I’ve always been obsessed
The journey to the ultra.
When I was eight years old, it was Gwen Stefani. I’m not sure how my parents coped with the way it took over my life. When my mom would take me to the grocery store, I had already researched which magazines Gwen had been featured in and scoured the rest for photos. We would buy them, I would take them home, and I would cut out the photos. There were over 700 photos of Gwen Stefani on the walls of my childhood bedroom.
If Gwen was on the cover, I had an entirely different system. I’d read it until I memorized it and stack it in chronological order in my sealed off collection. The April 2004 issue of Vogue meant the world to me. The photos of Gwen’s home, the soft spring palette, the dark eyes. When Gwen Stefani released her first fashion product — a L.A.M.B. handbag collab with LeSportsac — it felt like my world would end if I didn’t get it. I was in the fifth grade though, and my income was limited, so I reminded my mom several times per day about how I needed it. She bought it for me. She was the first person in line on release day for Gwen’s first solo album because I had to have the poster. I watched Live in the Tragic Kingdom every single day for years and I’d cry, overwhelmed with the thought of one day being in the crowd. This thing took up all of my time and energy and a significant portion of my parents’ money.
As I got older, the obsession varied. I was always a fan girl of bands. I waited out before and after shows to meet the members of Taking Back Sunday, My Chemical Romance, and From First to Last. Showing up to a concert less than four hours before doors was unimaginable to me. I wanted to love the band more than anyone, and I wanted to be front row. My friends and I would create our own entertainment in these lines. Occasionally, we would meet the band. Shrill teenagers with sharp edges for bangs, decked out in red and black, collecting autographs from Pittsburgh to Columbus.
I had short bursts of intense obsession. The concept of business and business-related things (namely, business cards, which I collected hundreds of at the mall). I hosted a business party. I called the numbers on the business cards. My concept of business had nothing to do with business; it was just a framework for my life, and I needed it. I was obsessed with crops (again with the loose concept). I cut down my neighbors’ plants and brought them home in the name of crops. This was particularly exciting during the fall when people had decorative corn stalks and crop-like additions to their yards. I did not understand that my actions often fell into the category of petty crime as a result of my “obsessions,” but the police and my parents knew one another well enough after years of being the local neighborhood menace. I did know to operate late at night, but I was often picked up past curfew.
By the eighth grade, my somewhat innocent channeling of weird freak girl energy to legitimately random things (it was the era of being so random, after all) turned toward things normal people are obsessed with: self-destructive behaviors with drugs, alcohol, and food. I lost my sparkle when I started stealing Mike’s Hard Lemonade to drink alone on the phone with my best friend and taking Vicodin from the kitchen to enjoy alongside my dad’s old Pink Floyd vinyls. I had phases with fax machines, geocaching, and winnebagos, but I wasn't a kid anymore. Drugs, alcohol, and an eating disorder made me feel more normal, coming off the buzz of being hyperactive and constantly seeking. I could surrender and cease the wild hunt, instead succumbing to a long afternoon in a hazy lucid dream.
In the decades that followed, I’ve been sober and not sober. I’ve starved myself, I developed a mildly parasocial relationship to Phoebe Bridgers, I binge drank to fit in and avoid the impending doom of tomorrow. I have dabbled in hobbies looking for purpose and identity only to make them my entire personality and have it not stick.
Over the past three years, my athletic pursuits have reached new heights of obsession that even Gwen Stefani doesn’t hold a candle to. I’ve been working out for over a decade with some regularity, but I never considered myself a lifter or a runner let alone a cyclist or a swimmer. I was consistent enough with convenient exercise to stay fit and have spent the better part of the past ten years doing things outdoors and working a manual labor job, so I was incidentally fit (at least during the summer). I started riding a mountain bike on a road ride when I lived on O’ahu which initiated some shift in my identity. Before returning to the mainland, I told everyone I was going to “get jacked,” and I started lifting weights as soon as I landed in Montana for the summer. I kept riding bikes and by the end of the summer, it felt like everything had changed. Bikes and the gym were the glue that held my world together. They were the things I couldn’t live without.
A year or so later, I had two bikes and big muscles and I could do pull ups and I took my bike on trips down desolate dirt roads by myself. I was doing it and doing it well. I was counting my macros and all of my veins stood out atop my skin, I was training for a race. Sure, I had spent a good deal of hours working toward these things, but it still felt so foreign to me. It felt like the first thing I was good at, and the first thing I had done long enough that it wouldn’t slip through my fingers in an instant.
