I began training in February for a late spring marathon. I have run numerous half marathons over the years. Every time I have run a half marathon, I have known with total certainty that I could not possibly ever run a full 42km marathon. If it takes everything that I have in order to get through two grueling hours of running, doubling that amount is surely impossible, I thought.
In the fall though, I decided to bump up my training a manageable amount and run a 30km race. Again, by the finish line I felt so totally depleted that my friends’ comments of “marathon next!” were laughable. And yet, a few short months later, I was in touch with each of my running buddies to gather as much intel as I could on what it might take to train for that previously unimaginable distance.
I am not naturally athletic. I was always picked last in gym class. On the inside, I am always that awkward bookworm who was ridiculed as I huffed and puffed across the finish line dead last any time there was a school race in which I was made to participate. Nobody is more surprised than I am to find myself as someone who devotes large chunks of her free time to running.
My friend Janice loaned me the life-changing book Roar by Dr. Stacy Sims. Dr. Sims has been a world-class triathlete. I wouldn’t normally pick up a book like hers, with a ripped woman on the front, because I wouldn’t think it was meant for me. “Is this how you’re working at looking now?” my husband joked when he saw me reading it in the living room.
Sims’ work is built around a simple premise: “women are not small men.” What she means by that is that the female body is different from the male body. This is not just okay, it is good. Most sports’ nutrition information is designed based on research with twenty-something white males. Understanding our embodied female reality means that we value who we actually are, rather than the ill-suited template the industry has used to define us, purely out of convenience. I soaked in her insights, feeling empowered as a woman embarking on a new training program.
And just as quickly as I had begun, a nagging voice began chirping in my head. “You’re not an athlete,” it said. “This advice is for athletes.”
That inner bookworm of mine may be awkward, but her voice is amazingly authoritative. I had loved reading Dr. Sims’ book. I took notes, found her online, listened to follow-up podcasts and felt excited about the resources I was gaining for my training plan. But suddenly I felt like I had gone through a door that wasn’t open to me. Dr. Sims is writing for serious athletes. I felt foolish in imagining otherwise. This accomplished physician specializes in the fueling and recovery needs of the female athletic body.
That isn’t me.
It turns out I’m not alone with this authoritative, self-eliminating voice. Sims posted on social media that she is frequently asked by people of all backgrounds and athletic abilities whether her research applies to them too. Her response is remarkably clear. “The answer is Yes. You don’t need to be an elite athlete to take your body and your physiology seriously.”
That Nagging Voice Has Many Platforms
There are religious parallels here. I am a parish priest who has served in church leadership for the better part of two decades. There is rarely a new person who comes into our faith community who doesn’t cart along with them burning, unsettling, and sometimes barely-articulated questions about whether or not they are allowed to be here.
“Are there other people here who have been in jail? Is that okay?”
“I have tattoos. Is that allowed?”
“I am Muslim. Can I still participate?”
“I’m not sure what I believe. Can I still belong?”
My colleagues have shared with me their stories of arranging to meet with someone from their congregation, as a check-in or to touch base, only to have that person wonder if they are going to be asked to leave—for having kids with behavior issues; for suffering from personality disorders; for being drunk at church.
Our newcomers’ groups often result in painful and healing sharing of stories across the myriad of people who have searched us out. People have been taught that their sexuality, their gender, who they love and how they love is distorted and wrong. Lorenzo, deacon of our church, spent the bulk of his adult life as a minister in another tradition, trying to live within the template of heterosexual love that was expected of him, failing multiple times at conversion therapy. He now devotes himself to leadership in the LGBTQ2S+ community, and as people are open to it, he speaks to them of the life of prayer and spirit—inviting them to imagine that, contrary to what they have been taught, these resources are available to them too. These conversations can be profoundly healing on the hearts of people who have longed to connect with that greater power and who had been told that they were not welcome until they could be different.
The Consequences of Believing We Don’t Deserve to Be Here
I have struggled repeatedly in my training because I didn’t think that my efforts were serious enough to warrant feeding my body with the food I need in order to support what I am trying to do. I have run out of energy in the middle of a race because I was scared to consider that my body was working hard enough to warrant extra calories. I thought that I had left behind long ago those other messages of the nagging, authoritative, self-eliminating voice—that I was fat, that I needed to lose weight, that the best kind of eating was less eating, that exercise was to be adopted for the purpose of burning excess calories, not taking more on—only to find myself hitting a wall on the race course because I had slipped back into that fearful mantra of a body that was inadequate, undeserving, and ugly.
