Running On Empty
5 minute read
On Tuesday, I ran for nine minutes on an anti-gravity treadmill. For those of you having trouble with that sentence, let me back up and explain. An anti-gravity treadmill looks like a normal treadmill but with one significant adaptation – a large built-in air bubble you get zipped into so it takes part of your weight as you run. There are not very attractive rubber shorts involved and the air heats up inside the bubble, so between all of that and my facemask, it feels a little like running through Death Valley. But for someone like me, who loves to run, I will take it every time to get that feeling, that runner’s high.
I am training on this strange anti-gravity machine because of an underlying knee injury that I didn’t know I had until it made itself known on a Tuesday, early in January. A couple of days before, I’d completed my first 10K race in three years, a twisting, windy run through snowy Central Park, where the wind chill factor brought the temperature down to a brisk -12 celsius. I’d been worried that I might fall – after an ankle injury in 2015 that led to surgery and being out of action for over a year I am always worried I might fall – or that I wouldn’t be able to run that distance anymore, especially in those conditions. But the race had been amazing – I felt invincible that day and I wasn’t surprised to see that I’d run my best time since 2019. At 47, I started to think seriously for the first time about training for a marathon; about setting it as a goal for the year I turn 50.
And then Tuesday happened.
Looking back, it might have been a good day to sit out my lunchtime run. It was even colder that day (-15) and the park where I usually run was treacherous with icy patches and uncleared snow. I thought I was doing the right thing, choosing instead to run on a path that had been cleared already, to minimise chances of aforementioned falls. The fact that a good part of this path is on a steep incline reminiscent of San Francisco – that even our car has trouble making it up this hill – was neither here nor there. I had a plan. And after all, I was invincible.
It turns out – spoiler alert – that I’m not invincible. Having made it through the 10K in Central Park, it was that “easy” lunchtime run that got the better of my knee, which blew up like a proverbial balloon overnight. A quick trip to the walk-in Urgent Care centre and I found myself on crutches. I couldn’t believe it; there hadn’t been an accident, a fall, nothing had actually happened. Sure, maybe I pushed myself a little hard, maybe I could have warmed up better, but I was never the best at warming up, always eager to get moving, to get on with the business of running. But this time my body told me, “no” – it had had enough.
Writing for Heyday earlier this year, while I was interviewing yoga teacher Mari Kennedy, we talked about our respective bodies changing, about the letting go that’s part of that, and we both admitted how hard it is.
At 47, I feel like I am 37 and I forget that my body isn’t, that it has changed – is changing – in subtle ways that I don’t always notice or feel. In ways that I don’t always like.
Whether I am at home in my apartment on the Upper West Side or visiting Ireland, or travelling anywhere else in the world, the ability to run out my front door and explore the world outside is part of who I am, just like writing is part of who I am. They’re connected, in a way: the physicality of one feeding the reflection of the other, the best balanced partnership. A partnership I’m not ready to give up.
One of the good things about this stage in life is that often you have a chance at what the Americans call a “do-over.” I don’t know about you, but many of the things that happen to me now – the challenges I encounter – have, in some shape or form, happened to me before. Grieving a loss, facing a fear, getting through sickness and surgery – these are things I have been through, stumbled through, more than once in my 47 years. And that first day, lying on the couch with my knee elevated and icing, I thought about the things I wish I’d done differently seven years ago when it had been my ankle on ice. The first was that I wasn’t going to minimise this injury or the impact it has on my emotions – my spirit – not to be able to run. The second was that I was going to ask for help.
As an Irish woman in her 40s, asking for help doesn’t come naturally and it’s certainly not easy. My stubbornness goes hand in hand with its sister, self-reliance, and often shows itself in declarations of being “grand.”
A lot of “shoulds” are involved. I should know the answer, I should know the right thing to do. I should be able to handle things on my own.
Another spoiler alert coming – I can’t always handle things on my own and over the past three months, I have embraced this knowledge by asking for help over and over and over again. In a city teeming with some of the best doctors and hospitals in the world – doctors that professional athletes travel to be treated by – I have seen not one, not two, but three specialists as well as two physios. I am grateful for the insights of each of these medical professionals – as well as for my health insurance – and I am listening to the perspective of each of them. And unlike that Tuesday in January, I am also listening more closely to my body than I ever have before.
There’s not a tidy end to this story. I wish there was, but maybe that will be a column for another day. Right now, I am at a crossroads. Right now I have a decision to make. I’ve made progress – since I first started writing this piece a few weeks ago. I’ve graduated from the anti-gravity treadmill to a real treadmill where I can jog in normal shorts, without a bubble for 10 minutes at a time. When I’m on there, it feels great – like flying, like I am getting back to where I want to be – but it’s the unpredictable knee pain the next day, or two days later that bothers me; the strange feeling I get in my joint. Like taking a temperamental car on a long journey, I don’t have confidence in my knee and I don’t think that’s going to change. If I keep going on this path, I might work up to half an hour on the treadmill or maybe get to do occasional short jogs outside on flat, soft surfaces, but realistically, my days of races, of carefree running, of exploring trails in forests, by the sea, in parks, in new cities, are behind me.
The other path involves surgery, crutches in a city that’s full of steps, and realistically most of my 48th year without any running at all, working back towards what I am able to do today. But at the end of all that – this investment of time and discomfort – there’s the promise of getting my body back, getting back to being able to do the thing I love.
My 47-year-old body can’t do the things that my 37-year-old body could, but at this stage in my life there’s a balance I’ve found – am finding – between fully acknowledging my physical limitations while still striving for what I believe I’m capable of. Accepting what I can’t change, while working on those things I can.
Sometimes, when I am in a race, I’ll pass by someone who is in their 60s or even 70s, and I’ve become increasingly aware of these runners as I’ve grown older. Mostly, they are moving slowly, at their own pace, often oblivious, it seems, of those of us who are passing them out. Over time, my admiration has grown for them, for their commitment to not giving up, to doing the thing they want to do, the thing they love, as long as they can.
You can probably tell the decision I am leaning towards, which path I will likely take. At 47, I can’t turn back the clock, but I don’t have to stop it either. I am lucky, I have choices. Maybe I will never get to do that marathon, but I have the promise of getting back to that freedom of the 10K I felt in January. And even though it’s not going to be easy, I might be able to harness that stubbornness of mine in a positive way, in a way that will help me get there.
Yvonne Cassidy, May 2022
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