Quote Originally Posted by OakLeaf View Post
Nice post, Colby!

I've come around to seeing myself as athletic, but not as a runner. That's something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately. I passed up some pretty cute slogan T-shirts at the pre-race expo this weekend because I didn't feel I "deserved" to wear them. (My favorite: "My sport is your sport's punishment." )

But if I'm not a "real runner" after running 13.1 miles faster than 3,000 other women this weekend, when will I be? When I no longer have to drag myself out for a training run, but anticipate them eagerly? (If that's the criterion, it may never happen. ) When I can win my age group in a field that large? (Definitely not going to happen. ) What's the impossible standard I'm setting for myself?

What did it take for the rest of you to think of yourselves as real runners ... or do we all struggle with that?
Obviously, I still do, and I have for a long time. I bought one finisher item when I finished my first Ironman, only because I couldn't wear the official finisher t-shirt (it was too big and I finished so late they didn't have a smaller size). It was a struggle. I wasn't a REAL Ironman, it took me more than 16 hours, and I had only finished one of them. It was a fluke, surely. After the second one, I reluctantly bought more things... two means the first wasn't a fluke, but I would never call myself a triathlete (I was an Ironman, but not a triathlete, somehow those are two different things).

It's taken me a couple of years to turn around and look at myself without carrying so much of the baggage of who I was. The questions people ask of me, the way people describe my body (describing me as "athletic" or commenting about some muscle somewhere), seeing pictures of myself in race after race and not just seeing what's wrong with yourself. I won't lie that seeing myself getting faster helps mentally (to be "average" even means that there are more "athletes" like me than not like me). Looking at the statistics helps, too - you finished that race with 3,000 women, and there are thousands of women that finish them every year... but there are MILLIONS of women in the US. If you're not a runner doing something that 1% or 5% or even 10% or 20% of women do... what are you? You can only think of yourself as a fluke for so long...

For me, seeing myself as an athlete, a runner, a triathlete, all of those things, is just another body image problem. I honestly don't know what standard I'm holding myself to, either. Some imaginary superwoman, apparently.