I started running for the same reason, I suspect, that many thirteen-year-old girls start running: my hips and thighs were growing thicker, and I thought I’d outpace puberty’s fat redistribution process by jogging at least three miles every day.
At thirteen, I hated running. I was still a committed soccer player, and footing a ball up and down a field was my preferred way of getting in my steps and staying fit. But I had to do something during the off-season to keep myself in shape, i.e., in the same shape and size. So I would dutifully plug in my headphones, play Imagine Dragons on repeat, and trot my way around the neighborhood in a 5K loop, all in chase of those ever elusive, prepubescent, skinny legs.
It took a long time for me to enjoy running for the sake of running, and the journey involved a few split tendons.
One day, I took a new pair of soccer cleats to the backyard to break them in. I was hopping around with a ball, pretending to fake out an imaginary defender with a double scissors soccer move, when I tripped over a pinecone at just the right angle. I heard a crack—the sound of a tendon in my ankle snapping and my soccer career ending.
I was sidelined and stuck on crutches for long enough to realize that mobility was more valuable than my identity as an athlete. I lost the enthusiasm for throwing myself against defenders twice my size and head-butting a soccer ball traveling who-knows how many miles per hour. I began to see the appeal in jogging, a sport that didn’t (usually) involve impact and collision.
It was like a switch flipped in my brain. I returned to my 5K runs with delight, and my mileage creeped up. I ran my first 10K when I was sixteen, dashing through the woods and slogging up a ski slope at the Cannonsburg Ski Area. In high school, I ditched the soccer team, my ultimate gesture of conversion, and instead went out for the two-mile on the track team.
Unfortunately, my physical insecurities didn’t entirely disappear—it was high school, after all, and I am humbled to admit that my running was, still, partly motivated by the desire for stick-skinny thighs.
By the time I hit senior year, which marked nearly five years of regular running, it finally dawned on me that if I didn’t look like Tina Turner by now, it was probably not going to happen ever. This is just what my body looked like—my body, that could carry me through six-mile races and still be raring to go further.
Only after I let go of those body-image fueled pipe dreams did running become so much more. This, I also suspect, is true of many things in life.
Now, I like to say running is my therapy. When I’m sad, I take a lap around the neighborhood and wait for the endorphins to kick in. When I’m processing tough emotions or events, I let the step-by-step rhythm and the passing scenery relax my mind, and it does, in a way that doesn’t quite happen when I’m following a YouTube workout or riding a treadmill. When I need inspiration, the exercise sparks my creativity and gives my thoughts space to unravel. When my mental health just needs a boost, running is a great excuse to get fresh air and get your legs moving.
Running is also my refuge in a chaotic world, a time for me to retreat into my thoughts and, often, to talk to God uninterrupted.
During the pandemic, with the long-extended lockdowns, running was a way for me to spin my wheels and still feel like I was going somewhere. Running was my lifeline. I’d hit the trails and get lost in my head while hopping over roots and dodging branches, which made me remember that the world was bigger and more beautiful than my living room.
I never did obtain “the runner’s body,” whatever that means. I don’t think someone walking down the street would see me and immediately guess that I run 10Ks in my spare time. And by no means did I ever morph into a semi-pro athlete, who snacks on gel packs and whose idea of a vacation is a weekend trip to the Boston Marathon.
Turns out, “the runner’s body” is one that runs. And a runner is a person like me, who chooses day after day to lace up and put one slow-but-steady foot in front of the other.
Hannah Riffell has landed in Lansing, Michigan twenty-three years after she was born there, nineteen years after she moved to Mississippi, seven years after she moved to Northern Michigan, and two years after she graduated from a university in Grand Rapids. You probably can’t find her because she’s either exploring the state, wandering around her city, or just lost in her own head.
