Wednesday, January 16, 2019 // The Statement
7B
Wednesday, January 29, 2020 // The Statement
7B
I
n a past life, I ran. For all four years
of high school, I was a member of the
junior varsity cross country team,
having joined on a mandate from my mom: I
had to do a sport in high school to keep busy,
be healthy and stay “socially stimulated.” Ball
sports were an automatic no for someone like
me, who’d been hit in the face with a basket-
ball during gym class one too many times,
and you didn’t have to try out for cross coun-
try. Plus my older cousin Jackie was already
on the team, so I figured that might give me
a leg up in the social scene. Cross country it
was, then.
This fall, three years after my last cross
country race, I found myself struggling to
propel my body down Stadium Boulevard
in Ann Arbor after I’d vowed to start run-
ning again. My destination was Washtenaw
Avenue, and as I inched down the sidewalk,
I finally began to see a stoplight in the dis-
tance. I picked up the pace a little because I
knew the faster I got to the light, the faster I
could be done. But when I neared the light, I
saw that it wasn’t Washtenaw at all. I realized
I hadn’t even passed the Trader Joe’s yet. I
still had so much left to run before I could
rest. Holy shit, I thought, trying to surrepti-
tiously wipe my runny nose, what have I got-
ten myself into?
I
’ve never thought of myself as an ath-
lete. In elementary school, I danced
for a few years. I did gymnastics,
played rec softball and soccer. None of it
stuck, though, and as the talent of my peers
increased and mine plateaued, I’d drop each
sport without much remorse — I preferred
to explore other interests, like reading nov-
els and writing articles for a weekly news-
paper I distributed at my extended family’s
Friday night dinners. I still did “athletic”
things: I rode my
bike around the
neighborhood all
the time, my dad
taught me how to
ride a unicycle and
I learned to love
hiking and canoe-
ing
during
my
summers at sleep-
away camp. Still,
I had this percep-
tion of athletes as
talented, competi-
tive people with
an intense love for
physical activity —
and none of those
childhood activi-
ties ever made me
feel like an athlete
in that sense.
I
t’s
hard
to
believe
now that I
stuck with cross
country for all four years of high school.
Most of the memories that linger involve seri-
ous pain and total mental anguish. I couldn’t
walk for two months sophomore year
because I’d given myself horrible shin splints
on both legs. I can also remember the refrain
that would run through my head every time
I ran a race: “If you finish this race, you never
have to run again, ever.” Of course, I would
always go back to practice the next day.
I recently came across two of my high
school journals while rooting through the
drawer of my bedside table. Sure enough, the
first entry I saw when I opened the purple
notebook from my senior year confirmed my
memories.
“I dread going back to school 90% because
of XC,” I wrote on Aug. 30, 2015, a few days
before I began my senior year. “I don’t mind
the other parts of it so much, but UGH I just
hate cross country and I want to love it ... but
oy, I can’t.”
When I read that, I remembered the dread
I felt just driving by the high school that
August. I remembered the desire to either
become a “real” runner or stop having to
pretend I felt like one. I shuddered under the
weight of the memories as I closed the diary.
Then I opened the second journal, this
one an earlier volume that I filled throughout
my freshman year. On Sep. 18, 2012, I wrote:
“I have cross-country every single day after
school. OH MY GOD, it’s so hard! It’s the best
kind of hard, though, because I feel so accom-
plished after I run.” And on Nov. 2: “I can’t
believe the season’s over!! I’m SO glad I did it;
I made so many amazing friends. I loved XC.”
I was so taken aback after reading those
entries that I had to lie down on my bedroom
floor. I couldn’t help but laugh. How in the
world had I gone from that level of enthu-
siasm freshman year to the pessimism of
senior year? And why were those final mem-
ories the only ones I remembered?
I
f nothing else, running gives you a
lot of time to think, and as I trudged
down the street five days after begin-
ning to run again, the journal entries kept
popping into my mind. I thought about how
I’d felt both grown up and protected when
the older girls on the cross country team took
me on a tour of the high school even before
freshman orientation. I thought about the
team sleepover we’d had and how cool I’d felt
just hearing two of the seniors on the team
talk nonchalantly about having “naked pool
parties” with their boyfriends. I thought
about the sense of accomplishment I felt from
making it up the notoriously awful hill at
Kensington Metropark. I didn’t run fast that
first season, but it didn’t matter. I was push-
ing myself. I was growing. I was having fun.
