Last week I texted my friend Sarah, longtime fitness buddy and high school cross country teammate, “I’m running a half marathon in October!” She congratulated me before asking the obvious question—why? When I told her, she sent me a “lol”: “that’s how I decided to run my half marathon, too.”

Since Sarah and I were scrawny high school sophomores, running has been an emotional mainstay. For all those teenage years, when I felt like I didn’t understand anything and especially myself, when I didn’t know what to do, when it felt like in every other area of life I could do everything right and try really hard but it still wouldn’t matter—well, at least I could run. I wasn’t very fast. But I worked hard and I got faster, which was gratifying. We ran the Riverbank Run at the end of our senior year, 15.5 miles through downtown Grand Rapids, in two hours and eighteen minutes. I was the 2410th runner across the finish line. And then I didn’t run as much for a lot of years, and I think I stopped trusting that I could. (A sign of the changing times: I recently told a friend that I got nervous about long distances, because what if I get hurt when I’m four miles from home? And she asked why I couldn’t just call an Uber.)

So why—in our “old age,” as Sarah joked—have I taken up running again? To reclaim my former glory as a junior varsity distance runner? To see if I’m still prone to shin splints? To wear out my knees and yet another generation of Brooks Ghost sneakers on the sidewalks of Ann Arbor? Sure. But mostly I am doing it because I’ve got a lot of soul-deep anxiety and restlessness and I need structure and tangible short-term goals to keep myself afloat. I am doing what I did in 2008: I am managing internal and external chaos by running until I’m really, really tired.

So, as of late July, four to five mornings a week I get out of bed (late), stick in my earbuds, and turn on that day’s Nike Run Club guided workout for the half-marathon training plan. I play some incomprehensible techno in the background while Coach Bennett says things like easy is an effort, not a pace and end the run better than you started and every run has a purpose. He also likes to say that this is about running, and it’s not about running. (It’s never just about running.) 

When I first started running in 2007, my dad was surprised; I had shown zero athletic potential to that point, so he questioned this new interest. I showed him up, of course, and he used it as a sermon illustration for most of my junior year of high school. It had all the right ingredients for an inspiring anecdote: weakness and limitation overcome by perseverance, focus, effort, commitment. Delayed gratification. Hard-won gains. Transformation. And that was kind of true, and kind of not true—mostly I ran because I wanted to belong to something, and joining my high school’s gigantic cross country team was a good way to feel safe and connected and valued. Sometimes I ran because I hated myself and my body and I wanted to control it. I’m trying not to do that this time. But I’ve been annoyed, honestly, by how much running again has buoyed me when everything is confusing and meaningless and hard. When Coach Bennett says

You should be proud of yourself for starting this run

If you can’t do the run you want to do, do the run you can do

Your fear is telling you something important

If you’re nervous, it’s because you care

It’s about running, and it’s not about running. I could really use some transformation right now. Also, if you happen to know anyone training for distance races in Southeast Michigan, I’m in the market for a buddy. 

Previous image credit to Ryderwear

Katie Van Zanen

Katie is a doctoral student in English and education at the University of Michigan. She loves the New York Times crossword puzzle, advice columns, oceans, and dogs of all kinds.