Stress as sport

The tightness cinches at my ribcage. Like fingertips gripping, pulling at my interstitial muscles. It’s unwelcome, unexplained, and leaves me short of breath. 

In baseball, they’re called the “Yips.” An unexplainable sensation that reduces skilled players to amateur mistakes. To tossing the ball in errant directions.

In gymnastics, they’re the “Spins.” An inability to track direction while moving through space. An alarmingly dangerous inability that leaves athletes at risk of paralyzing injury. All because their brain suddenly, inexplicably, can’t seem to execute the most foundational elements of the sport.

An inability to throw straight.

An inability to spin safely.

Those are the foundational skills of their sports.

Ours as runners is the ability to settle into stress.

Our sport is based on elegantly dialing in discomfort, then seeking acceptance. It’s a game of aiming for ease within difficulty. Of finding rhythm within exertion. Even, oddly, of seeking joy in the sweet ache. 

And as runners, we’re so accustomed to the cycle of stress, relax, recover, repeat, that it becomes the rhythm of our life. A cornerstone of our identity. We practice and rely on it, until the sequence gets unsettled.

If baseball players have Yips, and gymnasts have Spins, then what’s it called when runners are unable to channel stress in pursuit of sport? When their body succumbs to pressure beyond their control? 

All I know is that I’ve got no “Go.”

Mid-interval, leaning into the effort as I round the curve of a local high school track, my engrained sense of pace signals that something is up. 

Before looking I know that I’m behind.

Across the finish, beep, I am in fact too slow.

Leading to more effort. More stress.

Leaning, pushing, too hard, too soon. My task today was to settle in at a sustainable threshold and yet nothing will seem to stick. Each pace rises from a simmer to a boil and then quickly spills out of control. Collapsing onto the infield, back flat on the fake turf, I slowly expel a guttural gasp.

“What is going on?!” I demanded to my therapist the following week. “I feel like I’m doing well!” I insisted, perplexed at why my sleep had become unsettled and workouts had begun to unravel.

“When you say that, how you’re feeling fine, I sense a hesitation.” She remarked with inquiry. “Can we pause there?” She invited. “What do you feel beneath that?” She challenged me to look below the layer on which I’d spent the last year learning to sprint without inspection.

And as I sat, I sank.

I settled, softened, and then began to sob.

Because of course, I’m not alright. It’ll never be okay that my Mom is gone.

After steadfastly holding the sadness at arm's length, pausing to sit with it felt like inviting an emotional tidal wave to overwhelm my mind.

“I get that you want this to be linear…” She named my false expectations without even a need to finish her sentence.

The thing is, I am doing well. 

I am! 

My life is luxurious by almost all standards. If you’re reading this and judging me for complaining about the entirely expected event of losing a sick parent, I can assure you that in line for judgment, you’ve arrived behind me.

“I don’t deserve to feel like this,” is my rational justification.

“I don’t want to feel like this,” is my selfish justification.

“So many others have endured so much more than me,” is my comparative justification.

“I notice that you’re quick to try and place your feelings in context. To explain them away.” My therapist named my fastest internal defense. 

“Well, yeah,” I stuttered to explain while wiping tears, “I hate self-loathing. I can’t stand it. I don’t want to lose perspective of this privilege.”

“I get that. And I respect it. But you might not be allowing yourself to feel things.” She suggested. Maybe my best efforts to contain the emotional pressure building in Mom’s absence were unsustainable. I nodded, still peering at her through hazy eyes. I’m both relieved to name the force that’s gripping my ribcage and disgusted that a year in I’m still circling the same pit of grief. 

My simplistic assessment is that I should be past this. Not over Mom’s death, but able to accept and embark on a new life chapter without her. To turn the page with the type of strength she modeled for me. And I am, I really am…or I’m trying to. Unfortunately, while seeking rhythm in workouts these past months I was startled as the weight of this ongoing grief came crashing down. 

Within the structure of intervals, while measuring distance over time, the impact of my ongoing sadness is too present to ignore. My heart rate, the measure of effort I’ve spent decades settling, accelerates upward indiscriminately.

If it weren’t for these attempts at controlling stress for sport I might successfully explain it away. Might manage to duck and dodge through conversations without facing the sadness pulling within me. Might hide from a, “How are things?” and deflect a well-meaning, “I’m here for you.” Absent the slipping splits it’s unclear if I’d even have to acknowledge the still simmering stress. 

In fact, without digital evidence to the contrary, I might proclaim that my heart was healing from the moment when my life forked as her heart stopped.

If not for those seconds.

And the squeezing. That inability to catch a truly deep breath. Or to sleep through the night without the tense flinch that something’s amiss.

