Evolving as a long-distance runner.

*ve been running regularly for the past eight years, though I consider myself a lifelong runner. I started when I was 11, when my dad and I ran the Skunk Alley Run near Missoula, Montana.

Iremember so well his encouragement as I ran, and back then, it was just fun. I wasn’t thinking about competition; it was an adventure, even this two-mile race. To me, it took forever and seemed a vast distance, every step uncharted territory.

I was used to watching my dad run, as he did every morning, six miles or so. We had this long stretch of road from our house, so that I could see him getting smaller as he ran north, toward the Mission Mountains. I remember thinking how incredible it was, that he could run that far, that he could be that fit. Six miles may as well have been 6,000.

Then I entered that two-mile race and I realized, with a little encouragement, that I could do what he did. That was incredible. It hadn’t occurred to me before that I could do it, too.

Iwas lucky to have started with encouragement and a sense of adventure, with an emphasis on loving it first. My initial introduction to running had nothing to do with competing.

As I got older, that changed. It was less about play and more about discovering my potential. I enjoyed that at first; it was a form of exploring. Running is as much a creative pursuit as anything else. For me, it started off as fun, and over the years, it has gone back and forth: sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s tedious, sometimes it’s a test of how badly I want that time, to win that race, or to simply get out there at all.

My dad has been running for 34 years. He has run through blazing Oregon summers and Montana ice storms, in rain and wind, five to six miles a day, no hill training, no speed work, no long run each week, just that enduring, immutable desire to get out there on the road. He’s now 74 and he’s still doing it, still loving it.

That’s what I want to do. I want to love it forever.

The arrogance of youth

That hasn’t always been the case. In high school, the pressure was on. I understood that had to be the way it was, that to win or to place well, I had to be diligent about

my workouts, about my nutrition, about how I cared for nagging aches and pains. At 15, I wasn’t all that careful. I didn’t pay close enough attention to that stuff. I got hurt and thought I could pop a bunch of aspirin and keep running. What wound up happening instead was that I didn’t run regularly again for almost 15 years.

When I did pick it up again, I was working 60 hours a week in front of a computer and was 30 pounds overweight. I looked at myself in the mirror one day and bought a gym membership the next. I ran about a tenth of a mile on the treadmill, called it good, and wondered if I had wasted my money on the membership.

A week later, I tried it again, and this time I went two-tenths of a mile. I did that for a few weeks, adding a little at a time, and at some point, I deduced that Thadn’t wasted my money. Before I knew it, I could run two miles, then three, then four, then five. I was reminded that running could turn into a passion.

And that five miles was a long way. I had stood on the south rim of Crater Lake, gazing across to the north, and had stared at 4.7 miles worth of open space. I’d imagined a tiny figure on the surface of the lake, running, nearly invisible in her smallness as she covered the vastness of that width. This time, perspective was everything; I was in awe of what I could do.

Iran until I was about six months pregnant and then had to stop for more than three months. When I picked it up again, I was 50 pounds overweight. My first

run was one lap around the track, and it took me over three minutes. It may as well have been a marathon.

But little by little, I got into shape. I’m proud to say that I managed to push a BOB running stroller more than 13 miles when all was said and done, not quickly, but 13 miles nonetheless, on a 1.5-mile loop. I had done the right thing in toughening up my tolerance to boredom running on this loop.

All tribulations aside, I learned a lot about myself during my fight to get back into shape. I learned the importance of persistence, of heading off injuries before they begin, of getting enough sleep (which isn’t easy with a newborn), and of the kind of excitement that carried me through all of those times of doubt, when it felt like I would never lose the weight, would never get faster or fitter, when it seemed that all the running in the world wouldn’t help.

My dream carried me forward, and my dream was to run well.

My son, Rune, was 8 months old by the time I finally worked up my nerve to enter a race. It was a small, local 5K trail race, my first since high school. And I won! I couldn’t believe it.

My husband, Blaine, had brought the video camera and had captured my excitement as I chattered about how it felt, how hard it was (there was a monster hill), and how I hadn’t expected this.

As a result of winning…

Winning will usually do one of two things. It will either make you complacent, or it will make you hungrier.

In my case, I was hungry. I wanted to do more. I wanted to run faster, farther, harder. When I look back at my old training log, I realize just how hard I pushed myself after that race. I didn’t run lots of miles, but the ones I did run were full of fire, too fast, too far, too hard. I was frequently injured and suffered one frustration after another over everything from IT band pain to patellar tendinitis.

What I hadn’t learned in high school, I was forced to learn now: the value of rest, of taking easy days after hard ones, and of getting enough sleep.

As I got faster, my expectations got higher. I put more pressure on myself than ever before. My head was full of dreams. We all remember those Olympic track dreams we had when we were seven years old, the ones where you’re coming down the final stretch after a grueling race (though in the fantasy, you’re fresh as a daisy), your rival (or whichever famous runner happens to be making the headlines) at your elbow. You see her shadow at the base of your feet, and you’re trying desperately to outrun it. Just find that extra gear, you tell yourself. And there you have it, simple as that, and you go, you charge the line, and she is breathing down your neck, at your elbow, blazing a path right behind you, but despite her being so close, you are uncatchable.

