Miller - Running : a love story : 10 years, 5 marathons and 1 life-changing sport

Praise for Running: A Love Story

Running: A Love Story is Jens ultimate faith healer, restoring belief not only in herself but lifes possibilities.

Bart Yasso, Chief Running Officer of Runners World magazine and author of My Life on the Run

Once, I was running with Jen Miller in Philly when a crusty guy on the sidewalk yelled at her, You run like a GIRL! I had no idea what he meant, but in this inspiring, honest and fierce book, Jen finally explains it.

Peter Sagal, host of NPRs Wait Wait...Dont Tell Me and columnist for Runners World magazine

Running: A Love Story is a frank and sometimes gritty look inside Jen Millers heart. She speaks for a lot of us as she reveals her self-doubts, and then finds the confidence to quiet them through running. How running does that to us is, like love, very simple yet totally mysterious. But heres the bottom line: It works for everyone.

Kathrine Switzer, author of Marathon Woman and the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon

A contemporary coming of age story that will speak to a generation of women, Running: A Love Story is the candid memoir of a young womans painful but triumphant search for her place in the world. Skillfully crafted and unsparingly honest, Running is a courageous memoir written straight from the heart.

Amy Hill Hearth, New York Times and Washington Post bestselling author

Millions of everyday men and women have a love affair with running. No book Ive read captures the richness and complexity of this widely shared experiencethe exhilaration and heartbreak and everything in betweenmore faithfully than Jen Millers lovely memoir, Running: A Love Story.

Matt Fitzgerald, author of more than 20 endurance sports books, including How Bad Do You Want It? Mastering the Psychology of Mind Over Muscle

Running: A Love Story is a ballad for anyone looking to discover themselves. Jen Miller is remarkably honest, candid, and approachable in her writing style. She narrates in a way that makes you feel like the two of you are tucked in the corner of a tapas restaurant sharing stories way into the late hours. As someone who has never been good at running, I was delighted to find this book to be about so much more than sneakers and mile marks. This is a book about finding love, discovering your breaking points, and letting go. Jen pieces together a moral I think the world needs: only when we fully let go can we finally grip tight to the stuff that really matters.

Hannah Brencher, author of If You Find This Letter

For my grandmother, Dorothy Miller Bums!

Running: A Love Story

Copyright 2015 Jennifer Miller

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

ISBN 9781580056113

Miller, Jen A.

Running: a love story / Jen A. Miller.

LCCN 2015040211

Miller, Jen A. I Runners (Sports)--United States--Biography.

LCC GV1061.15.M55 A3 2015 I DDC 796.42092--dc23

Published by

Seal Press

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

1700 Fourth Street

Berkeley, California

Sealpress.com

Cover design by Jeff Miller, Faceout Studios

Interior design by Amber Pirker

Printed in the United States of America

Distributed by Publishers Group West

Authors Note: The author has changed the names and personal details of some individuals mentioned in this book to protect their privacy. Some timelines have been condensed for clarity.

Table of Contents

Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth.

William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Nights Dream

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

Haruki Murakami

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

CONTENTS

MAY 5, 2013

New Jersey Marathon

I closed my eyes as we approached the staging area. Mom drove, silent. She knew not to talk to me before races, and the only noise was me softly giving directions to Monmouth Park. Its normally a thoroughbred horse race track, but that day it was the start line of the New Jersey Marathon and Long Branch Half Marathon.

Under my sweatpants and sweatshirt, I wore an outfit I had tested in my sixth Ocean Drive 10-Miler five weeks before: two-toned blue tank top, black compression shorts (and Body Glide spread liberally on unmentionable areas that would otherwise chafe over the next four-plus hours), blue knee-high compression socks, black gloves, Timex sports watch. My yellow visor rounded out the ensemble. On my feet were the blue and orange Mizuno Musha 5s that I hoped would carry me over 26.2 miles in under four hours and thirty-five minutes.

I first signed up to run this race back in 2010. It would have been my first marathon, but I ran myself into the ground and quit halfway through training. That year, temperatures had topped out at a humidity-soaked 89 degrees. This time around, the race was on a freak May cold day, with a forecast high of 53 degrees. If I was planning to blame the weather for not reaching my goal that day, I lost that out. I couldnt have asked for a better day or better conditions to try, in my third marathon, to put together a raceone where I could take pride in the results, one where I didnt crash and burn and beg and cry and almost crawl to the finish line in the final miles.

I had eighteen weeks of training in my legs and lungs. Id prepared using a controversial marathon training method blasted as dangerous, unhealthy, and unproven. It put me, a middle-of-the-pack amateur, through high-intensity workouts, topping out at fifty-seven miles a weeka volume that had sent me into daily naps and two dinners a night. One of my editorsa longtime runnerwished me luck with the training as if I were about to paddle a canoe into the Bermuda Triangle. I ran that schedule fresh out of a breakup with the man I thought I was going to marry, and somehow kept it up through living with my mother, re-settling my home, trips to Seattle, Florida, Las Vegaswhite-knuckle clinging to those runs to keep me from falling over the edge into the black tar pit of my mind that kept telling me I was a failure.

I had pushed my body to the brink to outrun my pain. And as I planted myself among the thousands of runners who would test themselves in either a half or full marathon that day, I felt more prepared than I had before my last two marathons. My body was humming. My muscles were in tune. I had panicked before most of the races Id run in the last seven yearsdozens of 5Ks and 10Ks and ten-milers and half marathonsbut this time my breathing was steady and I was strong, like a horse set to charge out of the gate.

Except for one thing: Doubt. Would this marathon end like the Philadelphia and Chicago marathons? Maybe I hadnt rested enough in the taper, or the ankle that was sore last week would give out, or the training method I used really was snake oil, and Id end up a carcass being picked over by seagulls on the streets of Long Branch.

No, I told myself. No