Saturdays Are For the Girls

There is something beautiful and at times underappreciated about the world of female distance runners, and since Women's History Month is coming to a close, I'd like to take a minute and discuss it.  The women I know in this sport are fiercely competitive.  You can watch these ladies shift from sweet and innocent, incapable of even saying something hurtful to someone into warriors, out for blood, speed, and glory on the track and right back in front of your eyes.  It's amazing, and at times alarming.  There's nothing like catching an elbow from a girl who can't even bring herself to kill a spider to remind you that all women have incredible fighting spirits if you give them the right opportunities.  But beyond the fire, beyond the competition, there's something that runs much deeper, connecting us all across ability levels, from pro to fitness runners.  Maybe it's a spark of insanity that pushes us all to run those mile and unites us, or maybe it's the simplicity of the pure love of the sport, but there is something there that makes us legion, a group striving together, seeking for bold new heights rather than fighting to bring one another down.  
The first and most basic connection is with the unknown, the strangers that you encounter out in the streets and on the trails day to day.  You may have but a fleeting moment with these people, no intimate connection with them or knowledge of their lives, but that you are both out in the world is enough for a brief locking of eyes, a smile, and if your lungs will allow, a quick "Hello" or "Nice work".  Small, simple interactions that may not result in any meaningful relationship, but nonetheless lift you both up and remind you that we support one another, no matter what levels we are at, how old we are, or what our beliefs are.
The next type of connection I've observed is the inter-team connection with individuals you don't know.  You may not be well acquainted, but you can still respect the effort they put in, and they still have your support.  For example, Elle Purrier, distance runner at New Hampshire, and I have never had a conversation, but that doesn't stop me from being excited to see when she runs well.  One of my teammates and I have had multiple conversations about how we admire her and how strong she is.  Obviously there is still a spirit of competition with these other teams, and we all still want to perform at our best.  In the race, we put all of our energy into catching the next girl, but the moment we cross the line, we all turn to embrace and congratulate each other.  We all carry each other at some point, whether teammates or strangers.  We can all appreciate when someone accomplishes something amazing, and mourn when someone has an injury or setback, whether or not we are close.
Even more pure are the inter-team moments of cooperation and relationships.  These are some of the moments that I consider when I'm forced to reflect on why I stay in this sport after all the abuse it has dealt me.  My favorite example of this took place at the Mountain Regional cross meet this last season.  I was struggling through the six kilometer race, battling with the side effects of a medication that I had started on a week previously, and had not yet realized was the cause of the migraines and nausea I was experiencing.  I was not racing like myself at all, and were it not for the thought of my teammates and how desperately we wanted to go to nationals, how hard we had worked for this opportunity to show the nation our ladies and our coaches were worth consideration, I would have walked off the course.  As we finished our first time on the upper loop, with just over a mile to go, Makena Morley, a runner from Colorado was running side by side with me.  Makena and I have crossed paths several times through high school and college, having been connected by one of my high school coaches and meeting up a few times while I was living in Montana for runs as well as at various meets throughout our collegiate careers.  She is an amazing runner and a wonderful person, and I would definitely recommend following her running career.  As she passed me during the regional meet, she turned to me and said, "Come on Lys, come with me, you've got this."  I absolutely was not able to go with her, but her encouragement helped me get through one of the worst races of my career.  Additionally, when I was diagnosed with my injury, many lovely ladies from different teams sent me messages of encouragement and advice for overcoming injury.  It's one of the most wonderful things about running and a huge thing that keeps me in the sport-Not only being familiar with the women on other teams, but developing relationships with them, or maintaining ties from previous interactions (@ my NXN gals) and being genuinely excited for them when they race well.
