Running on Empty

February 4, 2018

It's not really about the competition. Your biggest challenge in a race is yourself.

- Summer Sanders, 1992 Olympic swimmer and gold medalist

The history of long-distance running stretches back to prehistoric times. Anthropologists have provided accounts of hunters who could keep up a slow, steady pace for several days, chasing an animal until it tired and collapsed from exhaustion, at which point it could be killed and used for food. And of course, we all know the story of the famous Pheidippides, the ancient Greek messenger who, as legend goes, ran the twenty-five miles from Marathon to Athens to bring word of the Greek victory over the Persians in the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. He collapsed, cried, “Joy, we win!”, and died.

Running as the sport we know now, however, is a much more recent development. Track and field events were introduced into the U.S. in the 1860s, and modern, synthetic rubber tracks were not standardized to 400 meters until a century later. The running boom of the 1970s, in which over 25 million Americans took up jogging and road running as a form of fitness and recreation, fundamentally changed our country’s mindset toward the activity. Professional running became an increasingly high-profile sport, and, in the decade following this boom, many athletes would become household names.

For women, however, the path to running success has been less than kind. Running was considered a “man’s sport” for most of the twentieth century. Not until 1928 did the Olympics add five women’s track and field events to its schedule, and it took until 1972 for women to officially be allowed to enter the Boston Marathon. Even now, women make up just forty-one percent of high school athletes, and men, across the board, hold every world record for every track and field event in professional competition.

Physiologically speaking, the female body is not designed to run long distances. Our hearts are smaller, so our blood flow is less efficient, rendering us unable to run as fast as male runners over the same period of time. We are at higher risk of injury due to estrogen loss, and we have wider pelvises, which changes the way our hips are positioned and increases the stress we transfer to our knees and legs. Our testosterone levels are lower, so we cannot develop muscle as quickly as men can.

Says Tina Muir, Saucony-sponsored athlete and lover of the sport: “Women are predisposed to hold an additional five to ten percent body fat for child-bearing. The extra weight of this body fat means the female body has to work much harder to run an equivalent pace to a man.”

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On March 26, in the second race of my junior track season, I drop thirty-six seconds off my mile time. I cannot explain how it happens. I have been training for most of the winter—“building up my aerobic base,” as my coach calls it, but in that race, something changes. My mind shifts. Some mental block fades away, and suddenly, I am flying. The third lap. The fourth. I cross the line in 6:21. As I catch my breath and begin to process the enormity of such an improvement, the inkling of a thought crosses my mind. You could break six minutes in the mile. And just like that, it begins. Like inception. Once the idea takes hold, I cannot let go.

That same month, I stop eating lunch. My mother packs me meticulous meals, well-balanced and nutritious. Each day, I allow myself to indulge in a single Chobani yogurt before throwing the rest of the food—foil-wrapped sandwich, serving of fruit, small portion of dessert—straight into the trash.

By April 9, I am down to 6:11. I have moved from sixth place on the team in the mile to third. The same dread still curls in my stomach before every race, but there’s a new sensation, too—of excitement, almost, and of a fervent and insatiable desire to run harder, to push my body to new limits. I am dropping five to six seconds in every meet. I am impressing my teammates and coaches in practice, and, for the first time, I am almost fast.

With this excitement, however, comes fear, more pervasive than anything I’ve ever felt. I must keep dropping time. I must keep running faster. I don’t want to imagine what might happen if I can’t. As a result, I will do anything to ensure that I can.

The scariest part is that it’s not as physically noticeable as you might think. The fat has faded from my arms and waist and thighs, replaced in my legs by muscle and in the rest of my body by empty space. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with how quickly my weight is dropping. Five pounds, then ten. I feel lighter and faster in practice every day. I finish ten 400s in 87 seconds, then go home and pick at dinner, unwilling to eat more than necessary to appease my mother, despite the hunger twisting at my stomach and wringing it dry.

April 30, and I am plateauing at 6:02. In the last two meets, I have improved only by milliseconds, despite the extra miles I’ve been putting in on weekends and the workouts I’ve been absolutely killing in practice—and the starting line is becoming the place I hate most, where my heart beats so fast I feel it will explode out of my body, and the adrenaline is so strong I’m nauseous before every race. I have to break six. I have to break six. I round the curve of each lap with the thought pounding in my head, but I cannot make my legs move as fast as they need to, and that three-second difference taunts me from the finish.

I continue to cut calories. Another discarded sandwich, a full meal scraped into the trash, only half of breakfast consumed before escaping back upstairs to brush my teeth. I am five foot six and I weigh a hundred and ten pounds. Statistically speaking, this is almost normal. My friends do not know. My parents do not know. Even I, to an extent, do not know. It seems absolutely normal to me.

The last meet of the season is May 8, and I run 6:01. I am devastated. I sit alone on the grassy hill by the track and cry. Teammates and parents try to comfort me, but I am inconsolable. They do not know what I have done to reach this goal. They do not know how much it hurts to fail.

It will be nearly a year before I break six, and that day will be the best day of my life. I still remember it. April 21. Six hundred meters from the finish, everything in my body falls into place. I have a lap and a half to go, but suddenly my breath steadies, my shoulders relax, my arms drop and my stride lengthens.

My diet has been better for the past six months. I’ve gained back ten pounds, and I’m eating lunch again. Even now, I can’t explain when or how it happened the way it did. Only recently have I begun to understand what it even was.

Rewind. April 21. Six hundred meters from the finish. Fast forward. At the two hundred, my coach calls out my time. 5:19. I round the curve and he follows. You can do anything for thirty seconds, Veronica. Go, go, go.

And I go. And I run. On the last straightaway, my team, who may not know the entire story but knows how long and how hard I have worked for this, gathers. One of my best friends is timing the race, and he stands at the finish, stopwatch in hand, eyes blurring as they flick between the seconds and me. There may be screaming, I do not know. All I know is that I cross that line in 5:58 and suddenly the world snaps back into focus and I am screaming yes fuck yes and people are embracing me and I am crying. My coach is crying. He shakes my hand and claps me on the shoulder and I stumble to the grass where I collapse, cheeks wet with tears, to the ground. 

Header image courtesy of South Bend Tribune