On Resilience

Keeping on, keeping on

A post shared by Kara Goucher recently on Instagram.

If you’ve followed the career of former Olympian Kara Goucher for any length of time, you know what a hero she’s been to so many in the running world. (And to me!)

And if you have, then you know the challenges she’s been dealing with ever since she was diagnosed back in 2022 with runner’s dystonia, a rare neurological condition that makes her left leg muscles contract involuntarily, causing her to lose her balance and fall whenever she ran.

The years since have seen steps forward and steps back. After retiring from her marathoning career — and flirting briefly with ultra running — she has since retired from competition altogether, as her condition no longer allows it.

But Goucher’s spirit is still very much alive, in both what she shares in her social media feeds and the podcast she co-hosts with the now also-retired 2018 Boston champ Des Linden.

Thanks to medication and physical therapy, she’s been able to keep running — shorter distances, of course. (Much shorter, in fact.) But that she’s able to run at all is a victory — she didn’t have to give up the thing she loved to do, that gave her identity and a sense of purpose.

But saying “thanks to medication and physical therapy” elides just how difficult it’s been for Goucher to get to a place where she can share an experience like the one above, her longest run in years.

That’s a huge part of why I’m so drawn to her story, why I find her so inspiring even now after all these years.

Of course, I can’t do what she’s done in competition — I’m not even in the same galaxy as her, or any runner at her level. Never have been, and never will be. (Certainly not at age 55, anyway!)

What I can relate to, though, are the difficulties she’s gone through and the courage she’s shown in overcoming them. And maybe — maybe? — that’s something I can replicate in my own life.

One of my favorite writers is Candice Millard, the author of books like The River of Doubt and Destiny of the Republic, about the all-too-brief presidency of James Garfield, who was inaugurated in March of 1881 — only to be shot at a Washington, D.C., train station that July.

In this beautiful tribute, Millard shares something Garfield wrote that echoes to me what Goucher’s past few years have been like:

“I have sometimes thought that we cannot know any man thoroughly well while he is in perfect health,” Garfield wrote. “As the ebb-tide discloses the real lines of the shore and the bed of the sea, so feebleness, sickness, and pain bring out the real character of a man.”

Honestly, had something similar happened to me, I’m not sure if I’d have reacted the way Goucher did after receiving her dystonia diagnosis. I might very well have said to myself about running and exercise, “okay, that’s the end of that!”

But she stuck with it. And in doing so, she’s given us something more special than any medal she’s ever won: she’s shown us what it’s like when the tide goes out, when we get to find out who we really are.

That maybe we do have a little bravery, a little courage down in there. That maybe we can find it too, when we need it most.

I hope you’ve had a great week so far and have had a chance to get some great runs (or walks, or hikes, or rides) in — as always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell