The last mile of Ironmother was not the best mile of my life, but it is definitely in the top 3. And I love that this picture captures how gratitude was oozing from my pores.

The last mile of Ironmother was not the best mile of my life, but it is definitely in the top 3. And I love that this picture captures how gratitude oozes from my pores, something I feel after nearly every mile.

The run Katherine and I did on a random weekday morning in preparation for the 2007 Nike Women’s Marathon, was almost over, but we were supposed to bookend the four miles with four strides, short bursts of gradually increasing speed. On the fourth stride, my heel didn’t exactly crack, but I imagine it splintered, like a shell of a hard-boiled egg does when you lightly tap it.
I knew immediately I was injured. With a capital “I.”
While those strides weren’t quite a mile, the four laps up and down the path drew a big crack in my life: on one side, pre-stress fracture and on the other, post-stress fracture (SF).
Pre-SF: I was training to sprint away from post-partum depression (which, in a lovely twist of fate, turned out to be “regular” depression that chases me almost daily); to feel like I was more than the sum of my mundane chores (wash bottles; write five-ways-to-lose-10-pounds-in-1-week articles that I knew were BS but paid the bills; bake chicken nuggets; sing “backpack, backpack” a la Dora about 4,000 times a day); to cement a friendship that I sensed was as vital to my well-being as meds were; to prove that 26.2 and motherhood weren’t mutually exclusive terms.
Post-SF: I had a choice. I could stop moving, heal up, and maybe hit another marathon. (Which, let’s be honest, wasn’t going to happen.) Or, every morning, I could take off my monster black boot, fasten on a much slimmer, albeit uglier, orthotic, stiff-soled shoe, and pedal, pedal, pedal. And hope that I could find a taste of the sweaty solace I found pre-SF.
I hung on after that mile and through 26.2.
And almost seven years later, this mother runner continues to—depending on the day—thrive, curse, smile, celebrate, plod, and hang on, mile after mile.
What was (or will be) the most important mile of your life? We want to know.
We’re going to make this an ongoing feature on the website (and potentially include some important miles in our yet-to-be-named third book, out in spring of 2015). Best way to submit is to email us your story with a picture: runmother {at} gmail {dot} com with “Most Important Mile” in the subject line. Please try to keep your mile stories under 300 words. Thank you!