Sasha Merrill 
I started running for a reason I can barely remember caring about anymore. Nine years and several shifts later, the reason I keep running looks nothing like the one that got me started.
My first race was a small local 5K I almost didn’t show up for. It wasn’t triumphant. I got passed constantly, doubted myself at the start line, and finished more relieved than proud.
A small, nagging ache in my ankle that I brushed off for weeks turned into more time off than I wanted. This is a different, smaller story than the year I lost, but the same kind of mistake.
I tried running by feel instead of watching my pace for a stretch of months. It was not a clean success story. Here is where it actually helped, where it got me into trouble, and what I do now instead.
My longest run has sat at roughly the same distance for a couple of years now, and I used to see that as a failure. Trying to push past it taught me it might actually be the right ceiling for me.
Some Sundays I don’t want to run at all, and I go anyway because the club is meeting. That habit, more than any motivation, is probably the real reason I’m still running years later.
I spent my first year convinced my pace was an embarrassment I needed to hide. Looking back nine years later, I wish I hadn’t spent so much energy being ashamed of something that just meant I was starting.
After close to a year off, my first runs back weren’t triumphant or easy. Here’s what my body and my head actually felt like the day I finally started again.
There was a stretch of years when getting faster felt like the whole point of running. Here is what that pursuit actually cost me, and why I quietly let it go without turning it into a new kind of pride.
For years I insisted solo long runs were the only kind that counted. Then I actually tried the weekend club runs and had to admit I’d been wrong about what I needed.