Running with Passion and in Disorder

You are probably reading the title and trying to guess at what this blog post is about. Passion means "intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction." Okay. Running with passion makes sense. We are very familiar with passion in sports. You watch any professional sporting event, and you can't help but observe the passion of the coaches and the athletes. (Why else would fights break out at hockey games?) Sports require drive, intensity, conviction...passion. But what is "running in disorder?" Disorder means "to disturb the order of something; a state of confusion." Huh. Running is pretty orderly. If you are in any way familiar with the sport of distance running, then you know that it requires order. Any course deviation can disqualify you. Races are run in a particular direction around a track. Workouts have a specific routine as well. Sports can't function in disorder, but, unfortunately, the athlete can. 

Two weeks after completing my first marathon at age 27 (2020) in a time of 3:17:22, I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). My mind, and sometimes it feels like my whole being, can be chaotic, confused, anarchical, and disruptive. I live in almost a constant state of disorder, and unfortunately, for over a decade I ran in a similar state.

I started running when I was 14 (2007) as a conscious and unconscious way to gain approval from my father because he enjoyed running so much. This was the beginning of my running in disorder, but there was no passion yet. Oh, I trained competitively and took my athletics very seriously, but it was joyless and prideful. I struggled with a mild eating disorder. I compared myself to other runners. I feared pain. Worst of all, I gave no honor to God through running. Then when I was 18 (2011) I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and suffered my first round of clinical depression, including being actively suicidal. Running became my solace, my safe place. But it was still marred by comparison, fear, and pride--disorder. It would take another 8 years before I would finally learn to run with passion and in disorder.

At 26 (2019) I suffered my second round of clinical depression and being suicidal, perhaps the most disordered I had been yet. For months I struggled to function normally. I would manage to go to work as a teacher but could do little more. Amidst this I turned to trail running. It was amazing that in spite of how weak I was mentally and emotionally, I could always find enough physical strength to fly through the woods. Running became a place of solitude, prayer, escape, joy, freedom, and strength. Ironically, I came to love feeling physical pain while running as it was a welcomed relief from the mental pain of intense anxiety and depression that lingered with no visible relief. Physical pain at least had a tangible end, and so I pushed harder and harder on my runs. This was the beginning of learning to run with passion, but it would take one final, solidifying experience for me to truly embrace it.

I was competing in my first 25K trail race. I was still undergoing intense counseling and had only been more mentally stable for a month. It was rainy, cold, and muddy. There were no other runners around me. I was alone--a feeling and state of being I had come to fear after months of clinical depression and suicidal thoughts. I wanted to quit right then and curl up on the side of the trail. I wanted everything to be over! But I knew that wasn't an option. So instead, I did what I had been learning to do for months to redirect my mind: thank God for the run! And it was in that moment of gratitude that I finally understood Eric Liddell's (the 1924 400m Olympic gold medalist) statement, "And when I run, I feel His [God's] pleasure." This was running with passion!

Over the next several months of 2019 I still ran in disorder but now it was accompanied by passion. I had finally started to grasp that running was a gift from God that He was intent on using to bring relief to my disordered life (the amygdala, the emotional part of the brain, actually disengages when you run and the frontal cortex, the logical and rational part, engages). Interestingly, I had already learned to push through such excruciating mental pain with no knowledge of its ending, that physical pain with a predicted end seemed like nothing in comparison. ("The faster you go, the faster the pain is over," I once told a friend. He didn't seem convinced by my rationale.) So, I ran with passion and in disorder.

Even after my diagnosis of OCD in the summer of 2020 (a mental disorder that I had been living with for years), I became more convicted that God had given me running as a gift and that I was to do it passionately amidst the disorder of my mind. At the end of 2020, I won top female for Level 32 Racing’s Run Big Trail Series 25K-50K. In June 2021, I competed in my first 50M trail race with Alpine Racing. This was the hardest and longest race I had done to date, but I crossed the finish line as the fifth female and twentieth runner. The 2022 season saw me racing more often and more competitively, capping the season with perhaps the best performance in trail racing I had ever had–second female in the Run Woodstock Hallucination 100M with a time of 23:00:25. And for this season (2023) I continue to share Eric Liddell's conviction, "God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure," and will continue to bask in the solitude, prayer, escape, joy, freedom, and strength of trail running as I do it with passion and in disorder.