When Running Becomes Who You Are: Athletic Identity

“I am a runner.”

It is such a simple statement, but for many of us it means SO much more than the fact that we like to run.

Running becomes part of how we see ourselves.

We wake up early to run. Our friends are runners. Our vacations somehow turn into race weekends. We structure our schedules around training. We spend way too much money on shoes. We follow other runners on social media and talk about running with people who actually want to hear about our long run.

And slowly running can move from being something we do to something we believe we are.

That is athletic identity.

Research on runner identity has found that runners often associate being a “runner” with qualities like discipline, perseverance, commitment, achievement and self-improvement. Running can also give us confidence, autonomy and a feeling of being more in control of our lives.None of that is bad.

I LOVE that running can do this.

But when running becomes our only identity it can impact our mental health, recovery from an injury, performance and our love for the sport.

I know because I have lived it.

When I was diagnosed with a rare genetic heart disease in 2015 and told I couldn't run anymore, I didn't just lose exercise.

I lost a piece of myself.

Research supports this experience. Injuries and health problems that prevent athletes from participating in their sport can create emotional distress, anxiety and disruption of the athlete's sense of self. Athletes with very strong performance identities may have an especially difficult time imagining a future that doesn't include their sport in the same way.

That is something I think we need to talk about more in sports medicine.

When an injured runner walks into my clinic devastated because they can't run, telling them to “just take a few weeks off” misses a HUGE piece of what is happening.

We aren't only treating a tendon, bone or muscle. We are treating a person who may have temporarily lost their stress relief, community, routine, goals and an important piece of their identity. If we don't treat the whole athlete we can miss everything.

Running communities themselves can become important places where runners share experiences, learn about injuries and figure out how to continue participating in the sport. Research on online running communities has even described how maintaining the ability to run can become intertwined with maintaining a runner's identity. But there is another interesting piece of the research.

These disruptions can also become turning points.

Researchers studying runners found that injuries and other moments of vulnerability sometimes caused athletes to reconsider why they ran. For some, injury ultimately became a learning experience that contributed to personal growth and self-development.

That certainly happened to me.

It took years, but eventually I learned something that I now try to teach my athletes:

Running can be incredibly important to you without being all of you.

You can be a runner AND a parent, friend, professional, musician, traveler, gardener, reader or whatever else makes you feel like yourself.

Building those other pieces of your identity doesn't make you less of an athlete.

It may actually make you a more resilient one.

Because eventually every athlete encounters something that changes their relationship with sport—injury, illness, pregnancy, work, family, aging or simply life.

You don't have to care less about running or stop running. But to be the best runner and human you can be you need to know who you are without running. If you are struggling to figure this out talking to a mental health professional or sports psychologist can be incredibly helpful.

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Campbell PA. Lay participation with medical expertise in online self-care practices: Social knowledge (co)production in the Running Mania injury forum. Soc Sci Med. 2021 May;277:113880. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113880. Epub 2021 Mar 27. PMID: 33819865.

Janssen M, Scheerder J, Thibaut E, Brombacher A, Vos S. Who uses running apps and sports watches? Determinants and consumer profiles of event runners' usage of running-related smartphone applications and sports watches. PLoS One. 2017 Jul 21;12(7):e0181167. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181167. PMID: 28732074; PMCID: PMC5521773.