Who Are You?

Who are you?  That question just took you aback a little bit, didn’t it?  I understand, it’s kind of an odd question.  And to make it more confusing, I don’t mean your name.  I’m talking about your identity.  Now if you’re a super hero, that is very cool, but your secret identity is not what I’m talking about.  How do you identify yourself?  Parent? Artist? Rockstar?

This question came up in my last Weight Watchers meeting.  Our leader asked us just that: “Who are you?  How would you identify yourself?”  I was stuck.  There was a very long pause in my head when absolutely nothing came to mind. I don’t think I quite understood the question.  Who am I? 

After a second or two, people started answering: “mother”, “sister”, “employee”, “grandparent”, “cook”, “house manager”.  As people called things out, I thought “yes” or “no” as it applied to me for each one.  Yes, I’m a mother.  Yes, I’m a sister.  Yes, I’m an employee.  Nope, not a grandparent.  Some were tricky (“cook”? Umm, if you mean cook well enough to feed myself and others to survive, then sure.  If we’re talking Gordon Ramsey level, then not even close). Others were a lot easier (I had a firm no on “scooterist” as one woman who we learned to be a Vespa enthusiast proudly labeled herself).

This went on for a bit, but then two identities were called out back to back that stopped my brain dead in its tracks.  When I tell you the two words, you’ll think it’s odd that they got to me (though if you’ve been following my blog for a bit, you probably picked up on my being odd a while ago).  They were “runner” and “athlete”.

I know; you’re confused.  So was I.  I run, bike, swim and weight train (as long as we define all of those words in terms of effort and frequency instead of skill).  I work out almost every day, taking a rest day only when my body is begging me for one.  That’s what athletes do, right?  I’m currently training for my 5^th marathon.  That qualifies me for “runner”, no?

It should, but it doesn’t.  My body is fit and carries 70 fewer pounds than it used to.  The problem, though, is that my brain isn’t quite there yet.  Often at a race, I feel very out of place.  At the edge of the water before a triathlon, I look around at all these people who seem relaxed and confident.  They talk about how this race is really just a training day for some bigger race coming up.  I’ve never done a smaller race to prepare for a bigger one.  I don’t feel relaxed and confident.

Yesterday I volunteered for the NYC Triathlon.  Volunteering in any given year gives you guaranteed entry for the following year.  This is my 3^rd year volunteering and I’ve done the race – zero times.  The first year I volunteered handing out packets to athletes with their race bibs, arm number tattoos (this race goes all out; no old creepy guy standing there with a Sharpie writing your number on your arm and occasionally getting it wrong, crossing it out, and writing it again under the first try.  Here you get tattoos you have to put on and that take about 3 weeks to finally come off, disallowing any sleeveless tops for close to a month).  I was with a few other women, most of whom would be competing in the triathlon the next day.  I spent 5 hours listening to them drone on about all of their athletic accomplishments; a Half Ironman completed with a broken wrist, 2 Olympic distance races in 2 weeks, about 3 million races that year alone.  I tried to keep up with them. I was training for my second marathon; that was cool, right?  Not to these people; they probably did 2 marathons yesterday. After a few minutes I kept quiet and felt like the only non-athlete in the room.  But there was a bright spot.  I was volunteering in 2012 to have guaranteed entry in 2013.  I’d be one of them then.

But, I wasn’t.  In 2013 the race was on July 8^th.  I got out of my boot from my stress fracture on July 1^st.  Now, even a real athlete can’t train for an Olympic distance triathlon in 7 days (well, these other volunteers probably would have told you that they could and did).  So, last year I volunteered again at packet pick up and was surrounded by different people with the same resumes: a billion triathlons, Half Ironmans, Full Ironmans, ultra marathons.  And again, I kept quiet and left at the end of my shift feeling like a fraud.  I wasn’t an athlete or a runner.  I was a Fat Girl who had lost weight and would eventually gain it all back and pick up my old sedentary ice cream filled lifestyle.

A few months after that volunteering day, registration opened for the 2014 NYC Triathlon.  I had that guaranteed entry – and I didn’t use it.  I told myself that it was because the race was ridiculously expensive (about $300; a LOT of money for an Olympic distance triathlon) and not worth it (note: I was given a guaranteed spot for volunteering.  I wasn’t given a free spot).  The truth, though, was that I didn’t feel like I could do it.  I’m not an athlete.  I can’t compete with those women I had handed out packets with for the previous two years. No way.

I did sign up to volunteer again, though.  First, it’s kind of fun to be involved in some way, and second, I’d get another guaranteed entry for 2015, and maybe I’d feel like an athlete by then.  Again, I signed up for packet pickup; yes, the other people were intimidating, but it was a really busy job and the time went by quickly.  But then a funny thing happened.  A few days ago I got an email from the triathlon company saying they had to switch some volunteers around and I had been reassigned to “chip checker” (we run your timing chip over a scanner to make sure that: a) your chip was given to you, and b) that it works.  Nothing like doing a race with a dead chip or ending with a fabulous time attached to someone else’s name because you had the wrong one). Didn’t really matter to me as long as I got that entry that I probably wasn’t going to use again.

This time I was with just 3 other women: Dawn, Caprice and Karen.  All three were competing in the triathlon, so I again felt a little inferior.  But once we got to chatting I felt comfortable pretty quickly.  Of course we talked about triathlons and running, but these girls weren’t crowing like the others.  One woman said she had quit in the middle of a triathlon (one I had done back in 2012) because she was having a really hard time and just got too far into her own head and gave up.  A second one (friends with the first and volunteering together) had finished that triathlon, but was second to last.  They talked about running paces of 11 minute miles, not 6.   They were back of the packers like me, and they admitted it freely.  They were all in their late 40s, and all just doing it because they love the challenge, which is exactly why I had started this stuff: to challenge myself and prove to myself what I was capable of.  Not to prove it to anyone else; prove it to me.

During this shift there was intermittent down time where we all talked.  But we didn’t talk about completing our first half marathon at age 6 like the packet pick up folks.  We talked about different style of foam rollers, where to buy the cheapest wet suits, and our favorite types of nutrition in the middle of a long training session (one of the women was partial to Honey Stingers wafters.  I’m a strawberry Shot Blok girl myself, though Vanilla Gu is a close second).  I brought up my broken foot from the year before and how I ran on it for a month before getting it checked.  These women weren’t shocked.  They nodded in complete understanding.

Messing around before a tri, 2011

Later in the shift I got hungry, so I pulled out the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I had made for myself; I had a 12 mile run the next day and a 9 miler the day after that; I needed to be all about carbs and protein.  About a half hour later Dawn got hungry, and pulled an almost identical pb & j.  She saw me looking at her and said, “The lunch of any athlete the day before a big workout.”  Then she smiled and attacked her sandwich.

And that’s when it hit me.  I spend half my time carb loading.  I own a wetsuit.  I worry more about flat tires on my bicycle than I do on my car.  I know what it feels like to roll out sore muscles on a foam roller and I do it anyway.  I have a favorite flavor Gu.  I will never win a race (unless I’m the only one competing in it, and even then I don’t know if I’d bet my money on me), but I train, sweat and ache.  I am a runner and I am an athlete.

Identities are fluid.  We start off as daughter or son and perhaps even brother or sister.  Later we become aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents.  We become artists, employees, even rockstars.  And sometimes Fat Girls turn into athletes.  I did.  So, who are you?