hated to lose and I didn't do it much. When I ran, my thoughts were possessed with winning. In practice, I ran to beat my teammates. Alone on the street, I ran to beat bikes, cars, anything I could catch. And in meets, I had no mercy. If a competitor dared to run alongside me during a race, I would surge ahead. When I didn't feel like running, the memory of winning pushed me out the door.
At 10, I went from being a sprinter, where my success was limited, to being a mid-distance runner. And I loved to lead. With the pop of the starting pistol, I sprinted to the front. It didn't matter if boys or older kids were in my race. The empty lane stretching out in front of me compelled me to keep it that way. I didn't want to see the competition until they were just past the finish line, panting and holding their knees.
My confidence level grew, but so did my fear.
The more you have, the more you have to lose.
At 14, I expected to win and I wasn't doing it. Thus, my pessimistic voice was born. My body had changed. I was no longer the bone-thin, wiry creature who took one step when everyone else took two. My waist had thickened. My hips had widened.
My parents and coaches wondered what was wrong with me. They talked to me about my diet. They wondered about my lack of motivation. And I didn't understand. Neither did the 13-year-old optimist in my head. She expected perfection.
I became so nervous before races that I would feel like crying and throwing up at the same time. My lack of success ate me up, yet my expectations remained high. Running wasn't any fun anymore.
I couldn't quit though. I thought about it several times. But the dedicated 13-year-old wouldn't let me. She still believed in the future she'd set up for herself. Besides, people called me a runner. My junior high school classmates voted me most likely to be an Olympic athlete. What was I, if I wasn't a runner?
When my brain was moving at lightning speed and all the chaos and worries of a type-A personality were dominating my existence, running gave me peace. It stopped the constant stream of information and provided me with a silence all my own. When my feet slap the pavement, I am only aware of my body.
But I didn't know how to handle not being the best.
Throughout high school I struggled. There was always someone better than me. Though I won two state championships in the 4x800 meter relay, the little girl inside me wasn't satisfied. For a while, I stopped paying attention. Instead, I tried to focus on what I was achieving.
When it came to choosing a college, the optimist spoke up and I listened. I was offered scholarships at Division II universities, but I turned them down. She said I could do better and I believed her. I tried out for the University of Kansas cross-country team. When I made the team, she applauded me and, for a while, we became one. Her irrational dreams became my goals.
I worked out twice a day, sometimes three. I battled my asthma and won the fight to remain calm when it acted up. My body became leaner than it had ever been. I made the traveling team. Sometimes at practice, I beat the girls on scholarship. My body fat was down to 12 percent and I could beat guys in my dorm at arm wrestling. I ignored my mother's worries about my declining weight. I turned down my roommates' entreaties to go out. My coach was a jerk, but it didn't matter.
I was going to be a champion.
But I was too tired to be happy. My legs hurt so bad that I would lay in my bottom bunk and cry. My roommates made fun of me when I tried to walk because my cramping legs forced me to limp. I was too tired to party, too tired to do homework and, often, too tired to walk to dinner.
And then, when it all seemed possible, I got hurt. During my first race with the traveling team, I stepped on a rock and fell down an embankment. I felt a pop in my left hamstring and then an unbearable burning. The heat trickled down my leg and pooled around my sock. I had torn muscles in my hamstring. "You could still win," the 13-year-old said to me. Dirt clung to my sweat. I rose, determined, stupid.
I finished the race, but my running career at KU was over.
The 13-year-old lost her power that day. Her radical idealism, which controlled my every action for two months, lost its stronghold. We were no longer one, sharing a common motivation. I simply couldn't run. It was a fact and there was nothing she could do about it. My pessimistic voice lost its power, too. There wasn't anything to complain about. There were no new tests to fail. For the first time since I was 8, there was silence.
When I healed, my inclination was to continue running, but the quiet had taught me something. Running had made me happy, but in my ultra-competitive mode I had lost my ability to rationalize. So I left Lawrence in search of balance. I needed a place where my dream of being a college athlete could be achieved but where I wouldn't lose myself in the process.
