First off, I’d like to say thanks to Jason Keith for inspiring me to write this story. I sort of wrote this as a sort of narrative of my running story, interspersed with some of my thoughts along the way. I’m sorry in advance if it seems disjointed and random.
I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety for so long that I can’t even imagine what life was like before it all. I know there was a time in my life where I wasn’t filled with crippling anxiety every waking moment, but I don’t know when that time was. Maybe it was middle school? Elementary school? I think the seeds of depression and anxiety were probably planted the day a little 8 year old Robbie ran inside the house to find his father dead. Ever since then, I’ve always felt like the world was out to get me, as illogical and stupid as that may seem. Ever since then, I don’t know if I’ve ever truly been happy. My family was torn apart, and things have never been the same.
There was a point when I had a happy family - a long, long time ago
Depression and anxiety are frustrating to deal with because they feed off of each other. As a kid I got bullied, and in high school I really only ever had a really small group of close friends. I always saw people having fun with their friends, and it would make me anxious, knowing that no one really ever wanted to hang out with me. For the most part, my depression and anxiety are linked to physical and social self images. A huge portion of the anxiousness that constantly fills my mind is related to those two things. Even to this day, my brain constantly tells me that other people don’t want to be around me or hang out with me.
So how does running tie in to all of this? I actually didn’t even start running until spring of my senior year in high school, when I decided to run track. Someone I knew from one of my classes encouraged me to give it a shot, and I did. I remember the first run I ever did on my own was about 3 miles, and it took me almost 30 minutes. By the end of the semester, I still wasn’t very fast, I think my mile time was in the mid 5:20s, but it was something. I ran my first half marathon in May in 1:52:47, right before graduating, and I started to feel pretty good about running!
I was going to Purdue for undergrad, so I looked around and found out they had a running club. When classes started, I went to practice the first day, and I immediately felt at home. Now, at that time, Purdue’s club was ~way~ smaller than it is today, we probably never had more than 15 to 20 people at practice, and that would be on a popular day. Anyways...I met one of my best friends, and future roommate Matt through running club, and he really helped me get in great shape. I remember a 16x400 workout we did that absolutely cleaned my clock, but I could tell I was getting faster. By springtime, I somehow managed to run a 17:27 5k in a race right before my birthday. I’ll never forget that race, I felt like I had proven I could actually accomplish something as a runner. Barely a year before it had taken me almost 30 minutes to run 3 miles. In fact, I keep the results page for that race bookmarked so I can go back and remind myself that I’m capable. If you’re curious, you can see dad’s 21st place finish here.
NIRCA track nationals 2012
Unfortunately, that race seems like it was the pinnacle of my running. I managed to drop a little time off my mile PR at NIRCA nats that year, but my 5k at nats was almost 2 minutes slower than my PR. My Indy Mini time improved to 1:43:01 though, and I kept up with running throughout that summer as much as I could. But when my sophomore year started up, I felt like I didn’t have the same amount of time to dedicate to running. I knew my future hinged 100% on academics, so I had to put my engineering courses before my running, so my fitness suffered. In the spring of my Junior year, I hadn’t run in almost 6 months due to school, but my sister challenged me to do a half marathon in our hometown, so I did. I finished in 2:10:48, which is incredibly slow, but given the fact that I hadn’t run in months, I took it.
For the rest of my time at Purdue though, I felt like I was constantly fighting to get back in shape, rather than maintaining and improving my fitness. It’s so much easier to stay in shape than it is to get back into shape, anyone can tell you that. By the time the Illinois meet came around my senior year, I was 30 seconds slower than my PR in the mile, and I just felt mentally crushed with my running. I was back to doing the Indy Mini, which I ran in 1:58:28 that year...even slower than my first half marathon when I had only been running for 4 or 5 months.
Somewhere along the line I managed to tie my mental health in with my running. I felt so good about how I had been able to run my freshman year that if I wasn’t running well, I was in terrible mental shape. At the same time, I’ve never really felt like I belonged as a runner. I’ve never been fast, except for that one 5k my freshman year. In fact, I’ve come last, or close to last, in almost every race I’ve ever been in. It’s one of the most demoralizing things you can imagine, to know that you’re the slowest person at a meet.
Most of my friends since high school have been runners, and I’ve found it impossible to not be continually comparing myself to them. Unfortunately for my mental health, it’s never been a good comparison. I clearly don’t have the stereotypical ‘string-bean’ body that most runners have. In fact, I’m just the opposite: slightly overweight, chubby, flabby, all the things that a real runner isn’t, and I absolutely hate it. For as long as I can remember, I’ve looked at myself in the mirror and hated how I look. Something as simple as taking my shirt off on a run fills me with more anxiety than I can even express, that’s how much I hate how I look. Not only am I chubby, but I’m also going bald early...just great!
