Running On Empty

I started to drink my coffee while waiting for class to begin when I felt resistance in my esophagus which caused me to abruptly cough it up. I remember knowing immediately that this was something serious so I spent the following months visiting different specialists and undergoing an alphabet soup of medical imaging until I was eventually diagnosed with achalasia, a neurological condition that affects peristalsis in the esophagus and leads to dysphagia. As a result, it became challenging to fuel properly because I started to develop an anxiety about eating and restricted myself to particular foods that felt safer. Through trial and error, I learned to identify and prioritize foods that maximized satiety and provided steady energy throughout the day which reduced my anxiety about feeling that I always needed to have access to specific foods.

Achalasia caused me to underfuel so I stopped running because it would only add to my nutritional needs and, while I wasn’t running much at the time, it was still unsettling to realize that my body was actually preventing me from being able to run. However, I eventually started to reframe this as an opportunity to transform my nutrition from a liability into a strength by fueling smarter in order to actually come back to running even better than before. This condition initially felt like something that I couldn’t control but I began to specifically focus on the impact of nutrition on performance and recovery which gradually allowed me to start running again and provided a foothold that allowed me to regain my sense of control over my own health. Over time, I built up my mileage to 100+ miles per month, which I had actually never achieved before achalasia, and have maintained that volume every month since December 2019.

Eventually, I was able to strengthen the muscles in that area which enabled me to mostly recover and, while I still occasionally have recurrences of that initial feeling of resistance, it no longer impacts my life to the same extent that it once did. So, what’s the right lesson to learn from this experience? Honestly, I don’t really know. I know that’s anticlimactic and I almost feel obliged to offer some profound insights given that I’m writing about distance on a planetary scale. I’ve never actually seen Forrest Gump in its entirety but I keep thinking about the famous montage scene (which starts with Jackson Browne’s song “Running On Empty”) in which he’s running across America and, when asked if he’s running for some profound reason, he simply replies, “I just felt like running.” I never had a goal to run halfway around the world but this experience instilled an appreciation that I never had before for the simple freedom to run when I just feel like running.