A Runner’s Balancing Act

Lately I’ve had some serious thoughts rolling around in the back of my head about my life and running. There has been both increasing clarity and increasing confusion in the last few days.  I thought I would attempt to hash my thoughts out here on the blog. Warning! This post contains somewhat serious and personal matters, so if you are here to read something quick and happy, you may want to skip this post.

I guess it all boils down to this question: am I running for the right reasons?

Running has been good to me lately, don’t get me wrong. I’m not injured or overly tired and I’m not even in a funk right now. For the most part, I have been loving running this summer because I have been getting to know new people during my runs outdoors and trying new speed workouts indoors. Even though it’s hot, I’m not struggling that much with the motivation.

The problem is that I have responsibilities in life that are being negatively affected by running. There is my role as an employee. Between the hours of 8:15 am and 5:45 pm, I am property of the company I work for. Then there is the 45 min drive both ways. When I run very early in the morning I’m usually a zombie by mid afternoon at work. My productivity takes a big nosedive. It can be near torture to make it from 2 pm to 5 pm without large amounts of caffeine. If I run in the afternoon, I’m always trying to get out the door as soon as possible which reflects poorly on me as an employee and coworker, especially when we are busy.

Then there is my role as a wife. Since I can’t afford to compromise my role as an employee, running usually affects the wife role the most. Last Tuesday night I got home from my run at 8:00 pm. (Left work at 6, got to gym at 6:45, ran for an hour and drove home). I had promised my husband I’d make his favorite chili for dinner. The plan was originally that I would get up early and run, then come straight home to make the dinner, but I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed for the early morning run.

As we sat down to dinner at 9:00 at night, I looked across the table at my husband and thought, “I am a terrible wife.” I didn’t say it out loud. We have a good marriage and we are happy together. But then a week ago, we had a small argument (which honestly does not happen very often) and the one thing he said that keeps echoing in my brain is: “you are never home!”  Since then he has tried to take it back. He says he didn’t really mean it and he wants me to go running if it makes me happy. Basically, if I’m not home, and I’m not at work, and I’m not at the grocery store I am probably running. Not many other things on the schedule.

So why do I do it? Why make my life harder by training for marathons, when it puts a strain on my job and my relationships with the people I love? Is something out of balance here?

A bit of history on me. If you haven’t read it on this blog already, the secret’s out so I might as well just be frank and say that I don’t have the best track record with keeping my life in balance. In the summer of 2003 I went through a partial hospitalization program for Anorexia Nervosa and exercise addiction. Running used to be my chief coping mechanism for the anxieties life. It was my mood regulator and depression chaser. I used to jokingly refer to my running as my boyfriend, because all my roommates would go out with their boyfriends and I’d go running. And I was happy with that. I didn’t feel alone or anxious or sad when I was running. It numbed all my emotions, well at least for a few hours. Needless to say, I ran a lot. Combine that with not enough calories and you get extreme weight loss and an eating disorder.

But I’m done with that obsession. I am recovered. I always argue with people who say that you can’t recover from an eating disorder, that you will forever be recovering. Running is different for me now. It’s healthy now. I’m maintaining a healthy body weight and I’m not obsessed. I don’t wake up every morning with fear in the pit of my stomach because I’m afraid something will get in the way of my run today.  I don’t run because I ate lunch. I don’t run because I ate desert. I don’t run because I’m lonely or depressed.

Okay, so sometimes I get depressed when I don’t run. Is that bad? I’m not talking clinically depressed. I mean, I get a little down, a little moody, a little quiet after a few days without running.

I took Sunday and Monday off from running this week. Monday, I felt down, slightly depressed and not my usual self. Joe kept asking me what was wrong. I didn’t know. I was just down. I wanted to go running, but decided against it because Joe was sick and I should be home with him. Tuesday, I had planned to go running in the evening but by 3 o’clock that afternoon I was having some stomach issues. Thinking about missing another run I started to feel really down again. On the way home from work, it hit me that the reason I was feeling down was that I needed to run. After that realization I managed to get myself to the gym for a fast 6 miler, stomach issues and all. It worked, I was happy again.

Last January after the marathon I took some extended time off from running (about a month). I felt the low level depression then too. I remember Joe was happy when I started running again because he noticed I was less moody and more positive.

Is running still a left over piece of my eating disorder? The fact is, I still need it to be happy and it sometimes it negatively affects my work and my relationship with my husband. And yes, I will admit there is still a small component of my running that has to do with my weight. As much as I say it’s not about that any more, I still worry that if I were to stop completely, how much more weight would I gain?

But then, how much of this is normal among runners, even runners who have never had an eating disorder or exercise addiction?

Sometimes, I think recovering from an eating disorder in some ways is harder than recovering from alcoholism. You can quit drinking and never go back. You can’t quit eating, you can’t quit exercising. You have to find a balance, and every day you have to check in with yourself and say, “am I doing this right?” Am I eating too much or too little? Am exercising too much or too little? One person’s too much, is another person’s too little. There is no perfect formula to follow. You learn as much as you can about eating, and exercise and loving yourself and then you try to sort through life by feel. Trying to live your life not worrying about it too much, but enough that you keep your recovery in check.