The decision to transfer gave my running purpose again. At Northwest Missouri State, I found the perfect balance between competition and fun. At KU, I hated our long runs because of the tense silence. At Northwest, my teammates and I talked throughout our 10-milers. Our dialogue ranged from relationship issues to philosophy and religion. I used the time to vent about the strains of working in the newsroom.
Though my running at Northwest was hampered by three surgeries for ovarian cysts and a yearlong bout with mono, I thrived on competition. The 13-year-old girl inside me gave me a pat on the back when I ran a 4:53 mile my sophomore year, five seconds off the national qualifying mark. I didn't come close to that time again until the end of my senior season. I matched the 13-year-old's 5-minute mile and was sure I would improve.
But it didn't happen.
My last chance passed me by. I finished the final mile of my career in dead last, my wheezing audible from the stands. I walked off the track, air rattling in my lungs, panic in my chest and tears in my eyes.
What happened ? What happened? the little girl asked me.
The question resonated but it didn't mean anything. I already knew the answer. I gave in. I gave up. My stubborn streak had ended. And the athlete in me was lost.
I walked off the track alone after the conference track meet. I managed to hold back tears as I hugged my teammates and my coach. But when I got in the car the torrent was unleashed. I gripped the steering wheel and sobbed. My shoulders shook. Fourteen years of sacrifice came pouring out of me, stinging my sunburned face. I thought I would be ready for this moment, but I wasn't.
I lost a part of myself that day in May. But I didn't get a chance to reflect. I was too busy with life. I went to my younger brother's graduation, spent time with friends I wasn't going to see and danced at my older brother's wedding. I didn't notice the loss because my teammates weren't running either. Every year we took the month of May off.
I left for Florida to attend a six-week journalism fellowship with The Poynter Institute. I had every intention of running each day. To hold myself accountable, I made plans to run the Chicago marathon. When I moved into a family friend's boat, I scouted possible routes.
But something was missing. I couldn't get myself out the door. My running shoes sat neglected on the shelf, next to my high heels. Then my lack of motivation began to affect my body.
The physical features of a runner are easy to distinguish and they are also a source of great pride. We complain about our huge thighs, enlarged calves and lack of breasts, but in reality we wouldn't change a thing. The muscles are grown from dedication and our meager chests reflect an overall health.
And now my legs were losing definition. The physical signs of my former commitment were fading.
In the one of the cabins on the boat, I stood in front of the full-length mirror and pinched the side of my growing love handles. I tried to count how long it had been since I had run.
Four days? Five? I can't even remember.
It's a small layer of fat. Maybe one-fourth of an inch, but it still bothers me. It jiggles when I walk.
I turned to the side, examining my body from a different angle. My frown deepened, forming two creases between my eyebrows. I am definitely going to have a wrinkle there someday.
What was I if I wasn't a runner?
The same question that prevented me from quitting in my teen-age years plagued me as a college graduate.
I tried to reassure myself. I was investing my energies in a worthwhile goal. I was becoming a journalist.
But the dreams I had as a young girl remained unfulfilled and they haunted me.
The 9-year-old who dreamed of bigger things while in the stands at the Junior Olympics turned away from me. The 13-year-old who compared her times to those of college athletes didn't understand my new aspirations. The 19-year-old who worked her ass off at KU thought I was a failure.
Every time I think about going running now, I come up with excuses. It's too hot. I've had a long day. It's too much effort to walk the dog, pen her up the boat and embark. I always think I don't have enough time.
When I do run the motive is not about the love of the sport. I ran once to explore the area, something I always do when arriving in a new place. I ran another time because I ate two "deadline doughnuts." I ran because I didn't want my former teammates to notice a change in me.
I told myself to run just for me, but somewhere between 8 and 23 I forgot how to do that. Throughout those 14 years I wasn't running for other people, but I wasn't running for me either. I ran for the goals I had set a long time ago. I ran for the 13-year-old. And without her I didn't know how to be a runner.
A new definition of what it means to be an athlete has eluded me throughout these six weeks. And I'm not sure how find it. There should be something between the chiseled abdomen I once had and the flab I am afraid of. There has to be a way to move past the goals I didn't achieve and find happiness in the ones I did. There must be a place beyond my competitive spirit where I can run with the wind in my hair and feel whole.
I just have to find it.
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