From Running to Wellness

2022 took a toll on my physical and mental health and wellness, for a variety of reasons! Not long after running the Honolulu Marathon in December 2021 and launching myself into my yoga teacher training in January 2022, I started noticing my energy levels being depleted and my desire to leave my bedroom fading fast. I learned some very valuable lessons about my health last year that have encouraged me to rethink my identity as a runner and reprioritize my value of Wellness…

As usual for me, I had big fitness goals for 2022: I was finally doing yoga teacher training, something I had been trying to do since 2019; I did a commercial/video shoot with Brooks Running; I had won entry into the New York Marathon via the raffle; and I was even playing around with the idea of an early fall or late summer half or full-marathon to help get me ready for New York. I was doing yoga nearly every day and my running and cross-training plans were in place. The next thing I knew, the stress levels at work were building, the relationship I was in was causing me daily angst, and my mental health and wellness were starting to falter.

Your Issues are in Your Tissues

Have you ever heard the saying, “Your issues are in your tissues”? Basically, it means that emotions and trauma can painfully manifest in our bodies as physical stress and disease. This past year, my body was a prime example of how this can happen – still is!

It started out as anxiety and depression – after a few rough arguments with my ex, I started to notice a decline in my desire to do things; the relationship was taking a toll on my headspace. Instead of immediately removing myself from that relationship, I decided to try to work my way through it by going back to therapy and trying to maintain a workout regimen. Right around that time, my ankle swelled up so bad that I couldn’t even see my ankle joint anymore – this was the beginning of many doctor visits throughout the year and the beginning of the end of my hopes for training for any marathons last year. I had to table running and cycling for at least a few weeks.

Later that summer, absolutely unprompted (in my mind), I woke up one morning with a kink of all kinks in my neck – an issue that lingered for 6+ months. I was unable to turn my head or move in any way without letting out a horrible scream; I was home alone and extremely scared. The doctor couldn’t pinpoint what caused this and chunked it up to sleeping poorly. I tried everything to soothe the constant pain in my neck that was keeping me from doing everyday tasks: I visited the chiropractor, went to physical therapy, and eventually started acupuncture. Nothing seemed to be helping and the medical bills were accruing!

Name Your Problems

On top of all of this, I was starting to develop some stomach and GI tract issues. One morning my therapist said to me, “Ebony, you’re manifesting your stress in your neck, your anxiety in your stomach, and the desire you have to NOT leave your bedroom is called depression!” That realization hit me like a ton of bricks. She was right. Every time I encountered a stressful situation, my neck would lock up on me; the idea of having a conversation with my ex or dealing with troublesome people at work would make my stomach turn; and at the end of the day, I just wanted to crawl under my blankets and not leave the room.

It helped so much to have my therapist call these things out for what they were. I was able to start identifying what was causing me stress, what I was anxious about, and how those things were leading to me feeling depressed. Then I was able to start building daily habits and mindfulness reminders to help work through those things. And for starters, I GOT MY ASS UP OUT OF THAT RELATIONSHIP! Then, I was able to start focusing on the ways stress was catching up with me at work.

Pause on Running

I made the decision in August that there wasn’t any way I could run the New York Marathon the way I wanted to run it. I had enough time to train well enough to finish the marathon, but that wasn’t the experience I wanted – so I chose to defer. After meditating one day, the word GENTLE was on my mind. I was craving gentleness – I wanted life and the things I choose to do to feel gentle, and marathon training was far from gentle on my body. Additionally, I struggled with this because my identity over the last several years has been wrapped up in Ebony the Runner, the marathoner chasing the goal to run a marathon in all 50 states.

I abruptly stopped running last August because running was no longer feeling good in my body at that time. I decided to take time to “renegotiate” my relationship with running. My goal in the fall was to figure out if running marathons was still what I wanted. I realized that I had made chasing the 50-state goal feel like a task. I wasn’t experiencing joy in running anymore. More importantly, my health issues were making me realize that I wanted to prioritize my overall wellness.

Renegotiating My Relationship with Running & Wellness

A lot goes into preparing for a marathon. So in my mind, I was a healthy person. When I am marathon training, I prioritize:

• Drinking tons of water
• Getting good sleep so that I can be energized for early mornings and long runs
• Eating healthy, loading up on carbohydrates
• Taking in fuel and liquids pre, during and post-runs
• Getting electrolytes
• Cross-training, etc.

