Body Image and Amateur Running



Hagg Lake 10K, 2012.  Can you predict the winner?

Standing at the starting line of a local amateur road race, you really can't tell who is going to finish first. At least, I can't tell. Even at relatively small races, you see people of all ages, sizes and body types.

 

Yesterday, we finished our 3rd (of 7) races for the ORRC 10K Series, the Hagg Lake 10K. Like most the races in this series, it's not flat or what would be considered an "easy" course. It's a mix of rolling hills: you run up, and you run down, then you run up again for a longer hill, then, you guessed it, back down. Yesterday, it was unusually warm for May. At race time (9 am) it was already sunny and 70 degrees. That's hot for racing. I knew going into this race, it wouldn't be a PR day. It wasn't just the heat, I know my body pretty well, and sometimes, you just know. I decided to run my best for the day, and in the end, I felt beat up and ravaged by the course, but having a "tough" race makes you stronger, right? Yep, that's what I tell myself.

During most of the race, I could see the women's winner of the race. I had no crazy ideas about catching her. I was solidly in 3rd place during the majority of the race. Until, about mile 5 when someone cruised on by. I didn't have anything left to try to keep up with her. She swallowed the 2nd place girl, too. Without a doubt, this woman had a GREAT race. At the end, as we stood around gulping water and congratulating each other on running up and down in the heat, I commented on how I was impressed with her last mile. She was very gracious.

Then she remarked, "I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but it was great to run behind you and see another woman with big legs and muscles. People think that women with muscles can't run fast, but that's not true."

I was impressed by what this woman said. Obviously, I know I'm not built like an Olympic runner, and "fast" is relative, always. I know that it's true that I do indeed have an "unconventional" runner's body. So what? In the world of amateur running, having a large frame with big legs won't necessarily keep you from running faster than people with smaller, sleeker bodies. Why is that? I'd venture to say because a huge part of amateur running is mental, and also focuses on the training you put in, not necessarily your figure.

But, let's forget about speculating on what makes one person faster than the next, because there are too many variables, and that's not what really struck me. In the end, I appreciated this woman's honesty in talking about body image. Dammit, we are consumed with it and bombarded with images all day, everyday of what our society calls beauty. Never mind that Photoshop makes complexions perfect and bodies smooth in magazines and beauty ads. It seems like it was only last week when I saw and even engaged in a few online debates about this Dove Commercial. Women are hard on themselves, right? Yes, yes. I won't go into the debate about how scientific Dove's experiment was or wasn't, or even about whether I think they went far enough to dispel the myth that there IS some standard of beauty.

What strikes me is that there seems to be some standard. And, it doesn't stop with faces. At least yesterday, I left with the idea this IS still something women runners think about, maybe even agonize about. For me, I hadn't really given it much thought since I started running races about 4 years ago. You line up at the start with all sorts of body types. And, in the end, most of the time, body type doesn't tell you a thing about who is going to finish first, or even last. You absolutely cannot tell at the beginning of a race how it's going to shake out, especially among the mid-pack.

Maybe, that is one of the reasons why I so love amateur athletics. You can be exactly who you are, and no matter what the shape of your human form, it will still carry you across the finish line. You are only truly running against yourself, and most of us are  not running in order to dispel some myth about what a long distance runner looks like. Right?? Maybe not, eh?

What about you? Do you "size up" the competition at races? Do you feel like you have an "unconventional" runner's body? Do you think running relatively fast with an unconventional runner's body makes a statement?