How It All Began

I’m Jill and I’m a runner. A slow runner. I was not born to run. As a kid, I was hopeless at anything athletic. I was the last kid picked for every team, and I flunked the Presidential Physical Fitness test every year it was given. The only race I could win was a cookie-eating contest .

I got into fitness around the time I turned 30. I was doing activities I liked: weight lifting, rowing, cycling. But I had trouble keeping the workout going when I got too uncomfortable. I needed a way to overcome this threshold. Running was perfect. I hated it and had no speck of natural ability. I figured that if I could teach myself to do something I despised from the very first step, then I would be good with the stuff I actually liked.

It evolved slowly for me. At first, I was miserable every run. Then, I started mostly tolerating them. After that, every once in a while, I would have a run I actually enjoyed. I started participating in some 5-k races, bringing up the rear and scrounging for whatever bananas remained at the obligatory food tent. Even in the smallest races, I almost always timed it poorly and had to walk a bit to finish.

So one day I am riding my bicycle to work when I hit a bump in the road and get ejected quite handily from my seat. I’d like to say the damage to my ankle wasn’t exacerbated by the pull-on high heel boots I was wearing, nor that I had to yank them off because I refused to cut them. Whether it was because of the fall itself or the fashion gods, I had a high ankle sprain. No running for at least six weeks.

A strange thing happened. Every time I saw a runner trot by, I was jealous. I told myself that this was because I hated my crutches and I was feeling increasingly out of shape. But the runners would bop past, all springy and bouncy and enjoying the outdoor breezes in their hair. For the first time, I realized I wanted to run not to achieve some other purpose, but simply because I wanted to run.

Since then, I’ve completed too many runs between 5-k and 10-k to count, the Broad Street Run (10 miles) three times, five half marathons and three full marathons. The first two marathons I had to walk a lot to get to the finish. The third one, Philly this past November, was my breakthrough. I ran the whole thing. I had to back off my pace a bit for the last five miles, but I did not walk. I’ve overcome so many injuries that the PTs at Novacare just shake their heads when they see me coming. I used to be shocked when I had an enjoyable run. Now I’m surprised by the bad ones.

I’m hungry to see what I can really do. How fast can I get? I’ll never get a shoe deal, but maybe, just maybe, I can elevate myself to the middle of the pack, where there is a plethora of yellow bananas to choose from at the end of a race. Simple goals, maybe, but not so when you consider where I began.