I feel grateful that, if I place my 20 years of running experiences—good, bad, and ugly—on a scale, the dial still points to “worth it.” Running has enhanced my life in so many ways. It’s been a passion, competitive outlet, and job. It’s also been a peaceful escape, a vehicle to enjoy the outdoors, and a social hour. Occasionally, it has broken bones and crushed my spirit.
Although running is many things beyond a sport, the gentle companion version of it hasn’t pressured me to grow nearly as much as the competitive side has. It can be uncomfortable and empowering at the same time, and I still love it to this day. What I don’t love is seeing young athletes become discouraged to the point of quitting the sport, especially girls, who have twice the dropout rate of boys by age 14, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation.
Be it the comforting confidante or hard-driving teacher, running is a partner you can have forever. Here are some keys to keeping the love alive between you and running.
Keep it Physically Healthy
When you’re trying to find your potential in anything, it’s common to cross the line of balance into specialization and accidentally head over the nearby border into destructive behavior. I see three main threats to not only a lifelong love for the sport but also to improvement: injury, overtraining, and underfueling.
There are moments of constructive pain inherent to distance running, such as during a race, when pushing through it has made me better at coping with discomfort and taught me how to patiently ride out stress.
Injuries, however, aren’t in this category. They’re damaging pain, and they happen despite our bodies being made to run, which is frustrating.
[Build your personalized and adaptive Health - Injuries.]
I’ve been fortunate not to have to endure a career-threatening injury, but I did have a string of broken metatarsals in college. It’s important to figure out what specific mechanical issues you have, as athletes at every level often have a “thing” they’re chronically managing. It can take a while to figure out this puzzle, so be patient and compile what you’ve learned from strength trainers, physical therapists, doctors, and coaches. For me it felt like collecting pieces of information, then assembling them in a thesis-level project on the topic of my own body.
Overtraining and underfueling can also contribute to high injury rates. Overtraining is partly running too hard and partly recovering too little. This was another lesson that took me a while to learn. Low-level fatigue is insidious, because you don’t realize you aren’t recovered until you slow down and actually recover. Of course, being tired is part of training, but not every run should require digging into the effort well.
I was often unrecovered in college, where I ran too fast on my easy days, biked miles a day as transportation, and didn’t sleep enough. I think running too hard on recovery days is one of the most common mistakes athletes of all levels make. It wasn’t until after college, when I started training with unarguably talented and high-performing women, that I learned the right effort on easy days. I submitted to these pros’ “slow” recovery pace because I knew they could kick my butt in a race and I aspired to be as fast as they were.
My workouts and races immediately felt better, and I PRd by about 15 seconds in the 5K, 10 seconds in the 3,000 meters, and 9 seconds in the 1500 meters within a month of joining the group. Part of that improvement was because of running a series of time trial-style races that summer, but I also had never felt so good on race day. I readily exchanged that new normal for my previously kinda-fatigued normal.
Fueling and diet are another important part of staying healthy in the thick of training. I don’t adopt diet trends, ban any foods, or try to lose weight for any seasons. I do try to focus on a diet that supports the specific demands of distance running. Glycogen is your primary fuel source, so carbohydrates are essential. If you’re doing hard workouts or long runs, muscle breakdown is occurring, so adequate protein is really important. In college, I was always in a hurry and lived mostly on the five food non-groups of salad, yogurt, peanut butter, Pop Tarts, and bagels. Injuries started to accumulate, but when I became conscious of how little protein was in my diet, I focused on including it How to Adjust Your Run Schedule After a Big Race, Whats a Good 5K Time.
Build your personalized and adaptive iron is another dietary component to focus on. I find red meat is an easy way to check that and the protein box if you’re able to. As a whole, you want to make sure you aren’t always in a calorie deficit, which also contributes to injury and fatigue.
I race my best when I can feel power in my stride, rather than lightness, and that requires enough fueling. Eating enough calories and good fats are also important in maintaining optimal hormone balances, which are necessary to adapt to your training loads and avoid certain overtraining symptoms.
Keep it Mentally and Emotionally Healthy
I often hear from young runners about anxiety and nerves before races. I’ve seen nerves bring good athletes to puke before the gun goes off All About 75 Hard.
Competing is challenging, and results aren’t free of judgements, so I understand the fear there. Racing, however, can help you grow by unlocking a treasure trove of self-confidence in your ability to do something that seems hard or even impossible. Make your nerves work for you rather than against you, and you’ll have cultivated a useful lifetime superpower.
There’s a wealth of sports psychology advice out there regarding separating your self-worth from your performances, using What Molly Huddle Thinks About When She Races, staying in the moment, and being process-oriented while competing to help you stay excited for race day rather than dread it.
In the grand scheme of things, sports are a safe space to fail; those few hard losses are uncomfortable but they help remove the fear of imperfection. In this way, it’s actually making you more brave and more resilient for real-life adversity, and it’s fun in the meantime.
Embrace the Built-In Community
Although running is technically an individual sport, the running community is widespread and uplifting. Be it a team, club, or local race, the community you run with is a source to draw support from and heartwarming to give back to. (Try to do both!) In fact, according to psychologist Susan Pinker, there’s evidence that your social interaction in said running club, team, or road race is doing as much or more to keep you healthy as the actual running.
Growing up, I would tag along to road races with my dad. I loved the racing, but I also looked forward to chatting through bagel-crumbed lips with my fellow running nerds at the results tent and catching up with the recent high jinks of the local running crews. That’s part of why I wanted to host a local race today. For the times when competition isn’t or can’t be the main priority, an opportunity to have those interactions is part of what keeps us all meeting up amidst our many solo miles on the roads and trails of our respective cities.
My hope is to encourage athletes young in age or experience to see our sport primarily for its many beauties, rather than its few pitfalls. If you can do that early on, then I think your relationship with running is in good... feet. Because who doesn’t want this or nearly quit the sport because of the negative stress?
Molly Huddle is a two-time Olympian who holds the American record at 10,000 meters. She placed fourth at the 2018 New York City Marathon in a personal best of 2:26:44.
