When I was younger, running felt like some sort of punishment. Ms. Parr, my elementary school gym teacher, made my class run the mile a couple of times a year. I hated it. For some reason, we always ran the mile in the gym. This meant each student had to run around the gym 27 times. Since we were little and therefore not required of the responsibility to remember the amount of laps we needed to do, we were given 27 straws and we would drop one in a trashcan each time we finished a lap. The combination of running a mile in a tiny gym with 20 or so other kids and wearing jeans was torture. I hated running.
My relationship with running continued like this into middle school although it got a little better since we were allowed to change into shorts when we had to run the mile. I still thought having to run the mile for P.E. was stupid but I didn’t mind it as much. For reasons primarily fueled by my social life, I joined the track team in eighth grade. Track was fun because it turned out that running wasn’t that difficult and I got to hang out with my friends all the time. Middle school track turned into high school cross country and somewhere in there I became a runner but I had a lot to learn.
First I had to learn the simple stuff like what shoes to buy and how long a cross country race was. My high school cross country coach always said that with running, there are really high highs and really low lows. During high school, I experienced the high highs but never really the low lows. I went to practice each day, the meets on the weekends and each year I got progressively faster. Occasionally, I would have a bad race but it was usually because it was a hard course or I just wasn’t feeling great that day. My bad races were my lowest of lows which really aren’t lows at all, they happen to every runner.
Once my high school running career came to a halt, I started to receive acceptance letters from colleges. While my times for cross country were decent and had sometimes put me on the varsity team, it’s not like I was getting recruited to run Division I school. When I was first accepted to Kalamazoo College, I wasn’t that excited about it. But as winter dragged on, it dawned on me that going to a Division III school, like Kalamazoo College, I could still run on a team. I planned a visit, met the team, and my decision was made. I would go to Kalamazoo College and run on the team.
My first year as a collegiate athlete, I took it pretty light heartedly and used it as a social vehicle. My two best friends were from the team and we were inseparable. My times were okay and it was a good way to stay in shape. Sophomore year changed. I actually trained seriously during the summer and was ready for the upcoming season. For the first race and the first time in college, I ran varsity, progressively getting faster.
The last race of my sophomore season was at Kalamazoo’s home course. Lots of parents and people from the Kalamazoo community were present at the race. The men’s basketball team volunteered and helped work the race. It was a beautiful November morning and I went into the race feeling confident but cautious about my upcoming six kilometers. I started out in my usual spot, in the middle of the team. As the race progressed, I moved up, passing girls consistently. I was feeling good, my legs felt good. They felt fast and controlled. I rounded into the 5K mark and a friend of mine, Jeff, from the basketball team yelled out my time. At the pace I was going, I was looking at a new personal record. I kept my pace in control just until there were 200 meters left. I let loose and flew through the last meters. I opened up my stride and sped up, picking up a few girls as I went into the finish and catching the clock to notice that I was almost a minute faster than my last 6K. Setting a new personal record is like running at a wall as fast as you can, knowing it will be hard then realizing you can actually break through it and that it feels awesome. It gets you high.
Junior year meant study abroad and my training lessened. When I arrived back on campus for my junior spring, I started to sense that there was something wrong. My gait just felt off. I’d go running for a couple of days in a row, each time trying to figure out what my legs were doing that made me feel so awkward. Usually my legs felt so natural doing this, running, putting one foot in front of the other. I went to talk to the athletic trainer and she said maybe it was a calf strain and showed me some ways to fix it. I did them but nothing made my running feel better. Something was out of whack and since I couldn’t figure it out and apparently the trainer couldn’t figure it out, I just fell out of it for a while. When there was perfect running weather out, I would force myself out there but still something was wrong.