One more unique relationship I get to have with running and ladies is with my sister.  Since we were both athletes from the high school to the collegiate levels, we got to watch each other progress and overcome.  I got the opportunity to have my sister guide me into the world of distance running and pave the way for me to join a highly competitive and skilled high school team.  She remains my favorite running partner, as she has been there from the days when I struggled to find motivation to run over twenty miles a week and had to be bribed with donuts to run a 400m interval under ninety seconds to the season when I broke through and placed fourth at NCAAs.  She is always game to participate in Sunday bun days with me (a sacred holiday wherein the participants go for a long run in buns and sports bras), and can discuss and understand any part of the running world with me, from armpit chafing to eating disorders to injury to falling over a steeple barrier (sry Kenzie, but we've both done it).  We share similarities from our need to run to our matching exercise science degrees and our budding interest in social work.  I can tell her anything, and she can trust that I will always be around to give her terrible and dramatized advice.  We share so many personality traits that Sonia has said more than once that she would be terrified to have had us both on the same team at the same time, as we just magnify each other when we are together.  My favorite memory of training with my sister was a run when our mother dropped us off ten miles from our home to run back in.  We started squabbling on the drive up, and by the time we got dropped off, a full-fledged argument was taking place.  I am guilty of trying to run away from my problems at times, so I tried to literally run away from her, since at that point in time she was my problem.  What I neglected to consider was that she is also a distance runner, and her fitness levels were just as good as mine, so she stayed right by my side, which just pushed me to try harder to run from her.  We came through the first mile shouting and shrieking at one another like a pair of pissed-off alley cats, then checking our watches to see that we'd run under 6:30, which at that point in time was below tempo pace.  Upon realizing what we'd done, we immediately starting laughing like a pair of choking asthmatic snakes and struggling through the remaining nine miles, all disagreements forgiven.  About four miles in, we had to stop and drink out of an unidentified water pump in a field next to a local church.  I'm reasonably certain we both contracted giardia as a result.  We have always been one another's biggest fans, with her driving ten hours one way to watch me compete at NXN in high school, and one of my teammates at USU once questioning whether she was actually a real person or if I had made her up to make a Twitter fan account for myself before she met her because her account had so many tweets about my running career.  If that's not sibling love, I don't know what is.
The last type of relationship I've encountered in my years running is the relationship with your teammates.  These relationships are wild, as you can talk to the same women about how many times you had to poop on your run when you had caffeine belly the other day as you do about how you are passionate about social work because you have a desire to make a difference in the world in the same ten minute span.  You share so much, from the daily struggle of running when you don't necessarily feel like it, the heartbreak of a race that didn't have the outcome you wanted, the pre-run rituals, the recovery from injuries, the sacrifices of the typical college experience for something so much bigger than yourself, the sweaty 800m repeats at three in the afternoon in August, the date with the boy with the dreamy eyes you went on last weekend, the pictures of your cat, the stress you have over your upcoming exams, and anything in between.  These strong, wonderful women share your life with you for months or years, and they become your family.  They are the people that you text if you are kept awake late into the night by your thoughts and you need reassurance that things will be okay, and the first people you tell when you get good results back from an exam.  They are the family you have at college, and the people who you will have ties to for the remainder of your life.  They are the ones that you feel like you haven't seen in years after two days apart, and the best part of your day every day.  
Names that simply must be mentioned when I talk about female teammates who became my family at some point or another:  Ali.  Annie.  Emily.  Maddie.  Haley.  Claire.  Lauren.  Rachel.  Keeks.  Chiara. Madi.  Layne.  Christie.  Weezy.  Lelo.  Ellen.  Payt.  Ci.  Tylee.  Kels.  Hannah.  Karen.  Katie.  Rae.  Megan.  Shannon.  Jackie.  Carol.  Heather.  Pres.  Tori.  Kash.  Elli.  Jos.  Tav.  So many women who I love and cherish and couldn't imagine life without now that I've met them and shared the triumphs and trials of life with.  You guys are going to change the world.

