In high school, as my friend Gena set up her blocks for prelims, she saw someone wearing a t-shirt that read, “Why do I run?” I’m not sure whether it startled or enlivened her more, but she proceeded to run one of the best 400-meter races of her track career. She, a few of our teammates and I bought iron-on letters to melt onto those cheap Hanes white little boys' size t-shirts spelling out the surprisingly provocative question. Whether I could honestly answer the question with an honest response, we carefully melted letters on our new shirts to wear for meet finals at PIL District Championships. To the shirts’ challenge, one of the 4x400m soccer girls replied, “because I can.” Oh, but of course; there are many things We Can Do.

More importantly, we chose to run, and we chose to run for a multitude of reasons. We’re lucky for the opportunity to do so, especially as females. Such luck is easily forgotten as we delve into becoming and being runners. The assumption that running is a given is what renders injuries so devastating. Being sidelined is more than physically dehabilitating – it’s socially, mentally and psychologically overwhelming. When injured and unable to run, I have been akin to a trainwreck.

In fact, in being injured, I found myself in no discernable shape and becoming unhealthy - but not for lack of trying. In a tizzy, I spent hours spinning my wheels madly, going nowhere on a stationary bike, an elliptical, in the pool, in the weight room... All that movement differs from the Can-Do, the Want-To-Do. To some degree or another, most of us are obsessed with running in a Need-To-Do to some degree. Be it recreationally or competitively, we love, want and need to run.

For some of us some degree of compulsion drives this desire. Especially for the neurotic Track Girls among us, working out enables us to simultaneously run away from and into problems. Much like eating disorders and other prevalent common manifestations of mental coping mechanisms adopted often in a response to maladjusted societal pressures, compulsive exercise has dangerous effects on one’s body and soul. Ultimately because we enjoy some aspect of running and cross training and weight lifting and etc-ing, we glean whatever satisfaction we may, even for a split second. The Can-Do, then, differs from the Need-To-Do and its corollary attempted grasp at control, its clawing at inevitable change to keep it all within reach.

Whether we’re addicted and/or know it, the action of Can-Do running is sought for its joy, its own sake, its process. And when the ability to opt into that joy is stripped away, the potential of choosing to run is rendered moot. Great sadness, then, may be felt when one must consider the cage-like rendering of a sidelining diagnosis. It’s shocking, deniable and everything else those de-humanizing-feeling moments are. We often perceive that “it is not fair.” Therein lies loss of control over circumstances which are beyond the scope of our own volition.

I’ve only been sidelined, at most at a given time, for 10 weeks in my nearly ten years of running. At the time of that diagnosis, I was sure that lifetimes would pass before I could try to train; and it felt like they did. But I was granted that lucky opportunity to choose to run again -- repeatedly. Eventually, the reality of not being able to run slapped me silly. Say I broke my femur all the way through next time. Say osteoporosis dissolved my hip before I could be an old lady marathoner. What if I’d preemptively removed myself, or been precluded, from the opportunity to run later – especially by my own compulsion, apparent desire to “work hard”?

Considering losing the opportunity to run down the road somehow turned my belief inward, my passion outward; it encouraged my ability to let my body heal, to nurture myself and others. Luckily for me, running is no longer the sole source of an identity, nor the sole source of feeling alive. I know I could or could not run, and I’d be fine. While no panacea for all that may ail us exists, by running, working out and not being able to do either, I am lucky to realize how running has taught me to rest, to heal.