I thought a lot about this, and in every context—on the track, on the road, on the trail, in the next 5K, in the next half-marathon, maybe even the next marathon. It was possible. Anything was possible. I hadn’t thought quite like that since I was a kid, yet here it was, this incredible confidence, this insurmountable belief in myself.

And never has that confidence showed itself quite like it did in 2008 when I entered the Timberline Half-Marathon, a trail race skirting Timothy Lake near Mount Hood. I took off like a shot, like I had in the 5K; I was new enough at this that I assumed I could carry a 5K pace through a half-marathon—what’s 10 extra miles?

I started regretting this decision about 3.1 miles into the race. It didn’t help that, because it was a trail race (and there are lots of trails around Timothy Lake), I got lost, leading 10 or 15 other runners down a dead-end route. Panicked, I backtracked (apologizing on my way past the knot of confused athletes), speeding up, nearly sprinting back up the trail, desperate to put some distance between me and the people chasing me.

I glanced at my watch: I was only 30 minutes into my race with an estimated hour to go (trail races are usually slower than road races) and a 5K pace I knew I couldn’t hold.

I tried to drift, to distract myself by getting a good beat in my head from a song I’d recently heard. Then I inhaled something and couldn’t stop choking.

Not the best running form

Tran, doubled over, thinking about how I must look. Ever try a six-minute mile while touching your toes?

I stumbled, turning my ankle, but I jumped back up, determined. I would go on to turn my ankle two more times before finishing, bedraggled, with something stuck in my windpipe, first overall: I had managed to beat all the guys.

Along with that accomplishment, I would later cough up the spider I’d inhaled in the first five miles of the race. Not only had I won, but I had done it in the most skin-crawling way.

From Timberline came big dreams, but even big dreams have to be tempered. I remember how excited I was the day I found out I had qualified for the elite wave at Bloomsday, a well-known 12K race held in Spokane every May.

It can draw nearly 50,000 athletes and is often compared to the Boston Marathon due to its popularity. It’s known for its scenic course and is one of the few premier 12K races in America, since 5Ks and 10Ks are much more popular here. It also draws an international field, offering more than $75,000 in prize money.

I was absolutely elated, on cloud nine, though I wondered what I was doing here. Then I remembered: I had worked hard for it. Fighting through injury,

Courtesy of Hally Hight

<4 Getting back into racing.

burnout, and other setbacks, Thad made the elite wave, a goal for over a year.

The morning of the race, the “elites” had their own indoor changing area, bathrooms, and warm-up space. People in black suits and white gloves opened the door for us. I felt like a royal.

And then the gun went off.

Seeing 5:15s on TV during the Olympics is not quite the same as watching it from behind. In my case, everybody just got smaller.

Ahead of me were scores of Ethiopians, Kenyans, Russians, Germans, and faster Americans—and then there was me.

“Go, 66!” I heard bystanders yell. I didn’t have to remember that was my number to know they were cheering for me because I was the only one in sight. Ahead, a conductor cued his band, and it played as I ran by. This happened more than once. Hordes of people waved and clapped. I was a brief celebrity, caught somewhere between the elites and everyone else, a race of 45,000-plus finishers, yet alone, something fleetingly remarkable. For a short time, I pretended I was in the lead.

The hill can kill confidence

In the brightness of the day, Doomsday Hill, the hardest climb on a notoriously hilly course, looked even worse than I’d remembered. My coach and I had driven the course the night before, and in the gloom, it had looked surmountable. Now, as I approached mile five, it might as well have been K2.

I would love to say I pulled it together, charged the hill, and ran one of the great races of my life. Instead, it continued being one of the worst. There were reasons: injuries, burnout, and more.

But people continued to cheer. “Come on, 66!” In other races, I had heard the familiar refrain: “Go get ’em!” This time, there was no one to chase. But that didn’t matter; the enthusiasm of the crowd carried me.

Suddenly I wasn’t alone. A man blew by as though I was standing still, a Tanzanian named John Yuda. Despite the fact that the elite men’s race had begun 15 minutes after the elite women’s race, I couldn’t hold him off. There was no more pretending. His entourage included a carload of cameramen, who were clicking away as they rode ahead of him. I found out later that he had averaged 4:38 per mile.

I finished almost 13 minutes behind Lineth Chepkurui of Kenya, the eventual winner, and nearly three minutes behind the woman ahead of me.

If you’ve never known what it’s like to finish last, it’s both lonely and freeing. You lose all illusions of grandeur, and finally, you’re left with yourself and the best you can do.

Iran that race by myself. I felt a conflict of emotions, including disappointment over the fact that I couldn’t keep pace with anyone else in this field. But I also felt the awakening of something else: the desire to be realistic in my dreams and to enjoy where I was at.

