It’s OK not to run. This seems like a strange post to publish on a running blog, but it’s taken me a long time to figure this out and I need to share. I have run fairly consistently for the last 15 to 20 years, taking a year or so off with each of my three pregnancies. Granted, I’m a casual runner. I usually average 3 to 5 miles, three or so days a week if I’m lucky. I have never had the desire to run competitively, or to conquer long distances. Rather, running has been my escape: an escape from the constant care of three young children, an escape from my lifelong battle with body dysmorphia, an escape into the outdoors to solve my everyday problems. As much as I love running, however, running doesn’t necessarily love me. I am extremely injury prone. I have had running related injuries in almost every part of my lower body: hips, glutes, IT band, psoas, illiopsoas, feet etc. You name it, I’ve had an injury there. Yet, I have always persevered. Why? Because, frankly, I was always convinced that running was my only recourse to maintaining a healthy body weight and staying active. Not to mention, I really do love the feeling of finishing a run…the high, the sweat, the accomplishment.

Then, this past spring, I fractured my right foot. By far the worst injury I’ve had yet. And, at the time, I was on the best running streak of my life. I had conquered a 10-mile race (something I never thought I could do) and was running at least 5 days (~20 miles) a week for over 6 months. I was in great shape, and at the age of 40, was feeling amazing! But, truth be told, I was becoming a bit obsessed. The idea of missing a run put me in a panic, so the 6-week setback due to my fracture nearly killed me psychologically. I think this was my breaking point. I knew my relationship with running wasn’t healthy, either physically or mentally. As a self-described spiritual person and regular practitioner of yoga, I kind of pride myself on self-reflection. My mirror was saying something needed to change.

I got out of shape pretty quickly (or so it seemed to me) given that I couldn’t bear any weight on my foot. That meant no running, no walking really, and no yoga. Ask my husband and kids, I was NOT fun to be around. During that time, I turned my back on running. It became my nemesis, the source of all my woes. Even after I could start lightly jogging again, it never really felt comfortable. I was always afraid of something catastrophic happening that would put me out again, making each ache and pain that much more intense. So, I’ve started doing other things. I’ve rediscovered my love for hiking by exploring the trails around our new neighborhood (we recently moved) and through a weekly hiking excursion with good friends. I have always been most comfortable in the woods and this has been like coming home! I’ve also started walking more in general. I’ve started biking more and have even taken a few intense barre classes led by a fellow yoga friend. As we in New England say, it’s been wicked fun! I’ve really enjoyed the diversity of activity. I’m not completely giving up on running either. I still average maybe one run a week, though it sure isn’t easy.

As I get older, my goals have changed. I am becoming less and less concerned about body image and more concerned about staying active and healthy. If I am so blessed as to reach my sixties and beyond, I want my body to be able to do all the things I love to do. I want to be able to travel and hike and get on the floor to play with my grandkids. I want to be able to move my body without pain. And, I believe the way to accomplish this is to keep moving now, anyway I can. This does not necessarily mean running. And, in fact, maybe for my body, running a lot isn’t the best thing for me. Now, I know myself, and I’m fairly certain that I will continue to run in some capacity for years to come, but it will no longer consume me. It is not the be-all and end-all to fitness.

I highly recommend switching things up a bit if all you do is run. I have a runner friend who just recently starting taking my yoga class on her doctor’s recommendation to cross train and stave off injury and burn out. And, much to her surprise, she really likes it. With the cold weather creeping in on us, this may be a perfect time shake up your routine. I really think you’ll be happy you did.

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I met Lynn Jennings for the first time last summer. She had emailed me out-of-the-blue earlier in the year to ask if I might be interested in coming to Craftsbury, VT in July to be a coach/speaker at one of the annual adult running camps. It’s not every day that you get an email from an Olympic medalist, and I was a bit star-struck by the experience. Spend a week in northern VT hanging out with other runners and learning from an Olympian? My decision didn’t require much deliberation.

