It's not who I am, it's what I do.

My story begins where many others’ end: with the 3 words, “I can’t do this”.

It was July 2013, the summer before my freshman year. Against my better judgement, I had been coerced into trying out cross country “just for a day”. In my mind, I was a sprinter. Or at least not a distance runner. But I rolled myself out of bed anyways and showed up at the school at 8:00 am for the first day of practice. It was hot already. I was dripping sweat by the end of the warmup jog and stretches and I felt a feeling of dread creep into me when the coach said “we’re running to the hospital and back” (which I now know is only a 3 mile route but at the time it sounded like a marathon). The mismatched team of high school boys and girls took off, falling into groups of friends and running partners. I was alone and immediately fell toward the back. Within seconds, I was wheezing and my arms and legs hurt and I had a cramp in my side. It was horrible. I sat down on the curb and put my head in my hands. I had made it less than half a mile. What a mistake. I’m not cut out for this. I’m not a distance runner. I might not even be a runner. The coach came up next to me and put a hand on my shoulder. I looked at him with tears in my eyes and said, “coach, I can’t do this.” He replies, “you can’t do it yet. I’ll see you back tomorrow.”

I was back at 8am the next day.

2 days turned into a week, which turned into a month, which turned into qualifying for the state meet by the end of my freshman season. Contrary to my firm belief that I was a sprinter at heart, I ended up loving cross country. The hot, August practices, races across rolling, green golf courses, bus rides to the meets with the dysfunctional team that became a family. It was hard not to fall in love with the simplicity of the sport and the black and white results. My times got faster, slowly at first and then more and more rapidly. I remember sitting in class counting down the minutes until I got to go to practice. Not “had to” go, but got to. It was my favorite part of the day. I ran because I loved it, not because I felt obligated to.

Fast forward 3 and a half years. It’s May 2017. I’m standing in tears on the starting line of the 1500 at the state meet, what I assume and plan will be the last race of my running career. I’m crying not because I’m sad it’s my last race, but because I’m so anxious to get it over with and be officially done running for good.

I had been mentally done for over a year: going through the motions, dreading every run, skipping workouts, slacking on my strength training, stretching, and the little things that make a big difference. I was burnt out. There was nothing fun about it anymore and I could not wait to close the book of my running career and put it up on a shelf next to my dusty trophies and medals. It had been successful: 10 All-State awards and 2 appearances at the Drake Relays, recruitment interest from major Division 1 programs, 6 school records. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to run anymore. For nearly a year, I had been grinding through the workouts purely because I knew people expected me to. When I ran around the streets of my hometown, I saw people I knew and I waved. They waved back. It was who I was - Jordan Winke: the runner. It was how people from surrounding towns knew me; it was how I knew myself. Over the years, I had developed that identity and put pressure on myself to maintain and improve it: I was no longer running for the love of the sport, I was running because somewhere along the line I had convinced myself that my value came from being a good runner and that I would be letting myself and everyone else down if that image slipped. I ran not because I was striving for improvement but because I was terrified of failing.

It was, of course, all self-inflicted pressure. The sun would still rise if I lost a race and my family and friends would still love me, and rationally I knew that. I had a God-given gift and instead of developing my talents and giving Him the glory, I held onto the successes and failures and internalized both, letting them define how I saw myself. The successes brought an unhealthy sense of self-importance and the losses crushed me to the point of wanting to quit. Winning races wasn’t enough: I had to win by a large margin or I felt like a failure. I was scared to race against tough competition because what if I lost? How would I feel? I based everything on “how I felt”, attaching way too much emotion to the wins and losses. Instead of seeing tough races as an opportunity to run faster against good competition, I saw them as a threat to my ego. I ran scared all the time. It led to a very toxic relationship with the sport that had once brought me so much joy.

I crossed the finish line of my last 1500 in fourth, with a mediocre time. I convinced myself that it was “good enough” to avoid admitting that I had in fact just not tried very hard. I hadn’t tried very hard because if I had given it all I had and still come up short, I would have felt like a failure. I told everyone I was satisfied, I told myself I was satisfied. In reality, I was just comfortable. I drove home after that meet, walked across the stage and graduated from high school. For about 2 weeks, I was so happy. It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Nobody expected me to run so I didn’t. I was finally free to do what I wanted.

Quickly, though, I realized something was missing. For the past 4 years, the whole purpose of my summer was to train for cross country. Now that I didn’t have that, what was I going to do? I felt empty and off, like a puzzle with a missing piece. I still worked out, but with no goals in mind, so it was easy to justify taking days off or giving a half hearted effort. I continued to tell people I was “so happy” I wasn’t running anymore; that I was “so excited” to just be a student that fall at the University of Iowa, even though as time went on, I wasn’t sure that was true anymore.

I ran a 5k in August, 2 minutes slower than I had ran the same race the previous year. I was furious with myself but what could I expect? I had barely ran more than 2 miles at a time for the whole summer. Naturally, my times would be slower. I told myself it was ok, I’m just a casual runner now, but inside I couldn’t stand being slower than I used to be. That anger turned to hopelessness. I was convinced I was just out of shape now, I would never be back to where I was my senior year, I had peaked. Why even bother trying to get be competitive again? It’s not like I have a reason to, I’m not racing anymore. It was my way of justifying my laziness and my fear of failure.

