When the cross country season ends, many athletes feel excitement, pride, satisfaction, confidence, or a sense of accomplishment. For many others, though, the reality is not so positive: they might feel disappointment, inadequacy, relief that they are done racing, or sadly even a sense of failure. Perhaps their season didn’t live up to their expectations: they couldn’t run due to an injury or illness, they didn’t get faster, they didn’t run what they had previously in their career, they didn’t get that PR, they didn’t get all-league, region, all-state; whatever they were chasing didn’t happen. I can speak from personal experience that the end of the season is NOT always a celebration for many athletes; in fact, many leave with unmet expectations, unrealized goals and dreams, and might even feel regretful. It seems to be an unspoken rule that you should get faster and always see continual and linear progression in running, but that is not always realistic.
I started Blue Water Running to focus on the incredible athletes we have in our area. Fast times, improvements, and accomplishments make great stories, articles, and podcasts and those elements are exciting and noteworthy. It’s admirable and understandable to strive toward goals, so let’s take a moment here to recognize that those achievements I mentioned aren’t necessarily requirements for a successful and fulfilling running career. You don’t have to have your life and identity defined and dictated by your successes and failures, especially in running. Believe me: I’ve lived that frustration, hopelessness, and discouragement.
Blue Water Running has allowed me to feature many different versions of athletes’ success stories, but today, I’m sharing my story in the hope that if there’s someone stuck in a rut, an injury cycle, a performance plateau, a season of discouragement; whatever it is, it will help them hold on for a breakthrough. Keep working, keep dreaming, keep hoping, and most of all, believe that you aren’t done yet. There’s a whole new story just waiting to be told.
So let’s take it way back to the beginning…
It’s 1979. Jimmy Carter is president, and the McDonald’s Happy Meal, the Sony Walkman, and ESPN are all introduced. My parents said the day I learned to walk, I was off trying to run. Anyone who knows me knows I love to run. It’s been my passion; being a runner was my identity; it defined me. It’s like running is in my DNA. I’ve loved running since as early as I can remember. I have no idea why since no one in my family was ever a runner and I had no experience or exposure to it in my household as a child. Some might say I was destined for it: my name was perfect, spelled ME-RAN MILES. One of my teammates in middle school called me that and it stuck for the rest of my life. I was outside playing all the time and would race kids around the block, and I loved the timed mile in the gym, which isn’t true for most kids: most kids dread it. I had a burning desire to run and win very early in life.
I shared a room with my sister and the night before the timed mile I’d be up doing sit-ups: my sister would ask, “What are you doing?” I would answer, ”Gotta win tomorrow!!” as if doing sit-ups the night before would help. In 5th grade, I won the timed mile because the kid in front of me had an asthma attack on the first lap. Did I stop and help? No, I just sprinted past him and won. I’m not proud of that moment - I probably could have handled that a little differently, but that gives you a little taste of how I felt inside.
Our family didn’t have a lot of money, so I didn’t own my first pair of running shoes until I was in about 6th grade. When my dad saw the price tag, he made my mom take them back to the store for cheaper ones. I sat on the porch for about an hour just holding them and looking at them, never trying them on or ever running in them. It was close to high school before I’d ever own and train in a real pair. There weren’t 5Ks like you see today or any kind of opportunity for kids to run outside of school sports. I joined an organized track team starting in 6th grade and ran through middle school. I had no idea how to train, race, pace, or anything. I just ran as fast as I could and that’s all I remember. My middle and high school tracks were gravel and the lanes were lined by the coach the day before the meet with the same little wheeled contraption filled with chalk that they used for the baseball fields. Nobody wore spikes and there weren’t even running-specific clothes that I knew of or had access to. My middle school record in the 880-yard run (yes, we measured races in yards, not meters), was a 2:40.
I started high school in the fall of 1993 at Plymouth Salem, a really big suburban high school with about 1000 kids per grade. My mom went to the cross country parent meeting my freshman year and came home saying, “They run six miles a day: I don’t think you’re ready for that”, and that actually sounded horrible, so I didn’t even run cross country for the first time until tenth grade. I started my season my sophomore year and my PR was maybe 22:30. There was no Athletic.net for that, so I don't really have any idea. I think an 18:30 won our Class A regional (now we’d call that D1) and that was probably a minute or two faster than almost everybody else. Apparently, I did race the Holly Invitational, which I have no memory of, but I found a picture of me with that horse corral fence you run around at the start and finish, so it’s true.
