Jen’s Brain While Running – 25-Year-Old Brain vs. 35-Year-Old Brain

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• 25 Year Old Brain (Clockwise from Left): 1. Grad school obsession, 2. Grandiose writer dreams, 3. The Postal Service (the band), 4. “OMG, running is so fun, I could do this forever”, 5. Obama’s Tan Suit, 6. “Those fucking gentrifiers”, 7. Overthinking text from a girl who is probably straight.

• 35 Year Old (Discolored and More Squishy) Brain (Clockwise from Left): 1. Texting parents to confirm they are alive (they are), 2. Emails (Argh!), 3. The Postal Service (the government entity and its budget), 4. “I hate this, everything hurts, I forgot how to breathe while running “, 5. Is civilization collapsing or what?, 6. Am I the gentrifer? 7. Climate anxiety.

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10 years ago, I was a 25 year old who ran marathons.  I would complete a few halves and a full marathon per year.  I would then write corny things about running as if it was a transcendental experience that only I was privy to.  It was reverse Columbusing – a young person of color discovering very white and sometimes very strange activities to call my own.

What powered me through each step of those 26.2 miles was not discipline nor diet nor technical understanding of my body and form.  I ran with youthful vanity and exuberance – sometimes after drinking a lot of alcohol.  I ran to say that I did, to look good for theoretical dates, to indulge in a single sitting of massive Chicken McNugget consumption, and because I could do so effortlessly.  I look back at marathon running goals that I held without any semblance of disciplined effort.  I’m in awe of a young mentality I once had that was a blend of untested pride and confidence.

It’s been 10 years since my last major race and so much has transpired.  I went back to school, got married, bought a house, reluctantly learned what “mutual funds” are, and wondered how this queer little runner fumbled into semi-stable adulthood.  I’ve experienced a lot of joy, especially with my partner, friends, and family.  Simultaneously, I’ve dealt with personal and professional failures that slowly calloused me with fear.  I’ve watched systems – political, social, financial – succumb to a pandemic, moral panic, and a general public distrust that still perplexes me.  I’ve witnessed my family home flood with grey water by a supposedly once-in-a-100 year flooding event while observing the skies of Northern California literally turn ashy from endemic wildfire smoke.  Each year of the last 10 has felt historic – sometimes the good kind and sometimes the terrifying kind.  These days, I feel slower and more burdened by things external to my body.

At 25, I ran with the kind of bursting energy that propelled me miles and filled me with the invincible arrogance that I could get up and do it again.  And I did do it again and again, faster and faster – many times until I decided to stop at 26.  Just a pause, I told myself.  It’ll be easy to get back to running and I have other, better things to focus on.

Now, at 35, I have finally returned to running.  I am partially motivated by shedding the stress my body carries from the pandemic and aging.  However, I am most moved by a wondering.  Do I still have it?  Can I still be that girl undeterred from running the rolling hills of San Francisco or energized by cutting through miles and miles of Houston humidity for a so-called personal best time?  I am not talking about running the same mileage and speed at 25, but by living with the same fearlessness and wonder of the 25-year-old girl I once was – as flawed and shortsighted as that girl may have been.

The return from my running pause has been, candidly, very difficult.  I am slower and my body feels all the things that I loathe to associate with myself – rusty, crunchy, viscous in motion, mired with adulthood worry.  The first miles of running are incised with thoughts that extinguish elusive runner’s flow or high – the bills I need to pay, the e-mail I need to write, whether free Britney Spears is still kind of crazy, whether my knees will give out, etc.

I used to be able to parse out the easy runs (5K) from the hard runs (a full marathon).  Now, all the runs are hard, perhaps because the last 10 years has resulted in 10 additional pounds and some emotional heaviness that feels a lot more than any of the physical weight I have put on. 

As much as I complain and breathe far too heavily and feel the fatigue in my legs, I keep running.  I have far less of the fresh energy that propelled me previously.  However, I have newer tools acquired with some age – patience, grace for myself, friends who care and keep me accountable, financial resources for good shoes and weird gooey carbohydrates, routine, and internal goals that feel much more important than the external goals I previously held.

I feel as if I am running between the exuberant girl I once was and the woman I have always wanted to be.  For now, I’m in the middle of that journey, trotting along – sometimes in pain, sometimes with persistence, always moving forward, 35 and beyond.