Thoughts on Running
The Empathy Project
Like any lost 20-something year old, I found it necessary to embark on an ambitious project to offer myself some semblance of purpose. Hence, I decided to begin a book project focused on empathy in Wisconsin. The inspiration for said project came to me spontaneously—while in a meeting, my mind drifted, and I found myself thinking about how I’ve often heard it remarked (and thought myself) that the world is highly interconnected. And yet, I haven’t seen a book project strive to make this remark apparent in reality. And with that, my project was born. I started with one interviewee from Wisconsin. I then asked her to recommend someone else for me to interview, with the only caveat being that they must have a connection to the state. The chain will continue until someone (hopefully!) eventually recommends my original interviewee to me, thus closing the circle. I have no idea how long this process will take. I’m not even sure if it will ever end (though, I have hope in my hypothesis.) But I do know that I will have the opportunity to meet a wide variety of interesting people, gather meaningful stories, and have the opportunity for self-discovery along the way regardless of the outcome. Each month, The Empathy Project series on this Substack will feature stories from interviewees. All of their names will be anonymized, and the pieces I feature will likely be very different than the ones I create for my book. Think of them as snippets of what is to come!
This first snippet comes from my first interviewee, Sam. I’ve long been inspired, and, if I’m honest, intimidated by Sam. She is the kind of person who is good at everything, and she didn’t hold the same fears around being vulnerable than I did when we met during our junior year of college. I think a part of me was jealous of her when we first met because she seemed to be more connected to herself and the world than I could ever dream of being. I’m thankful that as we’ve both grown up, our friendship has deepened.
One of the ways Sam inspired me was through running. In our first year after graduation, Sam ran a marathon—something I had always wanted to do but never had the courage to go after. This year, I ran my first marathon, and though I wish I would have run faster and felt stronger, it’s still an accomplishment, I suppose…and one I largely did because Sam paved the way. And so, I’ve decided to share her inspiring running journey with you.
Here’s to hoping some of you read this and become marathoners, too, whether in reality, or in metaphor.
“I think the first example of running I had was my mom. She started doing triathlons in her forties, so I watched her train for those in the field next to our house. We had 5 acres on the house I primarily grew up on, and we mowed trails along them, so she would run a lot.
And then, I started doing middle school cross country and track and really enjoyed it. I had great friends, and I was really competitive with myself. I wanted to be the best. I remember I would keep a notebook of my times, and I would run sometimes in the field next to the house, but I would mostly run on the roads. And I grew up in the country, so it was hilly. I remember it being a really good experience of learning how to be comfortable in my body but also in the world without anyone next to me. I was a paranoid kid. I always thought I was going to get kidnapped. I think, growing up in a place where there weren’t many people, it just always felt like I was vulnerable, and so running when I was in middle school was a way to get more comfortable with that, and even if I wasn’t getting more comfortable with it, at least confront it.
In high school, I did tennis and soccer, so I wasn’t running for a team, but I would run after practices on my own. That’s when I realized that [it] was a way for me to work out thoughts in my head and also really be alone with myself, in a way that felt the most natural.
In college, I stopped running for the most part. I…yea. Oh, actually, there was a period where I was really sad. Actually, I was depressed. It was the second half of my freshman year, and I think I felt a lot of numbness and there was like the transition of being in a new place, and the experience of college not necessarily being what I thought it would be, and also being really, just unmoored, after leaving Christianity and everything like that, and confronting big truths I hadn’t really been exposed to before. Everything felt very big and overwhelming to me, and I didn’t know how to carry it. And I would run from my dorm room to the lake in the early mornings. And I would run to the lake. I would cry when I would get to the lake. It wasn’t just crying…I would sob, and I didn’t even know what I was crying about, I was just so deeply unwell. And the lake was the one place where I could let it all out.
When I moved, that’s when I started running distances. I used running, especially that first year [in a new place] as a way to just, like, maintain stability when everything in my life had pretty much changed. I went for a run with an ultramarathoner who was starting her first year of med school. She was really encouraging, and she said, “if you can run 3 miles, you can run a marathon.” At first I thought that was absurd, and then I tried it, and she was right.
I don’t think I truly loved my body until I trained for a marathon. Someone asked me recently, “what is your relationship with your body like?” And there wasn’t a moment of hesitation, I was just like, “I love her so much. I am so grateful for what she can do.” I think I was always scared to push her before I started training for a marathon and now, like, beyond running, there are so many things that I am so excited to do with my body as well, and the marathon was my, kind of, first experience of pushing it and knowing that she’s capable.”
***This is entirely in the interviewee’s own words, though some sentences/words have been rearranged/removed for continuity, and questions from me have been removed.