I am a jock, through and through. Nothing gets me more pumped up than a race day. Track and cross country have been a way of life for me since middle school and running is something that I can’t live without. Competition is my oxygen, workouts are my food and my teammates are my heart. I am the female athlete, the epitome of the balance of beauty and strength, but don’t be fooled, I didn’t always see myself this way.
I have a love-hate relationship with the way I look. It started at a young age when someone now irrelevant made a comment to me during recess that I was bigger than many of the other girls in my class. Yes, recess, that’s how young I was. I remember going home and pulling at the “fat” on my 54 pound body and, for the first time in my life, hating what I saw. Little did I know, that day would be the start of what has been a twelve year on again, off again battle with body image that I’m still fighting today.
When I was in middle school, I discovered track and have been hooked on it since. During my first year of running, it never occurred to me that the girls I was racing against were any smaller than I was. I never considered losing weight and the phrase “lighter is faster” had not yet been introduced to me. I was happy to be competing, thrilled to be constantly winning and completely in love with the sport. Things were good. Of course, sometimes, like any awkward pre-teen, I felt a little self-conscious. I mean my thighs have never not rubbed together when I walk, but it wasn’t until I reached high school that things really escalated.
I spent my entire high school career in a state of self-loathing. I spent countless hours standing in front of the mirror pulling, squeezing and cursing out the excess weight on my body. Many meals were skipped, many calories were counted and I was constantly comparing myself to other girls. I went as far as to compare my own body to those of the girls I would be racing, deciding that if they were thinner than me (and believe me, many distance runners are) they were also faster than me and would definitely be beating me in whatever race I was about to run.
When I got to college things got really bad. Coming on to my Division I team, I automatically felt like an outcast. I was the biggest girl in our program by at least ten pounds. Everyone on my team was skinny, strong and rocking solid six-pack abs. I used to hide behind my towel in the corner so that no one could see me and my less than perfect body, when I undressed myself to shower. My insecurity reached a new high. During team meals, I would try to eat a little less and a little healthier than everyone else. During runs, I’d try to add on an extra mile. I did anything I could to shrink my waistline believing it would make me faster, better, more beautiful. I was constantly in a silent competition with everyone around me. The pressure to look the way people expect a distance runner to look was toxic and slowly consuming me.
I don’t really know what changed. I guess as my track times started dropping, but my weight remained constant, I started forgetting the empty rhetoric of “lighter is faster.” I stopped caring so much about the number on the scale because the number on the stopwatch started to mean more to me.
Female athletes are caught in a really weird place. We are constantly told that being thin is what’s beautiful, but we also need to be strong for our sports. Fitness models on Instagram don’t make things any easier constantly promoting weird dietary habits and showing off sleek bodies that aren’t conducive to the type of physical stress that we put ourselves through. I used to beat myself up over the fact that as a collegiate athlete I put my body through hell but still don’t look as cut as some of the girls I see at the gym or online. I used to stress about the aesthetic that people are constantly pushing instead of the actual strength that I am building with every lift, run and workout.
Right now, I am the biggest I have ever been in my life, but you know what? I’m also the fastest I have ever been in my life. I am faster now at roughly 140 pounds than I ever was at 115 pounds or less. I am the healthiest I have ever been and I am the strongest I have ever been in both body and mind.
The culture of running that “lighter is faster” and the unrealistic expectations of the female athlete body in general are so negative. I’d say that it’s time for people and the media to focus on our accomplishments rather than the way we look in our tiny spandex uniforms, but we know that no one is going to listen. That argument has been and still is being made every day. I guess the only thing I can say to my fellow female athletes is to love yourselves and each other. Yes, I still have moments where I look in the mirror with disdain. I still find myself having to take a step back when I get too obsessive over the number on the scale. I still have things that I’d like to change about myself, but I’m slowly becoming more confident in who I am and how I look. The journey to body peace is not an easy one, but I’m working on it day by day.
No, I'm not skinny, but it’s this body that ran that 1500m PR last season. It’s this body that can squat all of that weight during team lifts. It’s this body that passes all of those girls running up hills during cross country meets, and it’s this body that secured my position in such a competitive track program. This body is strong. This body is sexy and this body is the body of a female athlete. To hell with that “lighter is faster” nonsense. To hell with stereotypes about what the female athlete should look like. Ladies, we are strong, we are talented, we are athletic and we are beautiful. Love yourselves, encourage each other and never let anybody tell you that your strong isn’t sexy. You are the epitome of beauty and strength, remember that. I wish all of you more body peace than I have ever had, here’s to learning to love ourselves each and every day.
