Back in May, I got a message on my Instagram asking if I would be interested in submitting a piece to a new journal dedicated to sharing women's experiences in running as a way to empower and educate. Women? Running? Empower? Nothing could be more up my ally. The following is an excerpt from the submission.
My biggest concern in high school and early college was never a test or social status or even whether or not a boy liked me back, it was my body. More specifically what my body might become.
I started running competitively in 5th grade and found my identity rooted in running. It was something I was good at, I loved it, and it was where I found some of my closest friends. The concern with my body was whether or not one day it would develop into something else, something that would make me lose the identity I’d found.
Growing up I was always on the skinnier side, people would joke I didn’t eat enough. In middle school an especially nasty boy would call me skeletor. In my family I seemed to be a genetic abnormality; my mother, my sister, and cousins are all busty and have wide hips. Meanwhile I’ve been able to hang on to those training bras my mom bought me back in middle school which at the time she’d assured me I’d grow out of very fast just like she did. As I became more invested in running that prophecy haunted me. I liked my body the way it was, I’d found a place where it fit in, where I fit in, and I was terrified of losing that. In my mind I was a ticking time bomb. I watched as my friends' clocks ran out. Their figures changed and so did their times. Girls I knew who had been so good as younger runners were now a shell of their former selves on the track.
During my early collegiate career, I found my own body changing. The numbers on the scale increased and the pressures of college running were heavier than high school.
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