Unfortunately, marathon training does a number on my mental health, social life, and schedule. When I am actively marathon training, it consumes me, which was all year round sometimes! I am running 4-6 days a week, cross-training, planning my social activities around my training plan, spending all of my money on running-related items, and then I’m cranky, sore, and tired. All while needing to solo parent my teenager and work 40 hours a week. Plus, I have a decent-sized team at work that demands me to be on my A-game! Check out some of these running blogs here to see what goes into my training.

I started asking myself hard questions like:

• Why do I run? What do I want to get out of it?
• Who do I run for?
• What does running mean to me?
• How do I want to feel, physically and mentally, every day?
• What am I missing out on when I’m marathon training?
• What is my ideal day, week, month, etc.?
• What other fitness activities do I want to do {more of}?

My answers to these questions didn’t surprise me that much. I didn’t really care anymore about running a marathon in every state; When I run, I want to run for fun, for the surge of endorphins; I want to feel healthy; I despise how my body feels after long runs; I hate avoiding social plans on the weekend because I know I have a long run on Sundays; and I deeply craved more activities that felt gentle to my body. Ultimately, I just wanted to feel good and healthy. I wanted running to be a part of that, but I didn’t want to feel like I was consumed by it like it was the whole picture.

Health vs Wellness

The phrase “Health and Wellness” kept coming up in my thoughts. So I asked myself how health and wellness differ. When I googled wellness, this statement from Pfizer popped up, “Wellness is the act of practicing healthy habits on a daily basis to attain better physical and mental health outcomes, so that instead of just surviving, you’re thriving.” This triggered a lightbulb moment in my head. My marathon training habits may check the box for healthy, but it wasn’t for my overall wellness! I am not going to achieve optimal wellness just through marathon training – neglecting social connectedness, high levels of exhaustion, poor family time, etc.

Wellness Plans

So moving forward, I am prioritizing overall wellness instead of getting tunnel vision on being Ebony the Marathoner. My weekly intentions are to:

• Sprinkle in a variety of workouts. I plan to get back to running for fun, working on my strength, and prioritizing yoga.
• Get adequate nutrition. When I’m busy, I can eat and snack like a toddler. Eating healthy on a regular is one of my biggest challenges.
• Get adequate sleep. My goal is to work out in the morning so that I can rest and have family time in the evening. Therefore, I need to prioritize 7-8 hours of sleep so that I can rise early. Who would of thunk that by my 30s I’d be begging for a 9 pm bedtime!
• Make time to network and spend quality time with my friends brunching, camping, hiking, having game nights, etc.
• Continue with regular therapy.
• Prioritize REST and understand how that differs from sleep.
• Practice healthy boundaries with myself, relationships, work, and family.

Book Recommendations

I read some amazing books over the last year that have helped me tremendously:

• Sacred Rest by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith
• Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab
• Speak by Tunde Oyeneyin
• Atomic Habits by James Clear

These books were so all so amazing in different ways. Sacred Rest truly helped me understand that sleep and rest are not the same things and that there are many different areas of life in which we may need rest in. Set Boundaries, Find Peace is a book that I tell everybody about and helped me understand where my boundaries absolutely sucked and how to do better. I was letting any and everyone violate my boundaries, ME more than anyone else. Tunde’s Speak was the perfect read to start my new year. A quote of hers that stood out to me was, “A goal is a wish, but a standard holds you accountable.” This made me think a lot about my favorite quote from Atomic Habits, “You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”

Thriving

This year I’m focusing a lot on my systems and standard of excellence to hold me accountable to my boundaries, rest, and all of the components of wellness. I often find clarity when I am meditating. I was recently left with the thought, “you have to start breathing life into yourself first.” So here I am, putting my oxygen mask on before anyone else this year!

One of the ways I plan to do that is through tons and tons of yoga. I plan to bring that to this platform more! Stay tuned for more yoga content, YouTube videos, community classes, and dope carefully curated yoga experiences!!! Cheers to better health, boundaries, and wellness in 2023 and beyond. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe to stay connected to more content! How are you emphasizing Wellness?!