From the Last Kid Picked in Gym Class to a 9:27 Paced 10K

“You’re not a runner, you know.”

“You’re fat.”

“Face it, you suck at sports.”

These were all the thoughts going through my head this morning as I line up in my corral to start a 10K race I was doing in Central Park. Clearly, I’d brought “Fat Girl” to the race with me, and she apparently invited a few of her closest friends.

I always have some anxiety before my races. I think it’s because I’ve always been horrible at sports. Forget about being the last kid picked in gym class; I was so bad that the kids simply pretended I didn’t exist and the gym teacher would assign me to whichever team was better in order to balance things out. My senior year of high school my softball team voted me for the team’s MVP, so that year my school changed the name of the award from “Most Valuable Player” to “Player With the Most Outstanding Contribution”. True story.

Yet here I was, surrounded by about 5,000 runners about to take a 6.2 mile lap around Central Park on a brisk Sunday morning. I look around and think to myself, “I don’t belong here. These people are all runners, athletes. What am I doing here?”

The race hasn’t started yet, and I give very serious consideration to walking out of my corral and off the course. I can just take my number off and run the park on my own. Or better yet, I can find the nearest diner and lose myself in a large stack of pancakes drowning in melted butter and fake syrup. But before I can say “Hungry Man’s Special”, the swarm of runners moves towards the start line and I’m caught up in the current.

I cross the start line and automatically start my stopwatch. If I’m going to run this race, I might as well time myself. At first the route is packed and I can’t really go at the pace that I want. But, whenever I see a sliver of daylight between two runners in front of me, I make myself as two dimensional as possible and slip between them.

As my body is strategizing for ways to pass other runners and try to run each mile faster than the previous one, my mind has other ideas. “Fat Girl” keeps saying things like, “Wow, you are way too fat to get up that hill” and “Wait, is that an eclipse? Oh, no, it’s just your ass blocking the Sun.”

Last week I had a coaching session with Peter K. I had mentioned to him that lately I’ve been sabotaging my own efforts. I’d start by mentally beating myself up, and then would soothe my bruised psyche with contraband like ice cream and candy. Peter taught me that there were two things I had to do: 1) Figure out when I was sabotaging myself, and 2) Come up with a strategy to stop it. And when Peter mentioned this, I smiled and nodded like it made perfect sense; to be honest, though, this genius who got an almost perfect score in the logic portion of the GREs had no clue what he was talking about.

As I continue running, I half listen to a woman who has actually answered her cell phone (really. The conversation I overheard: “Hi, Jennifer! Yes, I’m out of breath… Running a race… Yeah, 10K… Central Park… So, what’s up?”) and at the same time I strategize. I know this course like the back of my hand, so I have it all planned on when the uphills are coming and I need to slow down, and when the big downhills are imminent and I need to run like snot.

Suddenly, something dawns on me: I finally understand what Peter was talking about, and even have the answers (and I also realize that if I could have taken my GREs while running a treadmill, I likely would have gotten a completely perfect score on the logic section, harrumph). I beat myself up when I am very tired and my defenses are down, or when I’m challenging myself with something that I once thought was impossible (like running a 10K race and actually passing people). I break my destructive thought patterns when I allow myself to be “Fit Girl” – the runner, the athlete, the person who has successfully kept off 70 pounds for close to 2 years now and does a darned good job running a 10K, especially considering that she has no natural athletic ability.

The race continues, and I run my last half way faster than the first. I finish the race in 58 minutes and 36 seconds. My 9:27 pace is the second fastest I’ve had in a 10K, and I’m mildly frustrated that I was 3 seconds behind my personal best 10K pace. I vow that I’ll beat that pace in my next 10K – just like any true athlete would J. All I have to remember is “Fit Girl” is the one wearing the racing bib, and “Fat Girl” is still waiting in the school yard to be the last one picked in gym class.