It takes only a cursory look at the world around us to see this dynamic writ large. When we believe that we don’t really deserve to be here, there are destructive choices we buy into as we try to make ourselves into something/someone else, as we self-eliminate from accessing the resources that will actually feed us.
We treat our bodies as problems to be managed or battlegrounds designed to trip us up with the minefields of hunger, desire, age spots, and cellulite. We get on the hamster wheels of trying to make ends meet, believing that we don’t have time, energy or need for Sabbath, for community, for considering what it is to be a neighbor. We get isolated in the prisons of shame that have been built around our problems, our inadequacies, all of the ways that we fall apart and don’t get it right and have need of help. We are taught that desire is King, and also that we aren’t good enough. That it’s every person for themselves, and whoever has the most toys at the end, wins. And also, that we can never win. We construct these virtual lives on social media, editing out all of the pieces that we think are wrinkled and ugly about ourselves—these platforms then intentionally stoke the fires of our envy for others’ edited lives, even as we ourselves struggle under the burden of our own carefully-managed facade.
The Power of Community
I have been surprised to discover that my inner bookworm, awkward and embarrassed and certainly not an athlete, still has so much to say—that she so forcefully assumes the power to define my life.
Thankfully, the running community has offered a very different sort of voice into my experience, and this has been healing. In my running friends, and in the overall ethos of the sport, I have found not just acceptance, but more importantly, I have found people who unquestioningly rejoice with me in the miles that I log and who are eager to share their own learned resources to help equip me. We all run at different paces, and those who are faster get celebrated in a bunch of different ways. But they also tend to be remarkably good about circling back to support and celebrate the rest of us too. Those who love to run love when others run as well, and they feel a sense of responsibility for making it clear that there is room on the path for everyone—and not only that, there are these things that have been learned that are not to be guarded by the elite of the pack, but are to be shared, because it’s better when more of us learn how, not just to lace up our shoes and get started, but how to keep going without falling apart along the way, with enough nourishment to bless and strengthen our bodies as we go.
As for the other false narratives about my life that I continue to sort out, it’s community that I have needed there too. If you’re reading this, then you are likely invested in forming and strengthening the kinds of community that tend to the nourishing and building up of life—of human life, and human life within the vast, intricately connected reality of life on this planet. Maybe the communities of which we are a part can take a few notes from our runners:
The Path is Big Enough
Most popular running events will include not only world-class runners, but also those who are just off the couch for their first running foray. There’s enough room for everyone, and you are encouraged to take the race at your own speed.
Try This
Runners are generous in sharing their tips and tricks. But they are also humble in doing so. “Everybody’s body is different,” is a common mantra. The invitation is clear: give this a try, and also, find what works for you.
We Go at Different Paces but We All Need to Be Fed
It’s not just okay to eat, it’s necessary. Running is not punishment. If you are doing it in order to transcend all of the things you think you don’t like about your body, you will hit the wall. Get seriously tuned in to hunger. Hunger is your friend. If you want to run the race, you need to be fed.
Alone & Connected
Running is more of a mental exercise than a physical one. Whether you run in groups or run by yourself, you are going to learn something about yourself and you are going to have to speak back to the self-defeating voices in order to keep going. In other words, you will do some soul-searching. And whether you run in groups or run by yourself, you will be blessed in the realization that you are not alone, that there are countless others on the path with you, and you can draw on their strength and friendship.
Share out of Joy
Runners love to run. That’s why we are so happy when others want to know about running too. You might start running to lose weight, to be a certain way, or because you think we should. I pray that you keep running because it fills you with joy. The invitation to join us is offered out of this joy.
Yes, this is for you too!
Whatever nagging voices have tried to define and exclude you in the past, there is most definitely the option of lacing up your shoes and discovering that this is for you too.
Martha Tatarnic currently leads a thriving urban church in St. Catharines--the Niagara region of Ontario. Her book The Living Diet: A Christian Journey to Joyful Eating explores the relationships between food, body image, community and spirituality.