Like winning, losing will usually inspire either complacency or hunger. The hunger flared, but I also knew that to be the best runner I could be, I needed to approach my goals incrementally instead of comparing myself to others and setting an unrealistic bar.

Thad also gotten into the nasty habit of focusing too much on racing and on those four little numbers on my watch. I had forgotten that running can be a creative process, that there’s beauty in improvising and in leaving the watch at home.

But if there’s a tug of war that goes on inside any runner, it’s the bid to compete versus the desire just to love it for its own sake. My best runs have taken me by surprise. They’ve been the impromptu, in-the-dark kinds of runs I wasn’t planning, the bet by a friend to a duel in the rain, the twilight run after I set down my book, not quite ready for bed or for the shower, when there’s nothing else to do but muse. What better way to muse than on a run? Especially just as the sun is setting—or coming up.

No guilt

I go back and forth on the competing part. I go through cycles when the race seems exciting and others when just getting out on the road is the best part. At first, I felt guilty. I thought that my lack of desire to compete was a sign that I’d lost my motivation to run, but I realize it’s just coming up for air.

When I was finally ready to go, I tackled the biggest goal of my running life: the marathon, specifically the 2010 Eugene Marathon. Here was a fairly flat, fast

Courtesy of Hally Hight

course, finishing around the track in Hayward Field, with hundreds of spectators along the way and in the stands, all cheering, all clapping—talk about a rush!

But first came the 16 weeks of training. I had come off a long layoff that had me running only about 15 miles a week. I found a coach, two other teammates, and a training plan, with the long-range goal for the three of us to make the Olympic Marathon Trials.

Again came speed work and longer runs than I had ever done. Early on Tuesday mornings, I wound down a bike path to a middle-school track flanked by evergreens. I did everything from 200s to mile repeats as kids came on school buses and I darted around pink, green, and blue backpacks in lane one. Much as Thad dreaded these workouts, I had also missed them and was ready to be going hard again.

On the flip side were the long runs. These came on Sundays as I arose before dawn to drive to the north side of Portland where I would run 18 to 22 miles on the Leif Erickson Trail, packages of GU in one pocket and toilet paper in the other. > Sometimes I would PPS «sa friend or team.

– join a friend or team . mate who was also

running the Eugene Marathon. At other times, I did these runs alone, and that’s when my imagination ran wild.

These were the times the trail was full of bandits or mountain lions or packs of dogs that had joined forces after escaping from every nearby yard. I was startled by the cackle of every bird, every movement in the grass. In the distance was the dull drone of the freeway, reminding

<4 At my peak.

me that I was, in fact, in a city. But in these early hours, I felt as though I was the only human being on the planet.

Despite getting spooked, I enjoyed these long runs and looked forward to my ultimate test in the marathon. My training routine felt comfortable, and the predictability of it appealed to me. No more running willy-nilly; I was on a mission. This first marathon would be a range finder, but I also wanted to go under three hours.

I held my breath as the weeks went by, nervous each time I went out about incipient injury (I’ve always been injury prone), but nothing happened except the usual aches and pains. Race morning yielded worse-than-usual nerves. (I hadn’t been able to sleep for two nights prior.)

But I was ready to go when the cannon (yes, cannon) went off. Talk about symbolism. This was my biggest race to date, and my longest.

IT band problems

A teammate and I ran together, and the miles clicked off easily until, at mile eight, I felt a tightening in my IT band. The tightening worsened until, periodically, spikes of pain set my knee on fire. Music and crowds took my mind off it, and I also thought about the time I paced the Portland Marathon.

What an experience! As a pacer, I ran with people who were trying to qualify for Boston. My job was to keep them motivated, excite them (even at mile 22), keep their minds off of their pain and their doubts. Their moods were up and down, cycling through periods of doubt and depression while, at other times, their excitement and confidence seemed to soar. I kept thinking: eye on the prize. But what of all those in-betweens, those moments of anticipation when it isn’t in the bag yet?

If there was no chase, no chance for failure, it wouldn’t be as exciting. And without failure, there would be no real chance to reflect or to do things better.

It’s what feeds our drive. It’s also what makes us better athletes.

I told myself those same things as I clicked off the final, painful miles. When I looked at my watch, I realized that achieving my goal was a long shot. Somehow, though, it didn’t matter. | was doing what I wanted, what I’d trained hard, to do.

I finished but missed my goal by six minutes. Funny that it wasn’t disappointing in the least. I was happy to be done and to have completed my first marathon. I didn’t run another step for nearly two months.

When I did, I had made a crucial decision: I wouldn’t be training for the Olympic Marathon Trials. I wanted to love running first.

Which takes me back to that race near Missoula, Montana, when I was 11 years old. I’m grateful I’m a runner. I feel very lucky just to be able to do it. There are days I forget all about what race I’ve got coming up and I relish the dash from the parking lot, realizing I’m not out of breath in the least. py