So anyways...I graduated and went off to work. I felt for sure that I’d have all the time in the world to focus on running and getting back in shape. However, the reality of working full time set in quickly. I was working 40-50 hours a week, on top of doing another 20+ hours of homework for the program I was in at work. I’d get home at 5 or 5:30 knowing I still had hours of homework to do, and the last thing I wanted to do was go for a run. I’ve always struggled with motivating myself to run on my own, so for the most part it just didn’t happen. A year after graduating, I did the Indy Mini in May as usual, and it was awful, I finished in 2:05:53. It wasn’t quite the slowest I had ever run a half, but I was the fattest I had ever been in my life. I felt defeated mentally, but I knew something had to change.
I slowly worked at eating better and running more, and some small semblance of fitness crept back into my life. I actually remember one of my good friends from work commenting “Wow Rob, I can really tell you’re starting to get back in shape.” By the time another year had rolled by, I managed to drop almost 30 minutes off my half marathon time, and I ran a huge PR of 1:37:44. Like I said before, I’ve somehow coupled my running ability and my mental health together, so for me this was awesome.
My best friend Matt and I with our medals after the 2017 Indy Mini
All the hard work in the prior year had paid off, and I was finally seeing progress for real. Even better? I knew I was going to get to go back to school in the fall for my Masters degree - the program I was in at GE would pay me full time to be at OSU for a semester. I know OSU had a running club, so I was incredibly excited to get to campus. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve always struggled to run on my own, so I figured that joining a running club again would be a great way to get back in shape.
Zion National Park ~before~ I started at OSU - I can’t believe I would wear that shirt
I don’t really know what happened, but that summer things sort of fell off, and by the time I arrived at OSU in the fall I had lost a lot of my fitness again. I still had my hopes up though, I knew that when I came to Purdue and ran with their club I had gotten in the best shape of my life, and I hoped I’d be able to do something similar. At the same time, I was nervous as hell. I was older, I wasn’t an undergrad, how could I possibly fit in? My anxiety was starting to kick in full time. Luckily for me, I went to Mass the Sunday after the welcome week run, and noticed this guy named Greg that I had seen with the club, so I went over to introduce myself.
Another interjection…I’ve always felt like an introvert. I feel awkward socially, and in my head I’ve convinced myself that I’m terrible at meeting new people and making friends. I look around at my life, and I see only a handful of close friends, so I manage to convince myself that I’m a loser that no one wants to be friends with. So going up to this person that I had seen at running club and introducing myself was actually extremely difficult for me. Luckily for me, Greg turned out to be an awesome person, and he’s been one of my closest friends since then. Through him, I made some fantastic friends in the OSU running club: Alex, Kyle, Jake, Zach...they’re some of my best friends now.
NIRCA Regionals 2018: the picture doesn’t capture how cold this race was
The start of that semester was a little rough though, as I was definitely out of shape, especially compared to everyone else in the club. To make things worse, I felt so out of place. I was older than everyone, I was fat, I was going bald...it just sucked. I felt so uncomfortable at every practice, as if I didn’t belong. Oh yeah, I sweat a ton too, which is something I’m self conscious about, so when we’d go do mile repeats at the lake loop, I had to choose between a completely soaked shirt or going shirtless: both options caused so much anxiety that I considered quitting the club. When we went to MC5 I was so bad that I ran a 41:22 in the 8k. Yeah... that slow. Sure, it was hot and humid, but still, that’s bad. I had reached a new low mentally. I already felt out of place in the club because of how old I was, and here was my fat ass running slower than an 8 minute pace in a race. Hadn’t I just set my half marathon PR a few months ago at a sub 8 minute pace?? It didn’t help that somewhere along the line people started to call me dad. I knew deep down they meant it affectionately, but it felt like a constant mental trigger.
Somehow though, I managed to push through, and a month later at regionals I ran a 33:27. Two weeks later and I ran a 32:43. I still felt out of place in the club, but I had at least managed to turn my running around. Spring came, and even though I had to go back to work, I was still technically enrolled full time as I finished my masters, so I was able to run the track season with the club. Despite having to run on my own back in Cincinnati, I managed to stick with it, and I went from a 5:27 mile at Tiffin to a 5:06 mile at Illinois. That was a PR by over 11 seconds, and I couldn’t have been happier. I dropped my Indy Mini time down to 1:34:32, and things were going great again.
