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    She Was Once a Runner
    She Was Once a Runner
    She Was Once a Runner
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    She Was Once a Runner

    By Anon ymous

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    About this ebook

    “She Was Once a Runner" gives an honest account of a female long distance runner on a Division I college scholarship in America and the resultant pressure cooker in which she lives. Her landscape is bleak and desolate, taking place on the East coast during the aftermath of 9/11. Her narrative is detached yet raw, as though she were a voyeur on her own life. The novel explores the physical and psychological effects of the Female Athlete Triad of anorexia, amenorrhea, and stress fractures on a nineteen year old girl struggling to find her identity amidst a toxic team environment and discouraging parents.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnon ymous
    Release dateApr 26, 2012
    ISBN9781476372563
    She Was Once a Runner

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      Book preview

      She Was Once a Runner - Anon ymous

      She Was Once a Runner

      By: Anonymous

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright © 2012 by Anonymous

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      This book is dedicated to my grandmother

      Something dramatic happens to girls in adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves. They crash and burn in a social and developmental Bermuda Triangle.

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      Zelda Fitzgerald, 1925

      Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

      Sharon Olds, 1987

      The Gold Cell (Knopf Poetry Series)

      Should I pursue a path so twisted?

      Should I crawl defeated and gifted?

      Should I go the length of a river?

      [The royal, the throne, the cry me a river]

      What about it, what about it, what about it?

      Oh, I'm pissing in a river."

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      Table of Contents

      SUMMER

      FALL

      WINTER

      Postscript

      SUMMER

      August is a sweltering month on the East Coast, producing a lethal dose of high heat and humidity, which zaps the energy out of even the fittest of runners' legs. Waking at sunrise to jog an easy five miles helps, but by noon, temps will predictably rise into the 90s, and then it will take till 7:30 before a longer, evening run can be mildly tolerated.

      This was how I spent my summer.

      I was an unknowingly pretty nineteen year old athlete with a mind beginning to fester like the August sun. There were only a few weeks left till my sophomore year of college began, and I was working the hardest I ever had as a runner. I was closing in on the best block of summer training I'd ever experienced, and had set some lofty goals for Cross Country that fall.

      Yet I couldn't help but feel the weight of a dense mushroom cloud lurking behind the silver lining I was desperately trying to create for myself.

      If only I hadn’t seen that painting.

      A week before I was to return to campus, I had attended a group tour at an art museum, even though I can’t stand crowds. My friend Maureen had insisted we follow the guide, and despite my arguing that I didn’t need someone directing me around, telling me how to look at art, she pushed till she got what she wanted.

      I wasn’t even sure if I liked Maureen. She was short, round, with a frizz of curly hair and pale skin; almost the physical opposite of me. We were neighbors our freshman year, and had stayed in touch over the summer, due to her persistent calling. I suppose that what I found most appealing about her was that she had no interest in running, and much preferred complaining about her other friends and their boy problems.

      Eventually, I drifted away from the group tour, and I’m pretty sure that Maureen didn’t notice my disappearance, because she never said anything about it later. Upon opening a suspicious looking side-door, I found myself standing on the roof of the art museum. Broken odds and ends of sculptures were strewn about, along with some cracked pottery and a few paintings. I happened to look up at an awning and saw a portrait of a young girl, blonde, dressed in a delicately pink apron dress, smiling beatifically. Behind her pose lay a thickly brushed black shadow. Her gaze seemed unaware of the dark shrub creeping up, waiting for the right moment to engulf.

      A heavy, sinking feeling set inside of me.

      I didn’t want to be that girl.

      ***

      Scrawling DAY OFF into my running journal felt odd.

      The last eight weeks of summer training had been spent running twelve to fifteen miles a day. Page after page of my journal was filled with mileage totals, splits, and tempo times. I never liked math, yet it seemed like my life was beginning to revolve around numbers.

      Eighty-five was the average number of miles I was running per week.

      One hundred and twenty-five was the amount of pounds I weighed at five feet nine inches.

      Five was the amount of pounds I had lost since June.

      Seven was the amount of members on a cross-country squad.

      Five was the amount of members who scored on a cross-country squad.

      Seventy-five was the amount of seconds taken, on average, to run from my parent's house to the main road. If I ran faster than that time, I knew I would feel strong on my training run. If I ran slower, I'd start doubting myself with discouraging remarks.

      My legs are shot.

      My knees won't lift.

      I should go home and sleep.

      This morning's run was shaping up to be the latter. I was fifteen seconds slower to the road than usual, and while making an on the spot decision to run ten miles no matter how tired I was feeling, I was jilted from my determination after tripping over a bump in the sidewalk, which sent me flying. Suspended in mid-air, I could sense a perfect stillness, as though everything around me froze.

      This is what it must sound like before you die, I thought to myself. My arms instinctively pulled out in front of me, breaking my fall, and I could feel my body breathing as I lay out on the concrete, stiff. I stood up, walked a few paces, and contemplated continuing my run.

      I thought I could do it.

      A middle-aged woman in a white Honda pulled off to the side of the road and opened her car door.

      Are you alright? She asked.

      I'm fine, I said.

      But honey, she interjected, your arm is bleeding.

      I looked down to see my entire right forearm drenched in bright red blood, so much so, that I couldn't even tell where the bleeding had been coming from.

      I think you need a hospital, the woman said. I can drive you there right now.

      Most of me had wanted to continue running, but my arm looked like a mess and I knew it.

      There's a doctor's office a few blocks away, I informed the stranger. My mother works there. I climbed into the backseat of the white Honda.

      The stranger handed me a white glove; the sort of glove I used to wear when I tap danced as a little girl.

      You can wipe off the blood with that, she offered. "That's my son's glove. He's a police officer now. You're that girl that jogs a lot, aren't

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