Good for a Girl by Lauren Fleshman

Author:Lauren Fleshman [Fleshman, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

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As the summer came to an end, the traveling circus thinned down to those who had qualified for Worlds, and I connected myself to a training group from Australia I’d gotten to know. I loved the athletes in the group, but their team culture around food and weight was unsettling. Comments about fellow competitors’ bodies, regardless of sex, were sharp and frequent. Bluntness around food restriction made me question my own plate.

Old habits of body-checking resumed: lifting my shirt up to see my abs in the mirror, glancing at my profile in store windows, and pinching the softer areas to determine if all was as it should be. On a bumpy bus ride back from a track session with the team in Helsinki, the last workout before Worlds, I remember looking at their star female athlete’s bare abs as she sat. While I could feel my belly jiggling every time the bus bumped, hers remained taut. I sought out a scale as soon as I got to the athlete village in Helsinki, and the number made my heart race. Images of croissants I had enjoyed were now linked to shame.

It was only two pounds, and it could have just been the time of day or time of month, but that level of obsession is the danger of the concept of “ideal race weight,” of hanging your confidence on appearance instead of function. All other signs from the summer pointed to me being in the best shape of my life, and I was. But by the time I got to the start line, I saw myself as someone who had fucked it all up. Vin had flown out for the race and he dismissed my weight concerns, saying all the right things to boost my confidence. But the internal chatter was too loud. In that critical moment about two-thirds of the way through the race when you’re hurting more than you’ve ever hurt before, your job is simple: You say yes. You don’t worry if you can maintain it. You say yes and extend the game a little longer, and a little longer, giving yourself a shot. At that critical moment with a mile to go, my confidence was preoccupied with a heated debate as to whether I belonged there at all. It sucked all the power out of my legs, leaving me shuffling along toward a distant last.

I was disappointed in myself before I even made it to the finish line. As I changed out of my spikes, Vin stood over me speculating what went wrong, blaming his training plan that peaked me too soon, or international travel preventing consistent quality gym work. But I knew what it was. I knew, but I didn’t tell him because I was ashamed. All that hard work so easily neutralized by lack of body confidence. What a waste. I vowed to never let it happen again.

Ethiopia swept the top four places in the final, only the second nation in history to accomplish that feat.

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