I wound up spending almost two weeks in Crafstbury last summer, and Lynn quickly became a good friend. She’s an amazing runner to be sure – 9 time US cross-country champion, 3 time World cross-country champion, and bronze medalist in the 10,000m at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. However, it quickly became clear that Lynn is also an amazing and inspirational person. She’s a dog-lover and a naturalist. She’s kind, smart, and she has a will as strong as that of anyone I have ever met. She still runs almost every day (and competes quite well as a sculler – won her age group at the 2012 Head of the Charles Regatta), and her running camps are all about learning, working hard, having fun, and being healthy. And I have to give special props to someone who is willing to stop by my house on her trips to NH to deliver me growlers of Hill Farmstead beer!

A few weeks ago Lynn and I were discussing scheduling for this summer’s Craftsbury camps. We had pretty much nailed things down when I received an email from her saying that something had come up that she had to attend to. Several weeks went by. I worried maybe something had happened to her beloved dog Towhee.

Last week I received an email  from Lynn that stopped me cold. She had almost died. But she didn’t. She is alive today due to a toughness developed in competition and a physiology built by a lifetime of running.

After exchanging a few emails, Lynn offered to write up her experience and wanted me to publish it here. To say I was honored that she wanted me to help tell her story is a monumental understatement.

Lynn’s story should remind everyone of why we run. PR’s are great, Olympic medals even better. But running saved Lynn’s life, and life is more important than any achievement in competition.

Read on – Lynn’s story in her own words:

There’s nothing quite so gentle, deep and irrational as our running – and nothing so savage, and so wild.”

-Bernd Heinrich

Like every other long-time runner I had spent the waning days of December planning for and dreaming about the fresh year ahead. I may not race any more, yet running is a solid daily cornerstone and an ordering principle in my life. Long past my salad days as an elite runner, I am now an avid daily trail runner and a competitive sculler. Being bicoastal between the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Vermont and my home in Portland, Oregon means I get to sample the best of two alluring places.

When in Portland, I run on the extensive trails in Forest Park which is about a mile from my front door. I’d been logging daily trail runs, but on January 10, 2104 I started a run and within 100 meters had to stop. I was so breathless that I had to put my hands on my knees and walk. I persevered through the run by walking when I needed to (definitely a first for me), and by the time I got back to the Leif Ericson gate, I was sure I was anemic and made plans to go for some blood work.

Four days later, walking around the block in the pre-dawn hours with my dog Towhee, I was suddenly unable to breathe. I was blacking out. My hands and feet were icy. I was dizzy. I sat down on the sidewalk, in the dark, unable to stand or continue on. Towhee pressed against my side and stood stock still. I sat there until a man passed by and asked me if I needed help. He was persistent and kept asking me over and over until I was able to whisper, “yes” and he helped me up. Alone, I forced myself to cover the remaining 300 meters home on foot, willing myself to get there. I struggled up the front steps and realized I was in big trouble.

I texted my neighbor for help and she drove me less than a mile to the hospital. I staggered into the Emergency Room. I wasn’t even able to tell the people behind the desk my name. They shoved me into a wheelchair and took me into the back. It was terrifying.

It turns out I survived an acute bilateral pulmonary embolism. The doctors couldn’t decide whether to stage me as sub-massive or massive, my lung involvement was so large. Since I survived intact, I guess they went with sub-massive. I don’t really know. Both of my lungs were loaded with clots, many of them large. My right lung was not working and my left lung was severely compromised. I was told in no uncertain terms by cardiologists, pulmonary specialists, internists, radiologists and ER nurses and doctors that the size, strength and power of my lungs and heart are what saved me since my heart was under severe strain and pressure. The lung involvement that I had with a less able set of lungs and a less able heart would have lead to a different outcome.

My attending physician told me she believed that my push to get up off the sidewalk and my extreme will to drive for home exerted enough pressure on my lungs such that some clots might have moved around a bit, buying me more breathing capacity so I could get home and then to the ER. Short of that happening, she had no explanation why I was still around.

After 5 days in the hospital and a staggering amount of tests, lab work and exams, it appears the cause is idiopathic. I had none of the usual risk factors and no symptoms other than the breathless run four days before. I didn’t feel great the weekend between the breathless run and having to go to the ER, but I chalked it up to the possible anemia.

Being a runner saved my life. The redundancy in my left lung, my strong and powerful heart and my honed tenacity and iron will are what got me home that morning.

I have been a runner since I was 14 and the only girl on the boys’ cross country team in Harvard, MA. Whether I was toeing the line at the Olympics, at the World Cross Country Championships or running 100 miles a week in training, I did it because running reminded me exactly who I am and what I am made of. These years later it remains purely so.

I’ve got a long trail ahead of me in order to recover and get better. Tucked into my thoughts is the memory of being a consistent stop on the morning rounds of the doctors, cardiologists and internists when I was in the hospital. Every one of them wanted to come and talk to the Olympian whose resting and sleeping heart rate hovered between 29 – 38. Some mornings my bed was surrounded by residents, 3rd year medical students and the presiding doctor – all of whom were eager to learn from an aerobic specimen.

I, in turn, wanted them to see what running did for me aside from records, medals and national titles – it saved my life.

Before there was “Born to Run” there was “Why We Run.” The latter, a book written by Bernd Heinrich, was the first running book I ever read, and it was one of the launching pads for my interest in running science. In the book, Heinrich mixes his life story with elements of animal physiology and a lot of running content, including the first mention I had ever read regarding the idea that human beings evolved to run.

Heinrich is a bit of a hero of mine – he’s a comparative physiologist (my background is comparative anatomy), he studies animals (mainly insects and birds for Heinrich; I studied amphibians for most of my academic career), he’s from northern New England (Vermont for Heinrich, New Hampshire for me), he’s an experimenter (I love his story of using beer as a energy drink), and he’s a distance runner. In addition to Why We Run, Heinrich also wrote one of my favorite books, “A Year in the Maine Woods,” in which he recounts his experiences living in his small, remote cabin in Maine.

A few days ago I got an email from Lynn Jennings alerting me to a video that Salomon had produced featuring Bernd Heinrich (they are good friends, and I almost had a chance to meet him this summer while coaching at Craftsbury but it didn’t work out). The video is beautiful, and I absolutely love his philosophy on running. His passion for the sport is so strong that he is moved to tears just talking about it. Watch the video and I can guarantee you’ll want to drop what you’re doing and go for a run before it’s over.

“Movement is the essence of life…The essential things is to run. Period.” -Bernd Heinrich.

Amazing.

One of the great things about the sport of running is that I get to repeatedly witness good people accomplish truly amazing things. I’ve written a lot on this blog about the power of the internet to bring like-minded people together, and so it was last year that I met a guy named Andy O’Brien on the social training site dailymile. Andy O., along with a small group of other fellow runners (you all know who you are!), was an early adopter on dailymile, and we have since become members of the dailymile Team. Andy stands out due to his wry, self-deprecating sense of humor, his colorful clothes and trademark du-rag, and his love of good beer. It’s easy to tell that he has fun when he runs, and it rubs off on the rest of us. He’s also pretty handy with Photoshop, much to my frequent dismay.

Anyway, Andy decided earlier this year to train for and run the Burning River 100 Mile Ultramarathon in NE Ohio. His initial intention was to do a 50 miler, but unable to find one in the right place at the right time, he opted to make the big jump to the 100 (his previous long race was the 50K HAT run earlier this year). Andy managed to put in his miles early in the morning and late at night while juggling the demands of job and family, and yesterday he toed the starting line at the BR100. I woke up this morning to find a tweet from my buddy Steve Speirs saying that Andy had finished the BR100 in a time of 26:36:05. I am awed and inspired, and wanted to take a moment to congratulate Andy on this amazing accomplishment. Andy, you’ve most certainly earned a beer – enjoy it!

Keep an eye out on Andy’s dailymile feed for reports on his experience at the BR100: http://www.dailymile.com/people/everyruncounts

Follow Andy on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/andyo22

Look for a race report on Andy’s blog: http://blog.andyobrien.com/