Empowerment in a Female Body Is More Important Than Ever

And I just ran the best race of my life

If you a) need a little break from the doomcycle swirling about us, b) are a runner or running-curious, or c) love personal growth in whatever form it comes in, today’s post is for you. But mostly for me. Okay, it’s for me. ;) I hope you enjoy the story… we’ll probably be back to “regularly scheduled programming” soon enough.

I firmly believe we all have different portals or paths through personal growth: themes that keep coming up in our lives that, if attended to, can teach us a great deal about ourselves and others. I believe that, in addition to the concrete events that we experience and learn to deal with, our soul is here on a quest to grow.

One of my “portals” to growth is running.

As a refresher, last April I ran a marathon for my birthday. It…did not go great, which is to say it wasn’t horrible, but I could have done about a hundred things differently and felt much better during the race. (Also, luck was not on my side then with getting sick shortly before the race!). I swore off of marathons after that, which lasted for all of two months until I remembered I love training for fall marathons because I find something serene and gorgeous about warm, humid, early morning Saturday long runs. It IS my “church of the long run,” as the running saying goes. So I tentatively moved toward training for a second marathon of 2024.

Not being a morning person, there were many early mornings I would have to wake up for a run and regret all life decisions leading to this moment… but the majority of the time, after my run, I was pleased with myself. There were a couple training runs where I almost pulled out of running the marathon, like the 20-miler in full sun and rising temps where I walked half of miles 13-19. I had a couple of “B-goal” (secondary goals, not expecting peak performance) that had me seriously doubt whether I would be able to meet my A-goal of getting under 4 hours in the marathon.

I consulted my tarot deck a couple of times throughout this process, first to decide whether to start marathon training, then again when I was seriously considering dropping to the half after training for a full all summer long. (I told my friend after a half marathon race, “Not one cell of my body wished today I was doing the full instead of the half! What do I do??” She told me to stick with the full later that season. She was right).

Tarot is just a way of tapping into your deepest intuition, and each time, I knew intuitively that this second race was more than just avenging the April marathon. It was a way of deeply trusting and connecting with myself, of believing in what I was capable of, and pressing forward when faced with hard things.

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Like many of us here raised in female bodies under a conservative evangelical religious system, I have had a hard time trusting myself. Or to put it another way, one of my growth points here on earth has been to develop a much more radical trust in myself.

I was raised to defer to male authority. (In fact, this should be an entire post one day, but I’ve been poking through my teenage journals and wow — the amount of times that my father asserted his authority over me as a teen for the sake of nothing more than being in control is outRAGEous.). I was raised to act submissively, uncertainly, tentatively. To couch my words with indications that maybe I was wrong and the other person was right. To be small and out of the way. To not only be humble, but dismiss my own hard work and effort in my successes. It’s not me; it’s God.

I can fully acknowledge my immense privileges: I am white and able-bodied; I feel safe in the areas I live in; I was born an American citizen; I have financial privileges most of the world could not imagine. All of that is true, and acknowledging it flies in the face of the white evangelical patriarchal control system. But I don’t have to hand over everything to that system that would glad take ownership over all of me. They don’t get to dismiss how much hard work, patience, intuition, and intelligence it took to pull of the race of my lifetime. And maybe “they” are only in my head because of past programming…but on the other hand, after this election, the “they” who want to make me smaller and more controlled will be more real than ever.

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In this training cycle, I felt more connected to my body and what she needed than any time I can remember in the past. I tried to feed her enough and give her decent sleep. I did strength training that made me feel strong and powerful. When I got (mildly) injured, I aggressively rehabbed and kept running instead of following someone else’s advice about what to do, because I know my body better than anyone else. I creatively modified my training schedule to fit in races I wanted to do and speed work I needed to build endurance and confidence, because only I was the expert on how my particular body would respond to this.

4 months of dedicated training later, and 4 days after a shattering election, I lined up in the starting corral for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. This had been my first marathon 9 years ago — before Covid, before children, before marriage (though my now-husband, then-friend did bike around the course to cheer for me; a memory I cherished while running the race this year). I had done every possible thing in my reach to try and maximize my results that day. Would luck be on my side, too? Would it be enough?

