My Why for Competing: The Mile That Taught Me to Love the journey

People ask me about my why: the thing that kept me lacing up through marathons and half marathons, through a three-year slump, through grief, grad school, and all the messy in-betweens. My answer isn’t a goal time or a finish line photo. It’s a feeling. It’s love.

I found it when I was seven.

It was a hot June afternoon, the kind where the air feels still above the track. My oldest sister signed my twin and me up for the park district summer track and field program, partly to dodge babysitting, partly to give us something to do. We learned to jump, throw, and sprint, but the day Coach Swank said, “Four laps around the track,” something in me changed forever.

I can still hear the sound of my shoes sweeping the track, and the way my breath fell into a rhythm like a quiet cadence. My seven-year-old self finally knew what it was like to fly. Untethered. Fearless. Limitless. When I crossed the line in 7:55, I didn’t want to stop. I wanted four more laps. I wanted more of that feeling of being fully alive inside my own body.

Years later, my adult legs would churn out a sub-5:20 mile. I would chase standards and splits and the ultimate dream of an Olympic Trials qualifier in the marathon. I loved seeing how fast I could go, but I loved the electricity of the race more: the quiet at the start, the courage it takes to chase a stretch goal, the thrill of competition and the opportunity to showcase the work, the almost unbearable ache of the last straightaway, the quiet mental battle of enduring discomfort for something greater than the pain.

Sport psychologist Ken Ravizza used to say most athletes have a love-hate relationship with their sport (this is normal!). I felt that truth in my bones, too. Running can give you everything and then break your heart. I chased that Trials time for years and never caught it. I could call that failure. But when I look back, all I see is joy in the journey; joy for the process, for the friends at 4:45 a.m. no matter how Mother Nature was behaving that morning, for the quiet miles that stitched me back together when it felt like life was unraveling. Even in the three-year slump, when my legs and mind felt heavy with doubt and joy was hard to find, my why kept a light on. I kept moving. One mile. Then another.

My why is a promise to my younger self: to protect the part of me that felt like she was flying on a city track in June. It’s joy and gratitude, not because running always feels good, but because it teaches me how to stay when it doesn’t. It reminds me that I am more than outcomes, and that courage can be as simple as taking the next step . . . and then the next mile.

If you’re an athlete reading this, maybe your why is different. Maybe it’s a story of overcoming, or the quiet pride of doing hard things, or the way competition makes you honest. Whatever it is, write it down. Tape it to your mirror. Keep it on your phone. Return to it when your heart hurts and when it sings.

Because medals tarnish and times fade, but love, the kind you earn in the long miles and the very, very hard ones, that stays. And on the days I can’t find anything else, I can still find that seven-year-old girl on the backstretch, sun on her shoulders, legs turning over, whispering to me as I pass: Keep going. This is who we are.