Human After All

There are two evil words in the world of running, two words we never want to hear, and yet most of us are affected by them at some point in our careers.  They hang in the background of our subconscious when we train.  We all know they linger in the world of possibility, even probability, and yet we all keep pressing forward accepting this danger in our sport.  Those two dreaded words: Stress Fracture!

It seems I would only make it to the age of 32 before personally encountering running’s great evil.  I have to admit, like most runners, I never thought it would happen to me.  We runners tend to be prideful and stubborn (it’s part of why we love this sport, the tenacity we have to have to keep going)  and given that we all run through all kinds of pains, we all think we can handle anything.  In fact, most of us probably feel pretty invincible, or at least super-human.  So after arriving home from the doctor’s appointment where I received the terribly frustrating news, my loving husband embraced me and said ‘Well it turns out the Julie is human after all.’  (that’s not a typo, he said ‘the Julie’… as if I am this otherworldy species)

And that is the only reason for my predicament: being human.  Unlike many runners who’ve had the stress fracture plague, I can’t point to an error in my training.  I wasn’t training for an ultra, I wasn’t even training for a race.  I hadn’t upped my mileage. In fact I had been running less miles.  My shoes were in good condition and my terrain hadn’t changed.  No, this stress fracture simply occurred because I’m human.  I have a human body and it sometimes fails us.  Our machine isn’t perfect.

It’s very easy for me to go about my life handling things myself and doing what I want.  Competence is one of my highest virtues.  If you do something, do it well.  Do it with excellence.  That is my personal ethos.  But now I’m finding myself not at my best, impossible to be excellent, and there’s not a dang thing I can do about it.  I could be a better coach right now if I could be pacing my girls and setting an example for my boys.   I could be a better wife and teacher right now if my brain chemistry was heavy on the endorphins like usual (not prone to depression and irritability).  I could be a better friend right now if I could actually be catching up with and regularly talking to my best friend (who happens to be my running partner).  Yet here I am stuck being not excellent, not my best, not ‘the Julie’ and yet… still Julie… human after all.

Trials in life are supposed to teach us lessons, right? So there’re all the cliché lessons an injury is supposed to teach you: being more grateful, not taking your gifts for granted, taking the time to invest in other things, or whatever else it is that I’m guessing most athletes learn when they’re sitting on their butts healing.  And sure I’m getting all that. But more than those, I am finding myself with no choice but to accept my humanity, something I’ve never really been good at.  ‘The Julie’ doesn’t delegate (because no one can do it as well as me). ‘The Julie’ is a control freak (because as long as I’m doing it, it will be done well). ‘The Julie’ can handle anything. …. Well ‘the Julie’ also has a crack running down her femur.  ‘The Julie’ is human like the rest of us, and at the mercy of an imperfect world.  So I guess I am becoming okay with that. A little weakness, a little delegation, a little rest, can’t stop God’s plans from being fulfilled.  Perhaps ‘stress fracture’ isn’t the two evil words I once thought them to be.  Perhaps  ‘the Julie’ isn’t the otherworldly, superhuman I once pretended her to be.  Perhaps I’m simply human and human is okay.