Distractions

Spring has arrived. The long winter has been replaced with sunshine, blue skies and favorite paths cleared of the ice and snow that kept some of us inside training on treadmills and bike trainers. Realistically, reading a book may have moved down the list of ways to enjoy outdoor pursuits. Still, you can’t work out all the time. Reading is a great way to spend the recovery time listed on your training calendar. Here’s our latest recommendations. One note: Silent Sports can boast about new books from two of our editorial team contributors.

A Review

Lou Dzierzak

27th Mile

How to Smooth the Rough Transition out of Your Running Years

Dimity McDowell

Sooner or later, every athlete faces the end of their journey. Mother Nature and Father Time are undefeated. The end can be abrupt, caused by an injury, a life change, or a long battle overcoming a stubborn belief that the time to stop can be pushed off. Somehow.

Dimity McDowell, a former contributing editor at Runner’s World, the cofounder of Another Mother Runner, and the coauthor of Run Like a Mother, has faced that hard decision.

On January 18, 2020, she unknowingly ran her last. Her running career had been decelerating for three years, but like so many runners, she had a hard time hanging up her sneakers.

Dimity’s new book, THE 27TH MILE: How to Smooth the Rough Transition Out of Your Running Years, will help guide you through the process of becoming a former runner.

Runners’ bookshelves are filled with how-to-train books, how-to-manage-injuries books, philosophical explorations of the meaning of running, and true-life tales of epic running accomplishments. The 27th Mile addresses how to stop running and helps you process the transition when your body can no longer handle this favorite activity, this near-daily companion you’re not sure you can live without.

Silent Sports spoke with Dimity McDowell about The 27th Mile.

 

Silent Sports

What role did running play in your life?

Dimity McDowell

Running was pretty much as close to Nirvana as I could get here on planet Earth.

To be clear, I was not an age-group runner. I was not fast. I was a middle-of-the-pack runner. Running has brought me many mental health benefits. The endorphins were huge. Running always elevated me.

Running brought me to this place where I just felt like I could conquer the world. Obviously, physical health was great, and running connected me with a community.

I’ve been an athlete my entire life, but I feel like running was the first time I was able to step into my power and feel strong and capable.

Silent Sports

Why did you have to stop running? Was that decision a long process or an abrupt ending?

Dimity McDowell

I was in a chronic injury cycle. I had some foot issues, some hip issues, some lower back issues, and some glute issues. It was always little niggly things.

In 2017, I had a doctor, an orthopedist, who knew me well and said, “You know, you need to consider not running anymore.” After that conversation, it took three years before I took my last run.

My last year of running was really just two runs a week, maybe three miles each, mostly run-walk. It was just a very long process. It was very hard to say goodbye. It’s very hard to say no to something that makes you feel so good and something that you know is inherently healthy and is a beneficial thing for you.

It was long and pretty brutal. There was a lot of Kleenex involved.

I didn’t have some great epiphany that I was finally calm, content, and confident enough to be done. By the end of it, I simply sensed I no longer needed to run. I also realized this: I couldn’t have arrived at that spot without running thousands of miles first.

Silent Sports

What has replaced running for you?

Dimity McDowell

Cycling, both inside and outside. Inside, I can give myself a great, sweaty workout. I can push power and can be in the zone. I like it because it’s pretty convenient. Cycling outside gives you that sense of speed, of moving through the world and seeing things you wouldn’t see in a car. I love riding my bike outside, too. Cycling is probably the one activity that brings me closest to what I felt running.

27th Mile excerpt

“If it’s the purest thing in your life, it’s also going to be the hardest thing to leave.” Kim Dawson, a sports psychologist who works with amateurs to Olympic-level runners. The psychological experience of leaving sport is the same experience for an elite athlete as it is for a recreational athlete,” Dawson clarifies, adding that very few of us, elite or amateur, exit a sport we love on our own terms.

Silent Sports

Does the end of a lifelong running journey bring a sense of grief?

Dimity McDowell

“The needle tipping toward empty is a long, wavering process that looks a little different for each runner.”

Whether you frame running as a gift, a friendship, your primary sport, or some combination of the three, when you are no longer able to run, it’s a true loss, which initially might not jibe with your definition of grief.

I’m hoping that, with anything else that’s hard and people don’t want to talk about, talking about it makes it a little bit more palatable and a little bit less scary.

I think the women I talked to are definitely finding their way through, but they hadn’t taken time to really unpack their running years. They were just sad and grieving. We talked through their feelings, talking about what grief looks like for them.

That’s where the magic is, going through the yucky middle. I’m hoping that, with anything else that’s hard and people don’t want to talk about, talking about it makes it a little bit more palatable and a little bit less scary. It’s like a country song. The only way out is through it.

Silent Sports

What is the Calling-It-Quits (CIQ) Marathon?

McDowell’s book explores the challenges runners face when they have to stop. Chapters describe grief, acceptance, and how to find another athletic outlet.

One chapter presents a 26-step process to work through that journey. Called the Calling it Quits (CIQ) Marathon. There isn’t a specific timeline, and a runner may loop back to earlier steps. McDowell’s personal experiences inform every step (mile) in the CIQ Marathon.

 

Dimity McDowell

I think the women I talked to are definitely finding their way through, but they hadn’t taken the time to really unpack their running years. They were just sad and grieving. We talked through their feelings, talking about what grief looks like for them.

That’s where the magic is, going through the yucky middle. I’m hoping that, with anything else that’s hard and people don’t want to talk about, talking about it makes it a little bit more palatable and a little bit less scary. It’s like a country song. The only way out is through it.

Silent Sports

There is life after running, right?

Dimity McDowell

As my running miles dwindled, I continually asked myself, How are you going to fill the gap, Dimity? What do you need? I needed to feel strong and capable—and, just keeping it real, to be able to look in the mirror and admire my legs. I needed activities that triggered endorphins, serotonin, and other feel-good neurochemicals to reliably boost my mood. I needed a dependable workout habit. I needed to stay connected with active people. I needed to spend time on trails, in nature, feeling adventurous.

The Ice on the Lake

Alex Messenger

A new novel by the author of thrilling, “The Twenty-Ninth Day”, Alex Messenger delivers a haunting story of survival and redemption on the frozen expanse of Lake Superior.The harsh winters of Duluth, Minnesota, don’t bother Hugh McLaren. Decades after the death of his wife and estrangement from his children, the only respite from his troubled thoughts comes from ice fishing alone on the windswept expanse of Lake Superior.

The Ice on the Lake is a novel of resilience and determination-both to survive the fury of nature and to reconcile with the ghosts of the past.

Where the Green Light Shines

Ryan Rodgers

A centuries-long story of adventure runs through the Boundary Waters. Stretching from northern Minnesota into the Canadian Shield, this expanse of lake-dappled land—long the domain of Indigenous tribes and fur traders—is the most popular wilderness destination in North America, Where the Green Light Shines is a fascinating chronicle of canoe exploration, told through the journeys of a true master of the craft,
Bob O’Hara.

A vivid depiction of the northern wilds traversed by an eclectic roster of paddlers, bush pilots, and historic characters, Where the Green Light Shines illuminates a lost world of arctic canoeing remade in our time. It is bound to transport anyone interested in outdoor adventure—from wilderness canoeists to armchair travelers—and to bring home the eternal allure of the far north.