Recently I ran intervals with my two-year-old. But I don't mean she was hanging out on the field while I circled a track. I mean she was running next to me, because my intervals were thirty seconds long and so slow an able-bodied two-year-old could keep up. Between each interval, I walked for a minute, or stretched while she bent to look at a rock.
This was not a workout designed to spend quality time with my daughter. It’s evidence of the fact that I’m starting to run again, all over again.
To be serious about running is, by definition, to encounter periods where running is either ill-advised or impossible. I wrote about this ten years ago, and even if I’ve gotten smarter about injury prevention and rest, the problem I then summarized as “not running”—and its close relative, “getting back into running”—persist, most recently because of the rather extreme physical demands of pregnancy and the postpartum period.
With my older daughter, I ran (well, that’s generous—I jogged) until a little over halfway through my pregnancy, at which point I got uncomfortable enough to stop. Four weeks postpartum—which, as I now know, most PTs suggest is too soon to start running again—I tried a very short, easy jog and quickly discovered that even very short, easy jogs were not possible. Cue physical therapy to rehabilitate my pelvic floor; cue short, slow intervals. Cue returning from my “runs” more mentally than physically exhausted, because I had to think about and make subtle adjustments to my form with every step. Cue a zillion clamshells and leg raises to re-train and stabilize muscles whose firing patterns had changed during pregnancy. Cue periodic tears of frustration, because for months my improvements were so incremental I often couldn’t see them at all.
But unseen improvements are still improvements. About nine months postpartum, my friend Jacey took me out for a trail run. I made it five miles, came home elated.
I was determined to be smarter as I approached the birth of our second child. I stopped running sooner in my pregnancy. I worked with my physical therapist on labor postures and breathing techniques to minimize pelvic floor damage. I didn’t even try to run for twelve weeks postpartum. Then, about a month ago, I went for my first run, a glorious twenty-minute jog. (I came home predictably elated.) Two days later, though, I was limping from pain. I’d largely prevented the problem I wanted to prevent, but another one had cropped up in its place. Cue the physical therapy. Cue the clamshells (which by my unscientific calculations are the solution to something like 82% of physical ailments), cue the mental fatigue of having to think about my posture with each step. Cue thirty-second intervals with a two-year-old.
A disclaimer before I continue: I’m uncomfortable with the cultural instinct to valorize “fitness,” or at least to narrowly define it. Of course physical exercise has proven benefits for mental and physical health, but so does adequate sleep, and there’s little applause for people who prioritize getting eight or nine hours a night.
So I hesitate to write about running because I don’t want to contribute to the problem. Yet it’s also the case that my very personal, very non-elite running practice has time and again been a useful lens for thinking through other, murkier life processes. Like the fact that sometimes, after a forced hiatus or break—some setback or failure or rearrangement of life as you know it—there’s no picking up where you left off. There is only starting again, all over again—if, that is, you’re given the chance to start over at all.
The subject of starting over makes me think about Lance Armstrong, whose memoir It’s Not About the Bike, written with Sally Jenkins, I read in high school. I remember liking the story about how Armstrong’s cancer made him a better cyclist. Cancer, he claimed, “gave me a second life. Even my body is different, because during the chemotherapy I lost all the muscle I had ever built up, and when I recovered, it didn't come back in the same way.”
Doping allegations had been made against Armstrong as early as 1999, but Armstrong was vehement in his denials, and—especially given that the book was published in September 2001—who didn’t want a narrative of rebuilding stronger than ever? Of course It’s Not About the Bike was a bestseller.
But none of us can count on coming back stronger after disruption; the only promise is that, to whatever degree we have the capacity to “come back,” we will come back different. We know this and we do not know this. We know it because we laud the “honesty” of people who admit how tenuous and unpredictable life is (Armstrong and Jenkins also wrote that “Good, strong people get cancer, and they do all the right things to beat it, and they still die”), but we do not know it because a quick perusal of bestsellers reveals a preference for stories of people who did come back stronger than ever from whatever their setback was—illness, professional or personal ruin, etc. I don’t doubt the veracity of (most of) these stories; what has to be untrue is the impression they create, especially alongside the relative lack of stories about those who came back merely different, or even not at all.
We’ll buy into the so-called truth of the world, that is, but only if we can actually buy a story of exception.
All that said, starting over is—or can be—a gift, beginning with the realization that I have the opportunity to start over at all, because someday I won’t. This attitude, though, requires me to uncouple a new beginning from the expectation of new heights of success, which means knowing that, on the world’s balance sheet, I might come out a loser.
Truth be told, I can’t let go of the hope that I haven’t yet run all of my fastest races, but the fact is that maybe I have. There’s another child in the house now; Kirke and I are both entering demanding turning points in our careers; we are occasionally exhilarated but, mostly, perpetually exhausted. This isn’t a complaint, it’s a fact. It seems likely that, for the foreseeable future, running will be geared more toward supporting my well-being than optimizing performance. And if I do get back to more focused training three or five or seven years down the road—whenever I am not attached to one or more children most hours of the day—I might be past the point of personal bests.
But here’s the thing: right now, none of that bothers me much. For the first time in twenty years, I am experiencing a patient commitment to starting again, one I’ve never known before, and one steeped in (yes) gratitude. Right now, starting over all over again is interesting. Years of experience have given me wisdom and instincts that make this juncture of body, mind, and circumstance a curiosity. And curiosity is the seed of delight.
I can’t know what will be different this time. That’s the crux of actually starting over, rather than merely trying to rebuild what was, except better.
In the classic text Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki observed that “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” This is one of those incisive sayings it’s all too easy to misuse—ah, if I only approach this tricky project/process/practice with a beginner’s mind, the solution will appear! Yes, solutions do tend to appear when we set down the armor of expertise. But sometimes other things happen, like realizing that the tricky project isn’t worth our time, after all. Or that the current, imperfect iteration is as good as it’s going to get. Or that the real problem lies somewhere else.
I mentioned earlier that Kirke and I are entering turning points in our careers. I won’t speak for him, but for my part, questioning assumptions I’ve carried about my career (including the definition of “career”) is very much an example of starting over, and probably what I’m really talking about in this essay, because running, though it matters to me very much, is not existential. Discerning a vocation, though, is—especially when doing so requires practical considerations like money and who’s with the kids when and what kind of life we are trying to build. But I hardly know where to begin with all that, because it all feels so big and confusing (and existential), so I talk about running instead. I talk about running to try to learn a few small things, things that give me enough for today, this week. Like, for instance, this: that starting over, all over again, isn’t about trudging back to some tired beginning. Starting over, all over again, is actually the next step.
Still here? I love it! The next post will be about reading—the gaps between what we think we “should” read, what we most love to read, and what we actually spend our time reading. If you have thoughts on this subject that you’d like to share, I would love to hear from you. You can reply to this post if you received it via email, or write bearingthelight@substack.com.
Truth teller! Another beautiful and very alive essay, Mindy.
Lovely, true piece, Mindy. I’m so glad I found your substack space❤️