Mother runner Jacki Correll writes how finding change on a run is more than coins on the pavement.

I’ve never been a #FoundChange enthusiast. 

If I spy a penny, dirty or clean, whilst out on a run, I will stop to collect it, but I don’t spend much time focused on the ground beneath my Saucony-clad feet. Instead I prefer to focus on what’s ahead of me: the rogue garbage can, the next steep hill, the zigzagging, tiny dog on a retractable leash. Looking ahead allows me more time to plan my next move, to remain in control of my run and my safety. 

It also comes with the added bonus of allowing me to ignore what’s behind me.

When I moved into a new home last January I was looking forward to exploring all the novel terrain in my new neighborhood, and I ran almost every day to learn all its quirks and pitfalls, to make this new place feel familiar. After a couple of months, I knew to leap over the tree root buckling the sidewalk at mile 1.6. I no longer startled at the deep bark of the protective dog halfway up Hilands Avenue, and my upper body instinctively began to lean forward at mile 3.2 to tackle the long hill that begins at the corner of Forest and Brighton. 

Jacki’s neighborhood running route

By spring, my mind began to run to increasingly uncomfortable places. What is this nagging pain in my right glute? Why do I wake up most days feeling like I’m wearing a corset? How will being divorced affect my relationships with my four kids: my 15-year-old daughter, the only kid still at home; my three adult sons?

After all the work I put in to raise independent kids, to make my new house a home, to start this fresh chapter in my life, it felt unacceptable to be anything other than excited and grateful. I did my best to reframe all the changes as “exciting”, but the physiological manifestations of excitement (quickening pulse, shallow breathing, increased sweat) are agonizingly similar to those of anxiety, and if I’m honest, I wasn’t interested in parsing out the difference. 

The only thing that seemed to quiet my racing thoughts and expand my lungs was adding more movement. 

Daily strength workouts: Check. Weekly long bike rides on the trail: Let’s do it. Physical therapy for this new ischial bursitis: happy to add it to my schedule. One sunny summer morning, I even decided to attempt a DIY sprint triathlon. I made it through the 20k bike and 5k run portions, pushing hard and enjoying the endorphins, before I looked out on the white capped river and decided the swim portion would be safer on a calmer day, with a buddy.

In the name of forward progression, I was open to any sporty suggestion, no matter how casual. A friend admired the 50k sticker on my car as we were exiting the trail one morning, saying that she wanted one of her own some day. Before you knew it, I was drawing up demanding training schedules and developing strategies for getting us through all those miles. I spent days and whole weekends out on the trail, running 10, 15, 20 miles toward a goal that wasn’t even mine. 

Two days before our scheduled race day, the nagging pains my friend had been running through the whole training cycle caught up with her and she couldn’t run. Sure, I could’ve physically done all those miles on my own, but all those hours alone in my own head was not something I was prepared to do, so instead I spent that weekend looking for my next (group) athletic adventure. 

In a typical year, I’ll usually run one or two races total, but I ran three just this fall with my teen daughter and various dear friends, including an international race-cation with my BRFs (Best Running Friends). Between all the training, maintaining, and racing, some days I was logging three workouts per day (not a typo) on Strava. 

Celebrating one of her many finish lines last year

My running journal, which in previous years was so full of personal narrative there was barely room to log miles and minutes, was now just a book of hastily scribbled numbers. I was extremely busy (and exhausted) moving forward, with no time or energy to dwell on how I got here or how I felt about it. When people asked me how I was doing, I had plenty of what I was doing to use as a response after my standard “I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

In December, Spotify Wrapped informed me that my most listened to song for the year was “Long Distance Runner” by Matt Nathanson, a song which contains the lyrics: “The past is a long distance runner and I’m failing further and further behind.” What’s more, the album is titled Sings His Sad Heart. Hmm. His words made me realize I’d spent 2024 trying to outrun change.

I thought that if I just kept moving faster, farther, longer I could outrun fear, grief, anxiety, and all the other complicated feelings change brings.

Found change comes in many forms

Instead of #FoundChange, change found me, like it does all of us. 

There’s a difference between using movement to process your feelings and using it to bury them. Last year I was definitely in the former camp, and this year, I’m committed to unearthing my feelings about all the changes I’ve experienced. I’m still going to trace my favorite routes around my new neighborhood, of course, but I’m also planning to include quiet walks and gentle yoga sessions, and to hold space—both in my mind and my running journal—for my feelings, not just my stats. 

These past few years, I’ve not only covered plenty of physical miles, I’ve also traversed thousands of emotional miles, and it’s time for me to start approaching the emotional ones with the same level of rigor.