“Just a runner…”
I am at mile 5 ish or so. A downward trajectory before the mega uphill that informs me, I’m basically home. I call it Mordor-the hill I must scale before I have that delightful reward of falling over the doorstep into my house. Seems fitting considering I live on a volcano.
I pass by a woman pushing a Jeep brand wagon stroller-one of those cool expensive ones that seem to be really in with bougie crunchy parents at the moment often spied at farmers market and hip family activities in public spaces. “That is no child in there,” I think breathlessly to myself, “tis a tiny purse dog of a sort”. My assessment is correct, she has an old chihuahua in the wagon and a second, beautiful Pomeranian walking alongside it. The kind that looks like it would be the head cheerleader in a Bring it On film from the 2000s-all shiny, groomed highlighted hair unnaturally straightened with a pink bow telling me that they don’t usually accept emo girls like me on the team because they are winners and I a loser but damn does my gymnastics background KNOCK them out of the park :P
As I slowly hobble to overtake, the Pomeranian freaks the fuck out losing its shit barking at me. I startle while the older lady dog mama hushes it saying in a soothing tone “shhhh dear it’s just a runner”
A runner. Me.
Running has never been easy for me…I suspect it never will be. I am one of those immediately sweating, red faced, heavy breathing types when I run. I don’t LOOK the part of a Lulu Lemon ambassador, all leggy and lean with that perfect sheen of sweat that makes those beauties effervescent skin glow. I am short, I got violin hips, hip dips whatever they are called, a wobbly bum and triangle shaped thighs. My ankles like to cankle a tad, and I don’t wear cool brand name gear but an old pair of baggy shapeless shorts, the only pair I have found that don’t get gobbled up by my thighs, and whatever t-shirt I can find that’s clean and covers my butt and belly pooch just a little. I tilt a little from side to side when I run, I REFUSE to call it a waddle, and in the words of the great Baymax “I am not fast.” For years since I started running for mental health reasons I have been met with constant surprise and the usual roving eye assessment from others when I tell them I like to run and lift weights. “Oh you are a runner, you do yoga/crossfit/weightlift?” they say as they try to contain their surprise that this soft, bookish body of mine works out. I always clarify “oh no I mean I like to go for run but I am not like naturally a runner or athletic or anything.” Usually that gives them an out and all is well. They don’t have to look any further into themselves as to why they assumed someone who looks averagely normal doesn’t fit their expectation of a ‘fitness’ person and I don’t really have to self-analyse what I mean by a ‘natural runner’ because it’s all a little joke, a bit, a ‘aw she probably jogs but she doesn’t RUN run’.
Imposter syndrome is a plague and a curse and is something that seeps through all of our souls annihilating our ability to feel confident and content in who we are and how capable we are of doing and being. I am certain we have all been intimate with this sensation and I hate that I contribute to this weird social game, this facade, of discounting my own self and my own commitment in the face of an assumption or stereotype that others hold.
At the core of it I don’t believe in myself. What does it mean to be a ‘natural runner’? In my heart of hearts, I think I don’t claim the term because I, like others, am conditioned to assume athletic people look a certain way or smash certain goals. Since I don’t, I am not one of them.
Yet, I have run a half marathon. I am running a second in a couple of weeks. I have been consistently committed to running for about 5-6 years now. I have healed my mind and body from anorexia, and I have the incredible talent (if I do say so myself) of not getting bored for hours at a time while moving slowly in a forward motion. I moved my body with intention and lifted weights up until my third trimester of pregnancy when carpal tunnel and fluid retention destructified me. I’m not sharing these things as a means to brag but to draw attention to the fact that exercise used to be a tool of self-punishment and a brutal way to silence and shrink myself and now, I engage with movement joyfully. In this season of life, it is one of the only opportunities I have to get alone time as a parent. I crave it to connect with my thoughts and process a lot of the stress we are under in our family; it lets me feel powerful in my body and it is encouraging me to take up space in the world. When I run, I get fresh air, I feel the sun on my skin, I see the world in motion around me and I feel like I’m part of something bigger. So, the fact that the random dog lady called me a runner…why I think that’s pretty darn accurate, and I am proud of that fact.
I am tired of the social agreement we have all made to think and make less of ourselves because we don’t fit a pre-ordained mould as designed by those who are attempting to profit off of our sense of belonging or not belonging. When I run, I may not always be smiling, mostly I am grimacing and huffing/cursing to myself lol but I am exactly where I need to be for me and who I need to be. I hope dear readers there is something in your life where if you feel that little niggling voice of self-doubt creeping in you can turn around to it and shout NO and embrace that you belong to you. Your power is in your own your choice and if you feel like you belong to something because it frees you or leaves you feeling alive then you belong. Likely to all of us on the outside looking at you we see you for what you are even if you don’t. Someone worth celebrating.
Tomorrow I run my longest run of my half training before the run in two weeks. Pray for me I am nervous as fuck.