I don’t know why, but in the 10 years Adam and I have been together there have been few times when we were both healthy and running well. Adam had some of his best years in the early part of the last decade, when I was constantly injured. But in 2007 I had a big breakthrough, and I kept the momentum going through 2008 and last year. Adam was sidelined through most of that period with a foot injury.
Things started to turn around for him last summer. His foot had finally healed, he was able to train consistently, and his fitness started to return. The longer it continued the more excited we both got—it had been a long, hard struggle for him. Not long after I got pregnant, which put my running on pause, Adam decided he was ready to race, and chose the Healthy Kidney 10K as his “comeback” event. Two weeks before the race, he got injured again. This time it was his hip.
Unfortunately, it’s no small setback. The doctors diagnosed an impingement in the hip joint that is causing bone buildup in the area. There’s also a possible labral tear. Surgery will be required to fix it, and then six months of recovery and rehabilitation will follow. Adam is 35 years old now and feels he is running out of time to return to the level he was once at. On top of that he is getting tired of fighting a seemingly endless, losing battle to stay healthy. He’s thinking about calling it quits—not giving up running, of course, but retiring from professional racing.
It’s not that he wants to. Adam still has the same fiery passion to compete that he’s always had. He feels he hasn’t achieved everything he wanted to achieve as a runner—that there’s still a lot of unrealized potential inside him. But he understands that the clock is ticking and it just might not be possible to climb back to the top of the mountain. He recognizes that refusing to quit might not be worth the pain and frustration that come with it. He’s torn.
As Adam’s wife, I find it hard to watch. I hate to see him suffer with this decision, and I feel powerless to help. On the one hand I don’t want him to quit, because as a runner myself I know how devastating it would be to give up on my remaining dreams without even having a chance to fail. On the other hand I don’t want to see him continue to struggle if it brings him nothing but misery.
Naturally, living through this hard experience with Adam has made me reflect on my own career and how it might end. One thing I know and accept is that, with very few exceptions, nobody goes out on top. Nine times in ten, your best days are behind you before you realize it. Being an elite runner is kind of like a high jump competition: you keep raising the bar until you can’t get over it. Your last effort is always a miss.
I love the thrill of racing to win so much that I know it will be hard for me to realize I’ve lost a step and am no longer good enough to win. But I also love many other things about running and competing. So I could see myself not worrying about slowing down a little as I get older and just continuing to pin on my race numbers and do my best, like Colleen De Reuck and Joan Benoit Samuelson, who have set the standard for graceful aging at the elite level of running.
All I hope for now, in the prime of my career, is that I have a choice in the matter. I want to be able to choose whether I stop racing because I’m past my peak or keep racing because I still get plenty of satisfaction out of it even without the hope of winning. I don’t want injuries to make me quit before I’m ready. And I don’t want that for my husband, either.
Kara blogs on Competitor
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