You Can't Leave It All On The Track When You Have An ED

I had a successful college career. My freshman year I qualified for conference but ran injured and didn’t contribute. That sparked an intense desire to come back the next year and make an impact to help my team. That became the catalyst for my eating disorder. The next year, I switched events to the 400 hurdles and came in 4th at conference. The year after that, I came in 2nd and qualified for regionals. Finally, in my final season, I won the conference championships and competed at Regionals again.

It’s been 4 years since I ran my last collegiate race, but every year when conference rolls around I find myself in group texts with my old teammates and looking up the results for the current team. It always hurts a little, but less and less with time. I still miss every moment of it and I think I always will. But that’s how you know how much it meant to you, how much you loved it, and how much of an impact it made in your life.

I spent today going through pictures from those last three years of championships. With time I have been able to recognize just how small I really was. But at the time, I couldn’t see it. When I looked at myself in the mirror I just saw lean muscles I wanted to show off. I did not look like the pictures of anorexic girls; I did not identify with them. I was strong. I was an athlete. I was winning.

Running well was the only thing that mattered to me. And so long as I was able to perform, I wasn’t going to address my problem. I had no motivation to change anything.

But now 4 years removed from my last college championship, I see those pictures through a different set of eyes. I can still see the pure joy and passion captured in those moments; I can still feel those emotions when I look at them. But I also see the strong lean body that I loved for what it was, smaller than it should have been; smaller than I believed it was. And I know how hard it was working to allow me to compete at that level despite giving it so little in return.

I cherished my body with an intense attention and love. Every moment of my life was devoted to caring for it, to protecting it, and to helping it succeed. My meals filled with vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein; my water bottle drained like clockwork; my daily visits to the athletic trainer for preventive care; my nightly routines of massage, foam rolling, and 8 hours of sleep. I was devoting everything to it in the hopes that it would perform at its best. That I would realize its potential.

But I didn't get there...

Because in the end, my body did not have everything it needed. It wasn’t fueled properly. It didn’t have the resources to grow, repair, and exert itself like it should. It could only give me as much as I gave it. And I wasn’t giving it enough.

I am so grateful for the success I had, and so fortunate to have accomplished what I did. But I will always be left wondering what I left out on the track. What more I could have done.

That is the purpose of this blog. I want my experience to help others realize they are not alone in this struggle and to serve as a warning to not follow the path that I led. To recover during your career and not after. To realize your potential and know that you gave it everything you had.