It’s my second monthly check in for my Stretchy November Project—the half-marathon in 2024!

In my “training” this month, I came across an episode of the Ali on the Run podcast featuring Randi Zuckerberg. Randi had recently completed the NYC Marathon and an ultramarathon—a type of race that can be anything longer than a marathon (~26.2 miles).

Randi shared that at first, she thought running would be something she was just “too old” for. She pretty quickly discovered she was faster and stronger in her forties than she’d been in her 20s: “When I talk to real runners, they’re not shocked by that.”

“Are you calling yourself a ‘real runner,’ I hope?” Ali asked.

“I’m working on it,” Randi said. “I feel like I’m very not-sporty… but I just ran 50 miles. I feel like I’m having a cultural immersion year as a pretend athlete.”

“It’s like cosplay?”

“Exactly, like I’m cosplaying as a runner.”

“Well you’re doing great,” Ali said. “We all believe you.”

Is any of this about the numbers? If a 50-mile race doesn’t make you a runner, what even would? They both agreed that anyone who runs at all is a “real runner,” but there are such currents under the surface, in our minds, revealed in this exchange.

Recently I got to have lunch with a friend since childhood—what a gift, that category of human!—and told her about my intention to do the Good Life Halfsy.

Without missing a beat she said, “You used to like running.” So matter-of-fact, she was. No duh, I know this person already, and so do you, she was telling me.

Being seen in that way was so grounding. I felt like I was waking up from a dream. It absolutely was not conscious, but I had been living inside some sort of story about what type of body I had, what type of exercise person I was or wasn’t, and what type of person I was in general.

So what do I make of my half-marathon whim-turned-plan? Turns out, I’m not identity shopping. I’m not looking for a next thing to lose myself in. One of the gifts I’ve found in sobriety is the space to reclaim what’s already mine. It’s just what it sounds like: recovery.

I can think of myself as a “real runner” or not, or try to chase away stories of any kind or not, but none of it will get me where direct experience can—that ineffable sense of what’s true, what’s fundamental, and what my essence is. I have a chance to discover and rediscover that with every step.

For everything else, we’ll have this space to keep sorting through it, together.

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