Embarrassing

Managing an emotion that can hold you back.

Post race embarrassment

I ran a race last weekend. It was a good one, and I’ll have a post on that coming. But there a lot of posts on good races, so before I get into that part of the day, I think it’s important to discuss what’s going on in the photo up there 👆

If you look closely, you’ll see the dark outline of moisture on my leggings. Yep, that’s pee. Embarrassing! But it’s important to talk about. Almost all runners at some point in time have some sort of incontinence. Case in point: Taylor Knibb recently told camerapeople at the Dubai T100 not to film her backside, as she was mid-race and had s*** herself. She was going all-out, and it’s not like she wanted to lose control; it just happened. She was embarrassed, but she also wanted to keep going. And she deserved to, because losing control wasn’t her fault.

I’m not Taylor Knibb, but I am human. I did have a baby 18 months ago, and another one 18 months before that. I had urinary incontinence after my second birth; I did post-natal pelvic floor therapy and solved the problem. But then the interaction of two changes, one bad and one good, has set me back:

1. The bad change: Recent training on a treadmill. Treadmills do not work for me (lucky for you if they work for you.) When I have to run on them, I clip my stride and tense up my trapezius; I pull back and up, and that causes my pelvis to tip forward, deeping my sway back and loosening the pelvic floor.

2. The good change: I’ve been working really hard to strengthen my glut medius. That’s the one that’s on the outside of our butt and contributes to overall balance and external rotation. Most of my life, mine have not been very strong, which is why I had knock knees.

The treadmill week I had, I’ll get over. I’m already mostly recovered. And the glut med strengthening…well, that’s just overall good news. What I have to do now is go back to my pelvic floor therapy to continue to strengthen those muscles to match my newly-formed glut med strength.

What’s happened is that now my glut meds are successfully rotating outward; my lats are supporting that rotation, and my alignment has improved. My natural sway back has decreased, and I have less pain overall than in my whole life, which, at age 43, is a very, very good thing. On top of that, I’ve re-acquired the stride length I used to have as a teenager, I’ve dropped some weight, and I generally feel lighter and better on all my runs. My pelvic floor just needs some more attention again, because everything around it has strengthened. So looking at this pee in the photo from a holistic stance of my running and fitness, it’s actually a very good sign.

All that to say, I was slightly embarrassed on Saturday at the race, and maybe you would be, too, but I didn’t let the possibility that would happen stop me from racing, and I hope you don’t, either.

Sometimes embarrassment signals that we’ve somehow violated social norms, and those social norms are helpful for a functioning society. I’m thinking about situations like when you accidentally go first off of a stop sign when it was really the other person’s turn, or when your phone rings during a play. In those situations, embarrassment signals that you know you have been discourteous to others (and, in the case of traffic, put everyone in slight danger), and that’s helpful embarrassment. Courteousness is social lubricant, and helps us everyone live together successfully.

But sometimes social norms are misplaced; they just don’t have a meaningful place in our judgement of the event. It’s not embarrassing to lose control when you’re working hard; that’s just the human body acting as it does. It’s natural, and it doesn’t actually hurt anyone or show them discourtesy. In fact, the opposite social norm should be in place; that would be one where it’s embarrassing to hold yourself back from doing your best. It’s not embarrassing to have babies and then need to work on your pelvic floor; it’s not embarrassing to have a body that you don’t fully, always, completely control. On the contrary, it should be embarrassing to not address it.

So if you’re embarrassed when you run, whether that’s because of sweat or fat or age or pee, or just feeling like you “look funny”, reject that embarrassment, because it is misplaced. You’re out there. You’re doing it. You’re not hurting anyone, and you’re not being discourteous. You’re having a body and living in it and using it. And shame doesn’t need to touch you.

For today, remember: go run.