Thankfully, I am evolving. In the past year, I’ve moved from months of waking each day in tears, to a season spent sinking into depression, toward a spring determined for new beginnings, and a summer focused on crossing the finish line of one year without her. 

And it felt good. 

I aimed to embark on a fresh chapter tinged by grief, but not all consumed. Until my insides indicated otherwise.

I so wanted to have moved forward already. So longed to shake free from the sorrow swirling inside me that I preemptively turned a page. I embarked on this fall focused on building marathon fitness free from this sadness. And things began well at first, until suddenly, unexpectedly, I couldn’t complete a workout. 

Could still start with intention. Could still stare down the session with hunger and drive, but like a table tipping sideways, my honed ability to manage effort would slip slowly at first, then come crashing down. The tension compounded quickly. Into anxiety, fear, and panic. In a sport based on calibrating effort carefully, I now spun out of control.

“I sense that you’re feeling anger you’re unsure how to process.” My therapist noted the following session. “You’re accustomed to sadness, but appear confused by anger.” Expelling a low groan, I acknowledged that while tears come naturally, attempts to intellectualize anger don’t offer similar relief.

“What justification do I have for anger?” I wondered, even as her absence makes my blood boil.

For no specific reason. 

My sanity hinges on the belief it’s no one’s fault that she’s gone. That no one moment or single choice led to her death. Yet, I’m learning that that may not matter. I’m learning that anger, as a “secondary emotion,” can swell without a clear source. Can consume without following a known line of logic. And it works overtime. Anger and anxiety, dueling partners in emotional derailment. You don’t have to acknowledge them for their impact to amplify.

“That’s how it feels.” I was stuffing soccer balls into a nylon sack at my son’s practice, and as it grew more taut, squeezing tighter with each object, I recognized it nearly bursting with tension. That’s how my chest felt each time I sought a deep breath. That's where the last few percent of my oxygen was being lost each interval. 

That tension, twisting my favorite sport into an intimidating chore. A wall that I kept ramming into without clear resolution. And so, after months of trying, and weeks of worrying, I chose to do the only thing I could think of to offer relief: removing this fall’s marathon from my calendar and shifting back to running without structure. It’s a subtle difference, maybe imperceptible to outsiders of the sport, but affords tweaks that allow me to move around the obstacle instead of forcing through. 

It still includes rising before sunrise to move through miles that offer joy and simple relief, but doing so while letting go of precise expectations. It means finding ways to dial in effort without obsessing each interval. And avoiding splits that signal progress toward a goal. It appears my work needed to redirect inward this fall.

I’d so wanted to perform on that day. I’d dreamt for months of arriving at that start filled with strength and infused with speed. Traveling at marathon pace offers an intoxicating rush, as if somehow getting away with a lie. Training with such focus for months affords a short-lived ability to breathe deeply under duress. A nearly magical capacity to fly down city streets heaving with exertion and realizing, “Wait, I’m…alright.”

And yet right now that talent escapes me because the baseline stress of my body is beyond my control. A season spent struggling against an unfamiliar duress has left me with intense frustration, possibly a bit of perspective, and a full order of gratitude for my past peak performances.

Because I’m learning, that it’s rare in life to feel completely in control. Despite plans laid carefully and workouts designed meticulously, life must be in some form of balance for us to casually play games with stress.

Stacking miles without fright and surging into splits free from concern, demands a central nervous system that is stable, if not tranquil. For all the talk of training volume, rest interval length, and long run duration, our game assumes steady life circumstances. 

And though in the past I might have nodded to these truisms, Mom’s absence has me spinning across the emotional spectrum. I see more clearly how fortunate it is when we’re at our best. And that despite an honest effort, at times even attempting such training is beyond reason.

Sadly, this is an essay without a clear ending. A journey without a clean resolution. 

But I'm trying. 

Aiming to navigate new waves of feeling, settle fresh currents of emotion, and avoid capsizing into pools of panic. 

Because I still aspire for more speed. Still dream of skipping across pavement with lungs deeply filled with air. And still long for a glimmer of a chance at arriving to a finish line faster than ever before. But in the meantime, I’m focused on other sensations. Ones that move me closer to the foundational emotional strength that this running game requires.

There's a satisfying emptiness at the bottom of a deep scream. A small smile that turns upward at the end of a heavy sob. And a tranquil peace afforded at the exhausted bottom of a deep sigh, when at least for that moment, it’s all let out. 

All the anger, 

all the sadness, 

and all the worry,

in that moment is external,

and I’m still here breathing.

In those moments of exhaustion, despite the sadness, anger, or grief that may swell again soon, I feel centered, connected to her memory, and steadied enough to keep moving.