Thinking about cross country made me
think about the concept of strength. The
summer before my sophomore year, I missed
most of the team’s summer practices because
I was away at camp, and when I came back
to practice in the early fall, I was incredibly
out of shape. The brand new freshmen were
outrunning me and I couldn’t complete the
3-mile run without stopping. I remember
sobbing to my mom about how embarrass-
ing it felt to still be running at the back after
a full year on the team. I remember the pain
that rattled through my shins during those
first few practices of the year, and the shame
that came from learning it wasn’t even a
stress fracture, just stupid shin splints, which
everyone gets. I remember sprints practice
on the soccer field, watching my teammate
Ioana limp through her own injury as I sat
out entirely. Of course, now I understand
how serious shin splints are and that running
would have been unsafe for me that season.
But all I knew then was that Ioana was strong
enough to push through her injury, and I
wasn’t. I remember thinking: I must not be a
runner. I must not be an athlete.
L
abeling myself in any way made
me feel vulnerable as a kid. To call
myself an athlete was to tell the
world I thought of myself as a person with
certain talents and passions. What if I called
myself a runner but people saw me running in
the back of the pack? What if I called myself
a writer but people didn’t like my stories? I
worried so much about what other people
would think of my labels that I never thought
to define the terms for myself. I wonder now
if it would have mattered that I didn’t con-
sider myself a runner if others had. Which is
more important: what others think of me, or
how I think of myself? Can I even separate
those perceptions from one another?
When I applied to colleges my senior
year of high school, I thought for a long time
about what I should write in my application
essays. Although I didn’t decide I wanted to
be a writer until my sophomore year of col-
lege, there must have been some deep-seated
desire in me to go down that path, because I
remember hesitating to write about my love
for writing in my essays. What would hap-
pen, I’d fret, if I wrote that I wanted to be a
writer, but the admissions counselor didn’t
think I had any writing talent? I’d be bearing
my whole soul right there on the page, and
the reader would have the authority to decide
my fate. It was too risky. I wrote about other
topics instead.
I’m no longer afraid to call myself a writer,
but the confidence in that label didn’t take
hold until I became the Editor in Chief of my
college newspaper. Even as a staff reporter,
I still felt like I only dabbled in writing, and
that anyone who was a “real” writer would
laugh if they knew I was calling myself one,
too.
Perhaps this preoccupation with how oth-
ers perceive our labels impacted my view of
my cross country experience. It was accept-
able, expected even, to be a less talented
runner freshman year. It wasn’t as common
to still be running in JV races as a senior.
Everyone got injured at one point or another,
but not everyone decided to sit out for three-
quarters of the season because of shin splints.
Maybe the contempt I expressed in my senior
year diary and the unhappy memories that
remain of the experience stemmed from a
subconscious effort to create cognitive disso-
nance between myself and the sport. Maybe I
was trying to signal to the outside world that
I didn’t care if I was a slow runner, because
I didn’t enjoy running at all. I didn’t feel like
I deserved the running label, so I shunned
the sport altogether. Would I have gone on
to love running if I hadn’t been so afraid of
labels?
I think about what would have happened
if I’d shied away from writing, too. I never
would have joined The Michigan Daily. I
never would have become Editor in Chief.
My whole identity would be different.
Though I’ve started running again, I’m
still not sure if I’ll ever be able to call myself
a runner — at least not with the same con-
fidence I have in calling myself a writer. I’d
like to say I’ve matured beyond the point of
caring about how others viewed me, but part
of me still thinks I’d feel like an imposter if I
claimed the label. I have to wonder, though
— does it even matter? I’m running again and
feeling good about it. This time I’m not going
to let a label — or lack thereof — dictate how I
feel about the sport as a whole. For now, you
can catch me trudging down Stadium Bou-
levard. I’ll have a better sense of where my
landmarks are this time.
Maya Goldman is the former Editor in Chief
of The Michigan Daily and can be reached at
mayagold@umich.edu.
On finding labels, and maybe myself
ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE WIEBE
BY MAYA GOLDMAN, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR