I’m a very competitive person, just ask my high school gym class badmitten partner. So when I became a retired college athlete overnight, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Suddenly, the life I had come to love the past 5 years was gone. One day I was running and racing with my teammates and the next I was walking across the stage to get my second diploma.

Over the past two years— training for and running my first marathon, starting marathon training twice more, but stopping because of the pandemic, and fighting off two (and maybe a third) injuries— it’s really taken a toll on my confidence on the road and track and has me questioning my goals.

Am I running out of time? I turned 25 a few weeks ago. I thought I would have qualified for Boston by now and been well on my way to breaking 3 hours. But alas, here I sit, on the injured reserve again for the second time in a year timespan. My college coach told us that female distance runners peak around age 27 and that has always stuck in the back of my head. With two years left in my mental timeline to crush my 5k goal, am I running out of time?

My new timeline and goals The strict timeline that I had in my head before is gone. I see more and more female distance runners getting faster after age 30. And with the way my relationship has changed the past year, I realize that there is no timeline on fitness and running. I want this to be something that I can do for the rest of my life. Sure, it would be cool to run really fast times and do some cool races, but really I want this to be a life-long love— something that I can share with my future family.

Where to go from here I am signed up for two races this fall, the Crim on August 27th and a full marathon in Detroit on October 18th. I don’t think there’s any way that I will run a 10-miler in August or a full marathon in October, so my plan from here is to not focus on those races and just get well. I will still probably do something at both races, but definitely not the distances I originally signed up for and it won’t be fast. I plan to get healthy and focus on strength work before building up my miles. Right now I like the idea of just running 3-4 miles a few times a week with a focus on strength work.

As a competitive person by nature, this transition has been really hard for me. I’ve been stuck between wanting to compete and just running/working out because I like it. This second (and maybe third) injury has made me pause and realize that I don’t need to compete to be happy. I like moving my body. But this doesn’t mean I’ll stop competing. I just need to take the time to heal and get stronger, then start again.

My sights are now set on Bayshore 2022 to get that first BQ.