Once it was summer, I decided it was my shoes. I went to the local running store and chose a new pair of shoes, a different brand since something was now wrong with my old trusted Asics. With a false hope that my problem was solved, I went for a run in my neighborhood. It was incredibly hot out and the sun was blazing but I was determined to go for a run. The pain was always there but it was gradual. I’d start off on my run and it was tolerable. Around the one mile, it would usually crawl out of the manageable and tolerable zone into the blatantly apparent zone. It was always talking to me and telling me how to run. When it was hurting more it was taunting me, telling me I couldn’t ignore it. I had almost finished my three mile loop when my right shin was hurting like crazy. My shin felt was throbbing, it had a pulse of its own. I stopped for a second to maybe try a stretch or two but as soon as I did, tears were running down my face. It was the middle of July and my last cross country season was fast approaching and I had this sinking feeling that it wasn’t going to go like I wanted it to. I walked home sweaty and blurry eyed.
I had never had a serious injury during my running career. But finally I was faced with one. I started going to see a chiropractor who specializes with runners. He started by aligning my hips and making some adjustments. It helped somewhat and I continued running. The last day I was going to see him before I headed to Kalamazoo for preseason, he was just feeling curious and decided to take an x-ray of my right lower leg. He had a hunch that I had stress fractures. He came back with the x-rays and he was right. Two tiny lines ran across my upper and lower shin. Those two lines were the cause of all the trouble I had been dealing with my running for the past months. I hated those two little lines. He said I’d have to start off with taking a couple of weeks off. Those two tiny lines benched me.
The next couple of weeks I was confined to a stationary bike and aqua jogging in the pool. I went to the trainer each day to get treatment and tried to stay off my legs as much as possible. Meanwhile, the weather had finally cooled down and it was prime running weather. I watched my teammates take full advantage while I was in the pool pretending to run. I became best friends with my iPod on the days I rode the bike, while my teammates went on long runs together, gossiping and creating inside jokes with each other. I counted down the days until I would be able to try running again. My trainer would say “maybe next week you will get to try running.” My first day back I was allotted ten minutes to run and that was it. I was told if I felt any pain, I had to stop. Running had started to become a privilege. The bike and the pool were my chores and then every so often I was given minutes to run, my ten minute reward.
With the third race of the season coming up, I was given more time to run. My trainer started to give me miles instead of minutes and things were looking up. The days we had hard work outs, I was given a shortened version and was told to take it easy, not to push too hard. When race day came, my legs felt better but not 100% better. I started off slow, really slow, not in my usual place of the team. I was second to last. My parents and boyfriend cheered me on, showing their support. I was embarrassed, wishing they weren’t there, wishing hadn’t wasted their time coming to watch me “race.” I wasn’t racing, I was prodding along, up and down the hills of the course until it hurt too much. I had tried to push it off, tried to ignore how I really felt. What I felt was pain, pain that was telling me to stop and I ignored it for half the race until I had to walk off. I made sure I had passed my support group before walking off the course. I needed a minute alone before I could face them. I went to the trainers’ tent, fighting back tears as I tried to tell them that I just needed some ice. I went to the finish to cheer on my team and watched them run by. I had never dropped out of a race before.
The last race of the season I was able to run and I finished the whole race. But I didn’t finish it the way I wanted to. I was slow, towards the end of the pack, way far away from my personal record. When I came into the finish, there weren’t many spectators left watching, just my teammates and my parents. While my season didn’t end the way I had wanted it to, I did have it back. I had it back, but it wasn’t the same. Running has been a lot of things to me. For a lot of people, it’s a punishment. Sometimes you’ll see the quote “My sport is your sport’s punishment” on the backs of runners’ t-shirts. But running had hurt me, knocked me down, made me wonder why I liked it in the first place. If running was my boyfriend, my friends would tell me to break up with it and tell me all the obvious reasons why. But for me, I have way more of an appreciation for it than I ever thought I would. It changes from day to day or even during a run. Sometimes it feels like work or a chore. Something you want to put off until tomorrow. Sometimes I take it for granted, like you might do with anything you love. But almost always, it gets me high.
My Franklin Outline:
Complication: Running injures Kristin.
Kristin hates running.
Kristin loves running.
Kristin loses running.
Resolution: Kristin reclaims running.
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