Finding My Stride: A Journey Beyond Athletics

I’ve never been athletic. I can’t catch a ball, I can’t throw, I can’t run fast, and I am not good at any sport. Trust me, I’ve attempted them all! I’ve been this way as long as I can remember. I just wasn’t born very athletic. It’s been something I’ve been frustrated with my entire life and something that I’ve always been severely self-conscious about.

In the 8th grade, I decided to sign up to be on the cross-country team. Several of my friends had signed up and I thought this could be a sport I could potentially be good at. I had never competed on a team of any sort of sport. However, at each cross country meet, I found myself continuously disappointed as I watched most of my friends earn awards, while I was deemed average in comparison. I gave up on sports completely after that, even though I had enjoyed the long training runs, the team sportsmanship, and the feeling of competing in a race. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it or that I didn’t want to get better, it was that I felt embarrassed by my skills in comparison to my teammates.

Fast forward to my sophomore year of college… my roommates convinced me to sign up for a Halloween-themed half marathon that ran down a beautiful canyon in Utah during peak leaf season. Even though I knew that I wasn’t a fast or accomplished runner, I thought it would be fun to do it with friends and the race itself sounded super cool. So I registered! As I began my training, I genuinely found joy in the anticipation of the race and the daily training runs. I couldn’t believe it when I ran 8 miles for the first time and felt like I was finally an athletic person. I still wasn’t fast, but I was more excited about running it with friends so I was only focused on preparing for the distance. A few weeks before the race, all of my roommates decided to drop out for various reasons. I was terrified because this meant that I now had to conquer this big race completely alone. I had doubts if I could do it and those past negative thoughts about my capabilities came trickling back into my mind. Ultimately, I decided to do it since I had trained and been so excited about it for so long.

A few weeks later, I found myself solo at 3 am boarding a bus with a bunch of strangers to the half marathon start line at the top of Provo Canyon. Those insecure feelings crept back into my mind and I honestly didn’t feel like I belonged with these other runners who were clearly more experienced and definitely more athletic than me. As we reached the top of the canyon and started the race, I looked around and realized that there were other runners running at my same pace. In fact, I noticed that all of the runners were running at various paces. Not only were there lots of different paces, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves! There were still extremely fast runners, but I quickly realized that everyone was there to focus on their own personal goals. As I finished the race and collected my medal, I felt incredibly accomplished with the distance I had run and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. 

21 half marathons, 3 marathons, and 1 half Ironman later, I am here to tell you, it’s so easy to feel inadequate when you start comparing yourself to others. Trust me, I’ve been there. However, I’ve learned that you don’t have to be the fastest or the best or the most athletic to enjoy something. Too often we deprive ourselves of amazing opportunities because of our own negative feelings. We rely on the opinions of others and hold ourselves back when we worry about what others may think. I genuinely enjoy training and completing these events. They make me feel powerful, they make me feel accomplished, and they help me become a better mom and a better version of myself. I don’t do it to compete with others or to feel like the best runner out there, I do it for my mental health and I do it to tell that little 8th-grade girl that she can do hard things in her own way.