Notes From a Sober Runner #1

I roll over in bed on a recent February morning, hand blindly searching for my phone on the nightstand. I rub my eyes and the screen comes into focus: 6:39 AM. Cold gray light seeps through the blinds in the bedroom that I share with my partner. He’s still asleep, wrapped tightly in our dark comforter, his brow slightly furrowed. I swing my legs over the side of my bed, moving quietly, so as not to wake him. Fifteen minutes later I’m driving my twenty year-old Nissan XTerra down the main boulevard that cuts through my San Diego neighborhood. I’m wearing baggy shorts and an old North Face jacket. I blast the heat to warm my legs. The road dead-ends and I turn right, then left, and then left again, following a smaller road to the man-made lake that’s become the regular site of my long weekend runs. Today I’m slated to run ten miles, two full loops around the lake. I circle the parking lot until I find a parking spot (even at this hour, I have to compete for parking with other cyclists and runners), do a couple of calf stretches on a curb, and then set off down the black asphalt running path.

I was never much of an athlete as a child, but I was an okay runner. I was the second fastest girl in my class when we raced around the large dirt loop on my elementary school field. I got third place in the fifty yard dash at the Junior Olympics, a series of athletic events in which all the schools in our district participated. Unfortunately, I broke my wrist and hit puberty at around the same time; the time off from physical activity, coupled with my new body composition and general nihilistic twelve year-old attitude, effectively ended whatever running career I might have had as a teenager. I ran when I was forced to in P.E., but I was always near the back of the pack, and it felt like a necessary evil. I didn’t pick up running again until I had already graduated college (save for a few aborted attempts to start jogging as part of a health kick). I ran a 5k in Half Moon Bay every year (the Pumpkin Run), and even ran a 6-mile race in Santa Cruz called Wharf to Wharf, which goes along the California central coast. My running was neither regular nor structured in any way, but I was capable of getting into decent- enough shape to be able to finish my races without having to stop and walk. In the fall of 2019, I happened to pick up Ultramarathon Man, a book that had been recommended to me by my partner. The book’s author was Dean Karnazes, a man who had picked up running on his thirtieth birthday after not running for fifteen years. He suddenly left the bar at which he was drinking and ran through the night for a total of thirty miles. He’s gone on to have a long career in ultra-running, covering distances of one hundred miles or more in a single race. I was hooked. I’m not sure exactly what it was— something about Karnazes’ single-minded purpose, perhaps, or the way he described the redeeming nature of the suffering that he experienced out there on the trail—but I signed up for my first half marathon that very same day. I went on to devour every endurance running book I could get my hand on. As I’m sure many readers will relate to, when I become interested in something, I can be a bit obsessive.
I spent hours scrolling through the running subreddit, absorbing as much information as I could. I bought a new pair of running shoes. Unlike a 5k, or even a 10k, the half marathon requires more commitment upfront. If you don’t train, you’re going to have a bad time. One of the biggest benefits of training for a long race, in my experience, is that it helps develop discipline. I could no longer skip a run if I didn’t feel like doing it. Motivation had to come out of the equation entirely—I was training in the winter, and if I had relied solely on motivation to drag my ass out of bed during those cold Santa Cruz mornings, I wouldn’t have left the warmth of my comforter. If I had a run on the calendar, I did it, to a fault. I ran through odd aches and pains that I probably shouldn’t have because I couldn’t bear the thought of missing a run, the result of an all-or-nothing tendency that I still struggle with now.

I ran my first half marathon on March 1st, 2020. I completed it just under my goal time of two hours. Two weeks later, Santa Cruz went under a shelter-in-place order due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Three weeks after that, my partner and I moved to San Diego so that I could start a new job. The other benefit of training for and completing a long race is that it proves to yourself that you can do hard things of your own choosing. I had experienced many difficult things in my life up until that point, but they were all, to some degree or another, foisted upon me. My resilience was not a choice, but rather a matter of survival. In choosing to tackle a difficult goal, I was exerting some degree of agency over what was an objectively challenging experience. I knew I would suffer during the race to some degree, but I had signed up for this. It’s empowering to come out on the other side having succeeded at something that’s just on the outside edge of your ability.

