Last weekend I wrote about the ambivalence I'd been feeling about not competing in endurance sports . In a Facebook comment to my post, a friend posed the following question: do you always /have/ to be going forward in everything, all the time? Can you find a way to be comfortable with staying where you are? I think this is emotional work, btw, not physical work. I was just struck, in reading this, by your observation that you can't enjoy something if you're not pushing yourself. But maybe all of this with your foot and knee is your body trying to teach you to be present and be okay with being you just as you are. I thought about my response and battled with it for a long time. A week, in fact. I decided to further explore my reasons in a follow-up post—this one. First, I didn't realize my post had come across as negative; my thinking was, ambivalence by definition is neutral, right? So then I needed to look up the word. According to Merriam-Webster, ambivalence is...

I think I know why I've struggled to fully latch on to swimming and cycling. Part of it is just starting out new. But I can't really play the newbie card anymore, particularly with swimming. What I'm missing, I think, is the thrill of competition (except for the occasional instances when, unbeknownst to the swimmer in the lane next to me, I engage in a full-out race with him or her to the wall and back). With running, the sport became more exciting to me when I started entering distance races. I began where most everyone does—with a 5k—but then decided that wasn't enough, so I trained for a 15k and soon thereafter a half marathon, etc. Those events propelled my love for running forward. I was never racing for prestige or placement but rather to challenge myself; to push myself further than I knew I ever would if I—me, myself—had been the only motivating source. I needed the accountability and structure that came with race training. And now, without the race factor, I ...

Last April, after achieving a PR at the Iron Girl Half Marathon in Clearwater, I suffered foot pain that, little did I know at the time, would keep me sidelined from running for 10 months. Today, I can finally say that the foot pain is gone. Through working with a chiropractor, Dr. Travis Mohr , on releasing the tight muscles in and around my foot that were gripping and pulling on the metatarsal heads in the ball of my foot, I was finally able to get relief from a condition I feared would plague me for the rest of my life, keeping me from ever running again. My journey to this freedom from foot pain was filled with frustration, fear, and constant disappointment. Here's what I learned throughout the process: Rest and immobilization are not always the answer . At least not longterm. In seeking medical care for my foot, I consulted with and received some form of treatment from a podiatrist, a sports therapist, three orthopedists, and three chiropractors (eighth time is a charm?)...