Even Dragons Have Their Ending

First things first, I hope everyone recognized the reference to The Hobbit.  J. R. R. Tolkien is a literary wizard, and I am strongly of the opinion that there is a Tolkien quote for every situation.  Many of my college bonds have been formed as a result of a mutual affection for Middle Earth (Perhaps most significantly, my first true college friendship and the realest human being I've ever known, Andre the Great Vandini, freshmen chem lab partner extraordinaire, slayer of snakes, and Twin Tuesday partner for life whose friendship with me can be marked with the response, "When we look back on college and remember when exactly we became friends, this is it" to a tweet of mine about watching LOTR to get through treadmill runs).  Team Tolkien nights are a bonding experience that I would definitely recommend.

So, now that I've distracted myself with my own blog title and gone off on a complete tangent, please allow me to get to the actual point of this post.  Guys...I'm running again!  On dry land!  With extreme supervision from Sonia to ensure that I don't get over-eager and misbehave and take off sprinting at five minute mile pace until my heart explodes and I drop dead in the training room!  I did my first run outside of the underwater treadmill since early December last Tuesday, and they were the most wobbly and wonderful three miles I've ever run.  If I were to paint a word picture for you all to imagine how I looked, I would have to describe the scene as Sonia looking on in half-amusement, half-horror, as I weaved back and forth over the midline of the treadmill because I was too excited and too busy grinning like a sociopathic baby deer learning how to walk while simultaneously trying to convince a panel of my peers that I had a full range of human emotions by refusing to wipe the creepy smile off my face to care about silly things like running in a straight line.  Three delicious, pain-free miles with no throbbing in my back afterwards and no protestations from my body.  And what's more, between dry land miles and underwater miles, I was over halfway back to my normal weekly mileage (eighty miles a week) as of last week, AND Sonia has me running faster on the underwater treadmill than I ever did pre-injury.  Based on my progression right now, I could potentially be racing again by the end of March, although I'm still intending to take this season as a redshirt so I don't feel pressured to rush into anything too fast and risk getting re-inured.

Another big step took place this week in the form of me running outside for the first time in three months.  (!!!!!)  I decided to visit Bozeman for spring break to catch up with some old friends and teammates, so I got to do my first run back in the open air on the first route I ever ran as a collegiate athlete.  Never again will I take for granted the ability to spit freely and remove your shirt on a run.  In my months confined to the training room, I forgot just how liberating being outside was.  Once again, passersby most likely thought I was an escaped convict based on my overeager grin and the fact that I was bolting through the streets like I was running from the law.  It's very fortunate that I was given a strict set of paces for this week, because otherwise I think I would've run the first ever female sub-four mile for my first outside mile then immediately dropped dead on the spot.  It would also seem that the state of Montana is still a little bitter about my abandonment because the two years I lived here, I never once slipped or fell on a run, and on my second run here after being back in the state for just over twenty-four hours, I hit a patch of ice and wiped out hard.  I guess that's what I get for being overconfident and declaring myself the indestructible queen of winter.

It's been a little strange this week and last, celebrating benchmarks like running five miles at eight minute pace or running over forty miles in a week, when this time last year training for my first season as a true distance athlete specializing in the 10k was in full swing and I was running several workouts and seventy miles a week.  Almost exactly one year ago, I was running my first official 10k workout which consisted of eight miles of tempo work (4, 2, 1, 1 mile repeats) and wondering how on earth I was going to survive this season.  It's also definitely not easy seeing competitors that I ran with all through the cross season toeing the line at nationals this weekend, but I realize that isn't something I can change for myself so there is no point in stressing myself thinking of all the "if only" scenarios that could've been if I hadn't gotten injured.  The important thing is that I am on a path to a place that is better than where I started pre-injury, and I didn't lose anything in the process.  (Based on my first run back outside, I actually gained from this experience both physically, mentally, and emotionally).  More than anything, when the what-ifs try to start cropping up, I just remind myself that I am HAPPY now and I have re-discovered the pure, untainted joy for running.  I have officially made it through this injury and come out the other side better for it.