Matt and I again with our medals after the 2018 Indy Mini - we got the bonus 500 club medals that year
Unfortunately, the injury bug hit me with a stress fracture in my shin, and it’s something I’ve never been able to shake, despite almost 6 months in a boot and taking almost a year and a half off running. Going from arguably the best shape I had ever been in to not being able to run was a huge mental drain. To top it off, I really didn’t enjoy work. I knew by then my passion was in teaching, so I decided to make a change. I wanted to teach and be a professor, and to do that I needed a PhD. In the end, the decision came down to Purdue and Ohio State. Believe it or not, it was the running club here that ultimately drew me to OSU over Purdue. I had great friends here, and I knew I needed their support to survive mentally, even if they had no idea the level of support they really gave me.
This is what a long distance runner looks like starting a 400 with blocks (not good)
So here we are, it’s Fall 2019, and I’m starting back again on a college campus. 2 degrees down, 1 to go. All of the old mental anxiety came rushing back. If I had felt uncomfortable due to my age two years prior when I first started at OSU, it was even worse now. It’s actually ironic in it’s own way. At work I was always with people in their 40s and 50s...I was literally decades younger than all my coworkers. But now, I’m back on a college campus, and I’m reaaaaaally old compared to everyone else in the club. And oh yeah, I also hadn’t really been able to run for the last year and a half thanks to my stress fracture and terrible shins. I felt like there was no way I would ever fit in.
Like I mentioned earlier, I really feel awkward socially. I knew I had to fight through my mental demons though, so at every practice I made a monstrous mental effort to step past that barrier and try to get to know people. All of the usual sources of anxiety were still there though: my weight, my age, my baldness, my slowness. I knew I had to fight it though, grad school is the toughest thing I’ve ever done, and I needed running to be the source of positivity in my life, because I still haven’t been able to disconnect my running ability from my mental health.
This past fall moved along though, and I felt like I was able to get into decent shape. My shin pain felt under control, and I ran a 1:34:57 at the Columbus Half, only 25 seconds off my PR. By the time NIRCA nats rolled around, I managed to drop over a minute off my 8k PR when I finished in 31:35. By the end of the XC season, I felt like I was finally approaching the level of confidence I had in my running all that time ago during my freshman year at Purdue. Unfortunately that has just served to tie my mental health even closer to my running ability. Something in my brain has convinced me that I should be as fast as I was 8 years ago at Purdue.
Unfortunately in December the shin pain came rushing back. This time around I’m being smart and going to physical therapy, and luckily it hasn’t gotten worse, even though every other run still feels like I have knives digging into my shins. The mental struggles have continued though. I keep pushing myself at every workout and at every race, but so far the results just haven’t been there. I’m slower than I was during track two years ago, even though my times this past fall were way better. My brain has remained locked into this mode where it thinks I should be faster than I am. I’ve only ever had two goals while running: breaking a 5 minute mile and running a half marathon in under 1:30, and I’ve never felt further from those two goals. Every workout where I struggle, or every race where I come in almost dead last...they just make things worse. All of the anxieties in my life just feel like they’re getting exponentially worse every time I struggle in any way with a run. Every workout in French when I’m faced with the decision of a soaked shirt or going shirtless and exposing my body, it fills my mind with so much anxiety that I feel like I need to quit the club. It doesn’t help that deep down, I still feel like I don’t really fit in, despite how welcoming everyone in the club has been to me. It doesn’t really make sense to me...everyone has been so nice, but this nasty little voice inside my head keeps telling me that I don’t belong. I’ve never felt like less of a runner.
So that leaves this narrative here, in the middle of track season in the spring of 2020. Everything feels like a struggle. Even as I write this, I question why I’m running. I don’t feel like a runner. I know it’s because I had a bad workout last night, and the logical part of my brain tells me to ignore it, but sometimes illogical emotion rules supreme. However, I know that I need to keep at it. Quitting won’t make anything better, it will just make things worse. I might not ever be as fast as I was in the past, but that doesn’t mean I still can’t work to improve myself with every run. Even if I’m the slowest person at all of the workouts and races, it doesn’t matter. I need to stop competing with other people and start competing with myself. Maybe I really can be a runner.
I’m grateful every second for the friends I’ve made with the club here
What I want to conclude things with is that I’m so grateful for every single person in this club. This past weekend I made a spur of the moment decision to run the 3k at YSU, and even though I almost came in dead last, I heard all of the cheers coming from the people in our club, and I almost felt like I belonged. You have all been so incredibly nice to me that I can’t really express how grateful I am for your support in words. I’m so lucky to have a group like this to run with. I’m not sure I would survive this PhD program without you all.