Right now it feels I’m doing it mostly right, but a little bit wrong. Maybe that is how it will always be. Maybe that’s why they say you can never be recovered, you will always be recovering.

I don’t have the answers. These are just the questions I’ve been asking myself lately.

Blogging. Its cheaper than therapy I guess. Thanks for reading guys. ☺

Thanks to my speedy cabbie, I actually made it to the park to meet the busses earlier than expected. It was a little after 5 am when my bus departed for the start line. As we drove over the freeway you could see that the exit ramp was completely jammed with cars. I was so glad that I had taken a cab and we’d come in to the park some other way and we didn’t get stuck in the traffic.  I’m sure if I had driven myself, we would have been stuck in that mess.

The bus ride was uneventful. I chatted it up with the guy sitting next to me who used to live in Phoenix. I’m not usually one to chat with strangers, but he started the conversation and I found it was a good way to keep my mind occupied.  When they let us off at the start line, I was relieved to see many, many porta-potties. They were all clean and I could take my pick!  After doing my business, I wandered around aimlessly trying not to get too cold since I did not have a jacket and the sun had not yet come up. I had over an hour to kill before the gun went off.

I ended up finding the Cabrillo National Monument which is a statue surrounded by a little circular patio out on the tip of Point Loma with almost 360 degree views of the ocean and the city. I sat there for a while with a few other runners and watched the sun come up over the ocean. How is it that I can watch the sunrise and the sun set over the ocean in San Diego? Explain that one to me.  I know it doesn’t seem possible, but I saw what I saw! As I watched the sun come up, I was aware of how clear it was. No marine layer whatsoever. Bummer.

After hanging out for about a half an hour. I headed back to the porta potties. This time I had to stand in line. I was surprised how many more people had arrived. When it finally got close to 7 am, there was some confusion as to where to go to line up. The race instructions said that the corrals wouldn’t open up until just before the gun since the start line was on the same road that the busses needed to come in on.  I just kind of stood in the crowd with everyone else until I felt the crowd move forward about 10 feet. I could see some flags with finish times up ahead that looked like corrals, but there was no way I could get there. I thought they would give us time to find our corrals, but within seconds I heard a gun go off and we were moving. So much for the corrals!

Needless to say, the first few miles there was a lot of weaving around slower people and trying to avoid getting run over by the faster people coming from behind. It finally seemed to spread out by the third mile. The first five miles were awesome. There were rolling hills, but many more down hills than up hills. We ran through neighborhoods and I kept myself occupied by admiring the homes and the incredibly lush landscaping and vegetation. There were lots of big trees that shaded the road which kept me pretty cool. I checked my watch at miles 1-5 and I was running about my 8:30 goal pace. I wanted to stay on pace so I skipped the water stops until mile 6. That might have been a mistake.

Mile six is when it started to get hard. The course flattened out and the trees went away. I got hot and sweaty very fast. At mile six I walked through my first water stop, gulping down two cups of water. I passed the 10k mark at about 53 minutes. After that, I was in a hurry to get the next water stop, which seemed much too far away. Finally got to it between mile seven and eight and by that time, I was really starting to feel crappy. I was just drenched in sweat. It kept running into my eyes and dripping off my elbows. I was really wishing I had brought a towel to wipe myself down with.  Between mile 7 and 8 I downed another two cups of water and took my Gu and two Endurolites (I had also taken two of these before the race started).

I surged a little after that (it was a surge in effort more than speed though), but mostly because I was promising myself that I could walk at the next water station, which again seemed much too far away. At this point we ran on a busy city street that only had one lane blocked off for the race. It was pretty packed in that one lane and I remember thinking that this is one of the more crowded races that I’ve run.  The sun was still relentlessly beating down on us, and I had to put my head down to keep from being blinded by it.  I cursed myself for not wearing my visor or putting on sunblock. I guess I was thinking there would be a marine layer. Wishful thinking that did not come true.

We finally turned the corner to start the final 2-3 miles towards the finish line. At first it was a welcome change. I was no longer running into the sun and there were tall buildings all around offering some shade. It was right after I turned the corner that someone was spraying a fire hose in the street. It felt good but since I was already drenched from sweat at this point it hardly made a difference. Then began the mile and a half climb that seemed to go straight up.

Here is the humbling part. I really thought I was pretty prepared for hills. I live in Fountain Hills and I have been running those hills at least once a week since I moved here last January.

In all my hill running, I don’t think I have run up a hill that steep for that long. Most of the hills I’ve run in practice are pretty steep but don’t last more than a half a mile at most. This hill seemed to go on forever.  We tuned a corner and it went up some more. Turned another corner and up again. Wow, does this ever end?! I admit, I walked a few times here when I really should have pushed through. I was so close to the end, and I could tell by my watch I was going to finish pretty close to 2 hours.  I think being really sweaty tricks my mind into thinking my body is working harder than it really is.

We finally turned into the park and with the hill behind me and the finish line less than a mile,  I started putting the pedal to the metal. My watch said I had about 2 minutes to get to the finish line before I hit 2 hours. I ran as fast as I could manage but in the end, it wasn’t enough and I crossed the finish line at about 2:01.  I was disappointed, but not surprised. I was just glad to be done!

Stay tuned for the Part 3, the conclusion!