I was gunning for breaking 4 hours and my training told me it was theoretically possible, though the idea of stringing together 26.2 miles at under an average pace of 9:09 minutes/mile felt pretty intimidating. I started off cautiously, worrying about my heart rate and effort level out of the gate, hoping that things would not blow up the way they did the year prior on this course running the half marathon when my heart rate skyrocketed to 190 in the middle of the race. I hoped the wheels would not come off the bus today.

After about an hour of running, I started to settle in. My legs knew what their marathon pace was—and they’ve always known, during this training cycle. By that I mean, I did not consciously choose the pace, but my legs just seem to know for me. My body holds wisdom. I began to lay down the steadiest of miles in the 8:40-8:50 range. One after another after another after another.

I tried not to get ahead of myself. Run the mile you’re in. Make it to halfway. Good, we did half of this in under 2 hours. Stay calm. Stay focused. This is when you have to start concentrating to stay on pace; this is when it’s supposed to start to feel hard. You don’t have to smile. Eat the Gu. Drink the Tailwind. Focus on this mile and nothing else.

I passed the places I used to live in Indianapolis; I ran the roads I’ve run so many runs on. I peered down the block to my old house, and ran past the window that was my apartment bedroom in seminary. I loved them. I loved the city. I loved the connection I still felt with my beloved city and their shitty roads.

I didn’t allow myself to really believe this was going to happen until I got to mile 20: 6.2 left to go; just a 10k. I glanced at my watch’s total time elapsed: 3 hours and 1 minute. Can I do a 10k in under an hour? I can. I can. I know I can. I know I can, on these legs. Unless something terrible happens… I have this. Ohmygod. Don’t think about that yet. Run this mile.

20 miles is when marathoners usually will hit the “wall” when their glycogen stores are depleted. But I did not. I had carb loaded so diligently beforehand and taken in enough fuel (sugar) during the race that my legs were still on autopilot. Each mile, I only focused on the mile I was in. You’re running mile 21. 21. 21. 21. You’re at 22. 22. 22. 22.

I was startled at mile 23 when a deafening silence occurred in my brain. As a probable ADHDer that is a very rare occurrence and I almost had a moment of panic (WHAT do I THINK about?). But I guess after 3.5 hours of pounding the pavement, even my mind has had enough to shut up.

I saw my friend (who flew out here from Colorado to support me) for the third time cheering me on, with only a quarter mile to go. I almost cried and hyperventilated motioning to her that I HAD THIS IN THE BAG.

My “finishing kick” is one of my strongest racing features, and I really did kick it in (according to my watch, that last quarter mile was at a 7 minute pace). When I could view the finish line clock at 4:01, I did some quick subtraction (I passed the start line 8 minutes after the clock started) and was STUNNED at how much I was blowing my goal out of the water.

As soon as I crossed the finish line, I sobbed. I could not believe what I’d just accomplished. 3:51:43 was not only way under 4 hours, but it was a 19-minute personal record from my 27-year-old self.

Utter elation.

Not only are my best days of athleticism clearly not behind me, but I like this version of me better, too. She is stronger, more confident, and has more clarity on things. I love my 20-something self too — she was up for so many adventures, and she was so curious and open to ideas. But I am still her, just with some other amazing things added in. I’ve learned how to be a spouse, a mother, a better therapist, a better friend… and a more confident, intuitive runner.

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Thank you for indulging me in sharing my marathon race recap story (I still get a high just thinking and writing it out; like I said, this is for me more than you but I’m grateful for your audience-ship today).

What are one of your “portals” to personal growth? Where have you found areas of learning to lean and trust yourself more or develop your intuition? Where have you found yourself growing in confidence as you age, or trial-and-error methods that don’t bring you what you are truly looking for? Please leave a comment, or just press the little “heart” if you liked today’s post and want to say hello!

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