I would go on to apply many of these same lessons when I quit drinking on November 1st of that same year. Again, I obsessively read every book I could find, though this time around it was Quit Like a Woman and Sober Curious as opposed to Eat &; Run and The Happy Runner. I listened to podcasts and scrolled through forums. When I took up running, I gained an identity: Runner. When I quit drinking, however, I struggled with the loss of an identity. I partook in the culture that surrounded craft beer and genuinely enjoyed trying different beer styles and identifying the subtle differences associated with different hops, yeast strains, and brewing techniques. San Diego is a craft beer Mecca. It was immensely difficult to let go of that, especially when the new identity I would be taking on often resulted in raised eyebrows and awkward pauses: Sober.

In the first few months of my sobriety, I experienced my 26th birthday, the 2020 presidential election, the holidays, and the Capitol Riot, all against the backdrop of an ongoing global pandemic. I like to tell people that I did early sobriety on hard mode. But I knew that I was capable of succeeding at something difficult, even if it meant plodding along one day at a time. That’s the gift that running has given me.

I didn’t run consistently again for over a year after my half marathon. Though I felt fine immediately after the race (albeit sore and tired), I woke up the next morning with a sharp pain in my ankle. Though the pain eventually dissipated, it would flare up every time I tried to run more than a mile or two in the ensuing months, which was incredibly frustrating. I was finally able to see a physical therapist later that year, who told me that I have functionally flat feet. Because of the way my foot landed when I ran, my outer ankle had become chronically irritated. It probably would have happened at some point regardless, but the half marathon had put me over the edge.

It took several months of physical therapy and a pair of insoles to get me to a place where I could run without ankle pain. 2021 was primarily about gaining confidence, both as a non-drinker as well as somebody returning to running after an extended break. I went to my first party as a sober person. I ran my first 5k in years. I learned to trust my body more and started making some vague goals. I knew that I wanted to run my first full marathon at some point in 2022, but I hadn’t planned much past that.
One morning that fall, one of my partner’s friends reached out in our group chat, asking if any of us wanted to run the San Diego Rock N’ Roll Marathon the following June. I hesitated—a June marathon meant I’d have to start training in February, at the latest, and that the weather would get progressively warmer as the day of the race approached. While the half marathon has been described as a “civilized distance,” for which training is relatively straightforward, the marathon is its own beast entirely. The sheer amount of time that you have to commit as your training runs get progressively longer is daunting. What if my ankle started having issues? What if I developed some other kind of injury? Was I really ready for a marathon training plan? Despite these valid concerns, I found myself navigating to the race website, clicking through the sign-up forms. I sprung for the insurance, meaning that I’d be refunded if I was unable to run the race due to injury. A feeling of nervous excitement washed over me as the confirmation email popped up in my inbox; for the first time in a long time, I was staring down a big, hairy goal. It was time to get to work.

Seven miles into my ten-miler around the lake, and the wheels start to come off. I felt great at the beginning of the run and erroneously went out too fast, a pacing issue that I’ll need to work on. I find myself plodding along, my quads sludgy and tired. The last few miles feel difficult and slow, but when I look at my splits afterward I realize that my “slow” pace is what I would have called my “normal” pace just a month ago. It might not feel much easier, but I’m getting faster.

I still struggle with an all-or-nothing mentality. As I write this, I’m taking a week off from training to rehab some shin pain. Even though I specifically built extra weeks into my plan to accommodate for things like this, it still feels like I’m doing something wrong, like I’m failing myself. Sitting still is difficult for me, as is feeling like I don’t have control. I alternate between feeling like the marathon is going to be difficult, but straightforward, and convincing myself that I’m going to get a stress fracture and end up in a walking boot.

I’m taking a chance on myself. Maybe that’s more important than whether or not I cross the finish line—the fact that, despite the myriad things that could go wrong in spite of my best efforts, I’m still driving out to the lake every weekend, putting one foot in front of the other.

About Aubrey Z:

Aubrey Zepeda is a scientist by day and runner by morning. When she's not setting up experiments in the lab or plodding down the road in her running shoes, you can find her either at the climbing gym or in bed with a book. She is currently living in San Diego with her partner and their dog, who is a very good boy.