There once was a world where running did not involve a stopwatch. Running was playing. You chased your friends through the woods for hours. You asked the referee how much time was left in the soccer game, not because you were tired and wanted to stop, but because you wanted to play forever. Every now and then I see kids playing and laughing with what seems like an endless source of energy and I feel nostalgia for those glory days.
Although I started running competitively at a relatively early age, soccer will forever be my first love. I was that girl who slept with her soccer ball at night and dreamed of being the next Mia Hamm. I lived, breathed, slept soccer. I spent my weekends traveling throughout Florida, Georgia, and Alabama alongside my best friends to play 5- 6 hours of soccer a day. My thirst for playing could never be quenched. I lived in a world where all that mattered was who got to the ball first…and lucky for me, my little legs usually came out on top.
It is through soccer that I discovered my talent and passion for running. While I am eternally grateful for the sport of running and the experiences it has brought me, I wish I could have told my younger self to keep playing soccer. I took running so seriously at such a young age that it led to me quitting track my senior year. I was running times in middle school that won me top medals at Varsity State Championships. I was constantly being told how fast I was and how impressive my times were. On the surface, it all sounds great, but ultimately, it led to me feeling like I was never enough. How was I going to be able to reach the great expectations everyone had of me? I had this constant weight on my shoulders that I could never seem to lift. If I won, it was expected. If I lost, it was the end of the world. Every race was filled with anxiety and dread, and by the end of my senior year, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had hit a plateau and was not the ‘it’ runner anymore. I was getting beat by ‘me’ 6 years ago (the pre-pubescent middle school girl who glides along effortlessly and has absolutely no idea how this sport is about to turn her world upside down).
Running is an unforgiving sport. It exposes your weaknesses and challenges you in ways you could never imagine. But at the end of the day, IT IS JUST RUNNING. It is simply putting one foot in front of the other. We cannot always get caught up in analyzing the splits and worrying about hitting the times- leave the Garmin at home occasionally! Running should be the medicine, not the illness. It should heal our anxiety, not create it.
After a few years in college where I ended up stepping away from the stopwatch and away from the start lines, I found my love for running again. It took me almost three years of running without a watch, but fortunately I was able to remember the reason why I ran and I found joy in racing again.
Although I now have ambitious and lofty running goals, it is important to remember the days when I was a kid. I was passionate about racing through the woods with my friends and sprinting up and down the soccer field. I would never get tired. I wasn’t worried about winning or what my time was; I was just embracing the beauty of the sport. We must not forget the simplicity of what running really is. Running is pure and beautiful and it is simply a mechanism to set us free.
“Her heart was wild, but I didn’t want to catch it, I wanted to run with it, to set mine free.”