As the girl with fleeting obsessions and hyper-fixations, this time felt different. I realized that I’d never seen myself through the hard parts before. I didn’t trust myself enough to actually accomplish something I said I would do, and here I was with evidence that I could. It has since felt like this secret someone told me, a great fossil lying in a remote canyon, the greatest thing I’ve ever unearthed.
I was a big kid, both tall and wide, having gone through puberty at around age eight or nine. I could not run around. I did not play sports due to lack of interest and the shame of being in a larger body which my peers noticed and pointed out daily. I lasted a month on the swim team and two months dancing before I decided I was too fat. Early on, I learned to be a quitter. It saved me from the additional humiliation of having tried and failed, so I didn’t try at all.
My parents tended to acquiesce when I decided I would quit with little protest, and as an adolescent and adult, I didn’t seek out other opportunities to learn the value of hard work or discipline. I lost interest in school altogether, often finding ways to sneak out of the doors and walk home midday, dealing with the consequences later. By rejecting all commitments, I embraced the art of escapism both physically and emotionally.
In August, I decided I was going to become a lifeguard. I wasn’t going to work at the pool because I figured it is a job for teenagers, and I am concerned with my social prospects. I would work at the ocean. It is an easy job to romanticize. The lifeguards are gorgeous, muscular, and tan. They wear sweatpants over a bikini and walk around barefoot which is an outfit I think I look good in. They drive Tacomas kitted out for sand and cruise the coast. I immediately began swimming and could not make it 25 yards without being gassed. I have gotten much better since then, putting in 2,500-yard sessions and attending Masters Swim only to get roasted for my technique the whole time. I’d have never lasted past my first day ten years ago.
I’m no longer considering becoming a lifeguard because despite my serious efforts to improve, I have not improved to the point of getting through tryouts. The pursuit was more valuable than career advancement potential altogether, a missing rung in the ladder of self-efficacy that I’d built. I have had transcendent days in the pool that have contributed to healing the wound — the one that made me so desperate to fill the void with something that would consume me entirely.
Around two months ago, I was weighing my cardio options for the day and didn’t feel like driving back to the gym to get in the pool. Instead, I laced up my shoes and went for a run. I started up my watch and got going. I returned three miles later and was shocked to see my splits much speedier than they were during my previous bouts of running. Even more surprising was how easy it felt. I even had a little runner’s high going on.
Within a week, I was training for an ultra marathon and have told everyone about it which means I will do it (this is science). Casey upgraded my watch for Christmas which gives me all the numbers my impassioned heart could possibly desire. I’ve found running to be the most enjoyable and obvious thing I’ve ever pursued. It’s easy to be obsessed with, it’s fairly inexpensive, I’m kind of good at it, and my intuition for programming and training is advanced because of my gym experience. I applied the same mentality and strategies I did to get big and strong. I’m progressing at a rate I’m very pleased with.
I considered training for a half marathon because I’m new to running, but I hiked a marathon with 7,000 feet of climbing this summer while I had COVID (I didn’t know yet, don’t bully me) amongst many other similarly extensive days in the mountains. The type of mental fortitude I have in my back pocket is meant for the trail, so I jumped the lines straight to 50k. I like long, hard, grueling mountain days. I like hitting rock bottom because I know how to bounce back. I am the cardio drama queen, and the ultra is literally the perfect outlet for me. I can’t wait to cry and laugh and find my people.
The spirit of training for long-distance races is wildly affirming. Though I’ve never trained for a standard half or full marathon distance race, the ultra adds another layer of training with intention. While I have goals and love anything I can watch the numbers on, I set an intention before each run or workout. While I often achieve my objective, data-driven goal, I almost always meet my intention. I have been stacking hard workouts back to back so I can build up my ability to run on sore, heavy legs. I hiked with a stomach bug a couple weeks ago because feeling physically well while running long distances is not a guarantee.
I may be two months into my running journey, but it feels like the thing I was made for. It is the perfect outlet to flex both my physical and mental strengths and abilities, and it keeps me in motion. I’ve always been a runner (as in, I like to leave everything behind on a routine basis). It’s nice to be running toward something that feels good. There is no way I will fail because I’ve already kept so many promises I’ve made to myself, and it’s already enough, and every workout is a privilege, and I cannot believe I get to be here instead of drowning in the pain and rage and sorrow of everything that led me to this place.
But that’s the whole point. It wouldn’t be like this if it hadn’t been how it was. On the treadmill the other night, I was beaming while sweat flew from my ponytail and No Doubt was playing on my headphones, and I was proud because I’ve always known exactly who I was, and somehow, I am exactly the same as I’ve always been.