I left for school a couple weeks later and began the intimidating task of acclimating to a new city and a new school. The hardest part was transitioning from a small town where everyone knew me and I knew everyone to a school of 30,000 where I was just another face. I had lost a major part of my identity in the fact that I wasn’t running anymore and I had no clue who I was without it. I had to entirely reinvent myself. I made friends, joined a sorority, and tried to fit into this new lifestyle. But still, something felt off. I had nothing to work towards. Nothing to force me to wake up on the morning with a burning desire to get better. Nothing to inspire me to dream bigger, work harder, eat healthier. I was out of shape, 10 pounds heavier than in high school, tired, and irritable. I was just drifting through my day to day life with a fake smile on my face and by Christmas break, it was clear that something had to change.

So I did what any rational person would do: signed up for a half marathon. I picked the specific half marathon for a reason: it was the Drake Relays half, held in mid April. 4.5 months would be plenty of time to train and the Drake Relays had been my favorite weekend of the year all through high school. The race finished on the Blue Oval which was motivation enough for me to finish. I wrote myself a training plan based on my high school workout schedules and half marathon plans that I found online. I really didn’t know what I was doing, I just knew I was doing something and that was enough.

Put simply, it was hard. Winters in Iowa are unfriendly to say the least and making myself get out and run 4, 5, 6 miles in the snow or sleet took all the mental power I had. I no longer had a town watching me or a team to let down. I had no rivals to strive to beat and no state meet to dream about. Nobody cared or even knew that I was training. There were no familiar faces to wave at as I ran through the streets, no coach checking daily to see how I was sleeping, if I was eating right, how my strength training routine was working. I was purely running for myself, to prove to myself I could do it.

4 months crawled by. One day at a time, I chipped away at my training plan. Some runs were good, some runs were bad. I had no pressure on me to do anything, no PR’s to exceed, no competition. It was just me and the miles. I watched as I got back into good shape. And then good shape turned into really good shape. I started to get excited for the half marathon. It was the same sense of excitement I had experienced in high school as each new season got closer, full of potential and the opportunity to see your hard work pay off.

And it did. On the morning of the half marathon, I woke up and ate my typical pre-race breakfast of an English muffin with peanut butter and honey. It was cool but not cold - perfect running weather. My dad dropped me off at the start line then found the most strategic places to cheer, just as he had in high school for cross country meets. I had no idea what to expect, I just knew that I had worked hard to get there and wasn’t going to let the opportunity to see what I could do slip past.

The gun went off and the race started. I fell into a comfortable pace and glanced at my watch. 6:50!!! I panicked. There was no chance I could hold that for 13.1 miles. I slowed down but that felt too slow. Finally, I let my body dictate the pace. The race felt comfortable and smooth. I fell into a rhythm and the miles flew by as I ran through Des Moines.

At mile 10, however, I hit a wall. Who cares if I stop? Who cares if I slow down? It doesn’t really matter. Nobody is watching. But that was the thing: nobody was watching. Nobody was watching when I ran in the rain, on freezing mornings all winter, when I was tired, when I didn’t feel like it. Nobody made me do it so I made myself do it. Channeling every ounce of willpower I had, I made it through that last 3.1 and ended at the finish line of Drake Stadium. I had averaged 6:55 per mile, well exceeding my expectations. An overwhelming sense of satisfaction and happiness came over me. I had done it, for no other reason than to see if I could. It wasn’t really a competitive race, at least not compared to high school meets. I didn’t know any of the other runners’ PRs or times going into the race. I didn’t even know the name of any of the other runners. The satisfaction I felt came not from the competition I was facing or from my results, but from the fact that I had given myself a challenge and done everything I could to complete it. It was no longer about trying to maintain an image or protect my ego, it was about improving and working hard for the sheer joy of being able to do so. Training for that half marathon had helped me develop an entirely different mindset than I had ever had towards running.

A couple days went by and I realized I was back to where I had been the last spring after the state meet: with no goals and nothing to train for. I needed something, I now knew that about myself. Something to make me get up and go.

Originally, it was just an idea, a kind of “wouldn’t it be cool if” thought that I didn’t ever intend to act on. What if I got into really good shape and walked onto the Iowa cross country team? It seemed so far fetched. It was the same dream that high school freshman Jordan had had years previously, a dream I had walked away from and yet somehow I found my way back to once again. I wasn’t even sure if I could. I wasn’t sure if they would still be interested in me. But I had to try. The possibility was enough to inspire me to write another training plan, this one for the 5k. I told myself if I could go sub 19, I could justify emailing the coach and asking for the opportunity to run.

I started training again. My first year of college wrapped up and I left for Italy for a 5 week study abroad program. Running there wasn’t easy. We traveled on the weekends but I did what I could to maintain a consistent training plan. On a whim, I signed up for a 5k that would be the day I got back to America - after 23 straight hours of travel. My mom and I landed back home, crashed at a cheap hotel, and then drove to the 5k on less than 5 hours of sleep.

Once again, the work paid off. My time of 18:44 was a road race PR for me. I had never - even in my high school prime - ran that fast out of season, let alone in June. I was ecstatic. Taking a deep breath, I composed an email to the Iowa coach asking for walk on consideration or if he would be willing to meet with me. He called me back and I headed to Iowa City the next day.

It was a literal dream come true. He was happy to listen to me and very understanding. He said you don’t really know whether or not you love something until you quit doing it. I left that office as the newest member of the University of Iowa cross country and track teams.

So here we are. July 2018. 3 weeks left of my summer, a summer I spent training and running, just like always. I feel like myself again. I learned so many important lessons from the past couple years; namely, running isn’t who I am, it’s what I do. It’s a gift and an opportunity, not an obligation or a punishment. Races are celebrations of your work and the chance to see what you’re capable of. Life isn’t always a linear progression - sometimes you take steps backward in order to move forward. All you can do is trust God and his plan, work hard, and stay positive.