I’m sitting in the doorway of my garage, holding a beat up shoe, trying to dig up old memories. I feel kind of silly, sitting here, staring at a piece of muddy rubber, as if it holds the secrets to the universe. It has only been a few months since I wore it last. Yet, strangely, I feel almost no connection to the person who had once run mile after glorious mile in it.

I used to be a runner, you see. Not a jogger. Not a sprinter. Not one of those people who sweated out a few miles on a treadmill on Saturdays, listening to their I-phones, hating every minute of it. No, I had been an athlete, a competitor, an honest-to-god long distance runner. I had pushed my body to its limits and endured horrible pain just to get faster, to go farther. To compare my sport, my quest to the half-stumble of a soccer mom out for a 20 minute jog would have been sacrilegious. If I sound melodramatic or elitist here, it is intentional. The reason why I am having trouble reliving past memories, the reason why I am, at this very moment, sitting in my garage, contemplating going for my first run in months, is that I have come to the conclusion that, when I was a runner, I had been one delusional, obsessive, snooty bastard.

But let’s start at the beginning.
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My legs screamed. My lungs burned. I took another step and the whole world shook in defiance. The blackness had infected my vision, but I wasn’t conscious enough to notice. My mind was starved of oxygen, and had long ago lost the ability to think, to care, to question why, in God’s name, was I doing this to myself. I was vaguely aware that the end was up ahead, and threw everything I had into getting there, into ending my misery, as soon as possible.
“Nineteen-oh-one! Nineteen-oh-two! Nineteen- oh-three!”

I passed the finish line, but it felt more like crashing into a brick wall. As I collapsed forward, grabbing my knees, gasping for air, the blackness that had clouded my vision left me, along with the numbness that had kept me going those last few minutes. Now I could feel it in full: the awful suffocation of total oxygen debt, and the sickening spasms of my leg muscles. Volunteers pushed me along the finish shoot to make way for other runners. I stumbled along gasping for breath.

Two minutes later I was gorging on cookies, chatting enthusiastically with the junior who had finished just ahead of me.

“Good race?” I asked.

“Good race,” he agreed, “but those hills in the third mile really killed me.”

“I know! They were brutal.”
An awkward second passed. We were both high on adrenaline, and behaving like close friends despite knowing nothing about one another. He wasn’t even on my team.

“That was the first time I finished under twenty minutes” I enthused, “I think it was a fluke though”

He shook his head, “That’s the first of many for you. You’re damn fast for a freshman”

That’s where it all started, I guess. Praise. Nothing feeds the ego quite like it. It was for words like those that I would head out every day, for months on end, whether or not it was too hot or cold, even when I was tired or busy or stressed. On some level, I ran because I loved it. It made me feel strong and alive and free. But more and more, I ran to live up to some idealized version of myself. I wanted to be someone who was fast. Someone who had talent. Someone who was dedicated. And I thought I had found a way to be that person.

I had a great time the rest of the cross country season. I really did. Sure, it was hard work, but it was rewarding. Every day, I could go to sleep knowing that I had done something to improve myself. Even better, I had all of my friends on the team. We encouraged each other, challenged each other, ran our hearts out together. At the same time we joked, played, and goofed off every once in a while. Or at least they did. I was too dedicated, I took my sport too seriously to skip workouts or slack off. I was convinced that it was that extra bit of commitment that would allow me to, in time, accomplish things far greater than anyone else.

As fall came to a close, so did cross country. My friends ran the last race of the season hard, and walked away from it feeling accomplished, but excited for the end of the season and the extra free time it would bring. Not me. I wasn’t ready to stop improving myself. I didn’t want to let myself go back to being the couch potato I once was. Against the advice of my parents and friends, who told me to take some time off, to relax, I signed up for the winter training team. I had been warned by older runners that winter training was a brutal and seemingly endless three months, but I shrugged it off. I was committed, I was ready.

But, of course, I was wrong. I don’t know if it was the cold, the brutal workouts, or the absence of my friends, but I lost all motivation by mid-December. Each day, I would go to school, but my mind would be somewhere else, distracted, dreading that day’s practice. At first I just complained—so much so that my friends started getting annoyed at me—but I kept going to practices; to do anything less would have been to give up on that idealized version of myself I had been chasing for so long. Then I started making excuses. First, I was injured. Then I was sick, or I just wasn’t “feeling up to it”, or I was “too stressed”. After I missed the first couple practices, it just got worse from there. At some point, I was skipping more often than showing up. I hated myself for it, but it was just so much easier to just not go.

Things got bad for me for a while. I never quit winter training, I was too ashamed of myself to look my coach in the eye, but I simply stopped showing up. I would spend the two hours after school that I had previously spent training in a depressed, idle state; watching TV or lying in my bed, staring at the wall. I was convinced that I had given up on myself, that I had been put up to the test and failed. I stowed my running shoes in a corner of my garage in a fruitless attempt to hide my shame.

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Months had passed since then. It is May now, and I feel strange telling that story, almost embarrassed by my past self. You’re probably a bit taken aback by him, or confused, or just annoyed. I sure am. I want to smack him upside the head, tell him not to take himself so seriously, not to worry so much. I had been self-absorbed, obsessive, and overly serious. In my attempt to be “the best” I had isolated myself and made myself miserable, ultimately in vain.

But I couldn’t have been completely crazy. There’s still something to be said for pushing yourself, for the sense of accomplishment, progress, and pride that running gave me. It wasn’t all bad; I had had great times. Hell, there had been a time when I would go outside a run, just for the fun of it.

Which is why I’m here now, lacing up my running shoes for the thousandth time. No one’s watching me. No one will congratulate me when I get back. I don’t have a watch to check my pace, or anywhere in particular I plan to go. This run wasn’t going to serve any higher purpose, wasn’t going to transform me into a speedy superstar.

I’m going to run because it’s fun, and I don’t need any other reason.