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Normally, I’d answer that I’m a runner. But ever since a mysterious pain started radiating through my right leg each time my foot struck the ground on a run a few months ago, I haven’t laced up my running shoes. I started articulating that but didn’t get further than saying “injury”—the word awoke a thought in the guy he couldn’t hold back. He, too, got injured a few months earlier and wasn’t able to run much, although he wouldn’t call himself a runner to start with, but still, he sure was bummed…and there was more to his story I couldn’t hear because I was busy swallowing the rest of my sentence.
It was interesting to him, he informed me, that Runner’s World would hire someone like me, someone who isn’t really a serious runner. I considered asking him for a definition of a serious runner but quickly thought better of it. The same guy, after I said I read a lot, declared he doesn’t, but he did have a recommendation for me. Oh, to be a man.
I’d worked myself to the conclusion years ago that I’m a runner. But am I still a runner if I cannot run marathon aspirations, but I’ve been running consistently four to five times a week for years—who else but a serious runner would do that?
I do other sports, too, but I haven’t integrated them into my personality the way I have with running: Riding, hiking, and yoga are just things I do. To be clear, I do them—in my opinion—just as seriously. I’ve pedaled under my own power for hours, ridden (and fallen) clipped in, changed a flat, and gone down a hill at 50 kph. I’ve been to more national parks than I’ve been to major cities, have planned entire vacations around a single hike, and once trekked across Spain for 28 days. I practiced asanas with a guru in Bali, joined yoga retreats, and have been a member at so many yoga studios that I couldn’t list them all.
But then there is running, with its impact lasting long after the activity is done. Over the years, I’ve learned that every cliché-sounding benefit of it is true: It improves mood, leads to better sleep, and reduces stress. It has helped me manage my anxiety long before I even fully grasped what it was and taught me to feel safer and more comfortable with its symptoms. My interest in the science behind it led me to get a run coach certification. As a bonus, when I was training to run 30K for my 30th birthday, it accidentally turned me sober. It’s what I do the most often, build my schedule around, and know the most about.
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Then again, if all it takes is not living out the identity at the moment, how am I Czech if I live abroad? Should I take my coffee-lover sticker off my desk since I stopped drinking caffeine every day? Do I still call myself a writer if I haven’t written anything of consequence in weeks? (Is this what an identity crisis feels like?)
Then again, if the only people who get to turn what they do into personality nouns are the ones who live it the most, how would any of us ever be anything? Because we could always find someone more athletic, patriotic, creative, or dedicated. And who does the guy think he is, anyway? Hadn’t I spent enough of my life internalizing and then unlearning other people’s ideas of my identity, mostly in relation to them anyway—difficult teenager, not-good-enough wife, funny-sounding immigrant—instead of being confident in my own sense of self?
Amazing Runners World Show seriously riding my bike along the flow of the Delaware River and against the wind gusts, just to get a coffee. Though the guy would likely conjure one up if asked, there isn’t a scale to measure how seriously anyone is doing anything. The point is, we can make what we do our entire personality. Or we can just do it. We can be serious about it or prioritize fun (or seriously prioritize fun). Either way, the decision is up to us.
As I sat on a bench outside the coffee shop I rode to—coincidentally just across from another bench where I had met the guy two days earlier—I was holding my iced latte in one hand and petting three miniature poodles with the other. Their owner was telling me that the biggest one jumping on me was rescued from an Amish puppy mill and is the neediest one of them, and although she gets startled easily, she has also been adjusting very well. And while I attended to the lively pack of wagging tails, the owner’s husband came out, a croissant and coffee stacked in one hand, a cane in the other. As he was getting ready to sit down, the wind rattled the little metal table in front of him, and the coffee spilled into the street. A stranger at the next table ran inside for napkins while another went to ask if they’d make the man a new cup, which the barista himself carried out shortly after.
All of that, happening in less than three minutes, suddenly mattered in ways the conversation on the bench across from me two days earlier did not. The poodles’ owner, with her short white hair fluttering in the wind, said, “What a day!” Because I didn’t know what to answer, I blurted out, “At least the weather is nice after all that rain.” What I truly meant was how much I admired her for giving the puppy a home and her love, how impressed I was by complete strangers who quickly turned the situation around, and how I wished I had walked away from the guy instead of being silently agreeable, letting him question who I am. She smiled at me, as if she understood, and said, “We’re just happy to be alive.”
Looking from the biggest puppy with its front paws on my knees to her, I smiled, too. If I’m only one thing above all else, it’s that.
Pavlína Černá, an RRCA-certified run coach and cycling enthusiast, has been with Runner’s World, Bicycling, and Popular Mechanics since August 2021. When she doesn’t edit, she writes; when she doesn’t write, she reads or translates. In whatever time she has left, you can find her outside running, riding, or roller-skating to the beat of one of the many audiobooks on her TBL list.
