It is a chilly October day with autumn clouds hanging low in the sky while a breeze rustles leaves across the track.You shiver in your t-shirt and shorts as you line up with your classmates for the most dreaded of all gym class activities, running the mile. Four laps around the track. Four seemingly endless laps are all that separate you from heading back inside.You shuffle your feet and watch the little puffs your breath makes as it collides with the sharp cold air. To make matters worse, half of your school's classrooms face the track and you know that your embarrassment will not be limited to the confines of your class. Stopwatch and clipboard in hand, your teacher instructs everyone to get ready...get set...go!
You take off with the others while desperately hoping you won't be the last one to finish, all the while knowing that if history proves true you will be. You watch as the fastest kids in your class, the basketball captains and football stars, glide forward quickly with ease. Yet for you, this task is anything but easy. You feel the clutch of the cold air twisting and wringing your lungs and each breath becomes more painful. There is a pressure in your chest and you take big deep breaths, though it does little to help. You try to keep your legs moving and will yourself to run faster - all you want to do is finally run a mile without stopping! But each breath gets harder and harder and finally you slow to a walk, barely halfway through your first lap of the track. Your lungs are burning as your classmates whizz by, lapping you now. Despite slowing to a walk it is still hard to breathe and you suck frigid air in shallow gasps in an attempt to feed your lungs what they are starving for, though this seems to only make things worse. It is another lap until your breathing finally eases a bit though it is far from being back to normal, and in fact you will have trouble breathing for the rest of the day. You are frustrated. You are embarrassed. You hate everyone looking at you as you gasp for air and you imagine the thoughts they must be thinking, because you are thinking them yourself:
"How pathetic - she can't even run a lap!"
"What a pig, look at her gasping for breath!"
"She isn't even trying to run!"
Oh 15 year old self, don't despair! I wish I could tell you that things will get better in the next lap or the next time you run, but the truth is it will take a bit longer than that.
It will be years until you recognize the difference between conditioning (or lack of) and the fickle tendencies of your asthma, which can hold your lungs hostage at a moments notice due to a change in temperature or other factors. It will be years until you meet an asthmatic marathoner who helps you realize that running is possible for you with the right approach and routine. It will be years until you are no longer embarrassed to breathe loudly and generously as you run, because that precious oxygen is what fuels you and you have to work harder for it than other people - and even then, you will need to remind yourself of this from time to time when running with others, etc.
It will be years until you discover the joy of running and the way it frees your mind and your soul. It will be years until you discover the way that running eases your stress and helps you to process the noise of the world around you, and how it makes you feel strong, healthy, and capable. It will be years until you discover these things, and then a few more years where you tuck these discoveries away only to rediscover them with even more joy.
It will be years until you run your first 5k. Then a 10k. Then a half-marathon. And then you will a full marathon- yes you!
And on a brutally chilly December morning about seventeen years from now with the thermometer reading 12 degrees, you are going to go for a six mile run in Boston (don't worry, you are still a Yankees fan). You will look back on today- that chilly morning in October where you couldn't run half a lap- and you will start laughing while you watch the little puffs of breath escape through your facemask and feel your inhaler bounce in your pocket with each step, and you will be so grateful for this day and how far you have come from it.
So do not despair 15 year old self. Remember this day and know that it will motivate and fuel you for years to come. And while you may be frustrated and embarrassed now, someday this memory will make each mile all the sweeter.
Love,
Your Future Self
P.S. I know you dream of running a mile without stopping someday...so you should also know that on that same morning seventeen years from now you will run six of 'em without stopping, and your fastest split will be an 8:48 pace.
P.P.S. You should also know that in 2015, we still do not have hoverboards. Sorry to disappoint you.