My dad had a job transfer in the summer of 1995 so I moved to the much smaller, rural district (D3) of Blissfield the summer between my sophomore and junior years. There, my graduating class was about 120 and a very different culture, but that hometown feel and smaller close-knit team helped me blossom. When I came on my spring break to register for classes and tour the school, another student saw my family walking through the school with my Salem cross country sweatshirt on and ran up and said, “Hey! Are you moving here? Do you run cross country? I can introduce you to the coach!”
The week after we moved, I was walking down the street from my new house and this big red van drove past, squealed to a halt, and backed up. A guy stuck his head out the window and yelled, “Hey! Are you that new runner that moved to town? I’m the coach. I’ll have some girls come over and introduce themselves”. And they did. They even helped my mom plan a surprise party for my 16th birthday so I’d have someone to celebrate with. Moving to a new place is always a bit scary, and this was the fourth move for my family and my sixth new school, but I already had friends when school began and running helped me find my place here. One of the best things about running is the culture and community. Even kids who aren’t the fastest or maybe don’t even race varsity in the top seven are drawn in by the camaraderie and family atmosphere.
I became the fifth cross country runner the Royals needed to have a strong pack. In cross country, running together as a pack helps you work more efficiently and takes all the burden of pacing and racing off of the leader. You pull others along and give each other strength. That’s what my teammates did for me: they gave me the courage and strength to begin a new stage of my life and feel accepted and included. My coach, Mr. Navarro, pushed and inspired me to be a better runner and helped me develop a stronger mental attitude and competitive spirit. He was a student of the sport, always reading articles, researching, and striving to improve. I didn’t really recognize his sacrifices at the time, but he worked the night shift as a Michigan state trooper and then coached all day at a meet on little to no sleep, then went back to work again after the bus ride home. He followed and encouraged me in my collegiate career and is still a successful, competitive runner himself. Weirdly enough his daughters and I kind of look similar, so they used to jokingly call me "the fourth Navarro sister".
We won our league, county meet, and regionals, and there was a lot of press about our team’s success as we went into the state meet ranked second. Pressure was mounting. We were excited about what we could do. Our coach thought we had a shot at winning as we finally had that cohesive team. We ran the state meet that year outside of Grand Rapids, as back in those days each division raced at a different location until they started holding them all at MIS later in my senior year. It was a cold day with snow, sleet, rain, and blustery winds. It was my first state meet experience and as the gun went off, the first mile was a blur. All of a sudden a stabbing pain I’d never had before hit my gut: a terrible side cramp. I’m sure some of you have had one before, so you know what I'm talking about. Every breath got harder to take. I passed my coach a few yards later and he yelled, “C'mon Miles!” I gasped and pointed at my side. He realized what was happening and tried to tell me to just relax, but I got slower and slower...falling from 20th to 97th by the end of the 3.1-mile race, running what ended up being the slowest high school race of my entire career. I was devastated. I felt like a failure to myself and my team. This had never happened to me before!
Maybe you’ve had moments like this. Maybe you’ve felt great and like everything was going your way and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, things are falling apart, and you have no idea what to do with that. People try to give you advice, and you try to keep going, but the pain and confusion drag you down. Before you know it, you feel lost and far behind. I want to tell you that there will be moments like that: even when we are doing something we love or feel called to, it’s not always easy. A lot of runners quit and walk away when they go through a season like this. But I want to encourage you to stick through the tough stuff. The miles you’ve run are still there, the work you’ve done still matters, and you're still learning and growing. I was so young and had only been running for two short years. There was still so much to learn and I didn't have that perspective of experience yet.
I wish I could tell you that was the only time I struggled in my running, but there were still trials to come. I bounced back from my first bad race to have an awesome track season: my team finished second at the state meet in the 4x800 relay and set a school record that still stands at 9:47. My next season of cross country my senior year of running went ok, but I never really ran a fast or great race. I stayed stuck at basically the same time all season in the mid-21s. When track season rolled around in the spring, things got very difficult. Every time we would do anything in practice, especially speed work or high-intensity workouts, I just couldn’t get in a groove. I felt sluggish, tired, and just off. Times I had run easily the year before seemed out of reach. I would go home and try to do more workout videos or get a few extra miles in, but no matter what I did, I felt like I was running through the sand. My coach finally had to pull me off the relay I had been All-State the year before and replaced me with a more reliable and consistent teammate. It was devastating, but I couldn’t blame him. My high school career just fizzled out and ended. That was it.
We didn’t have the internet or training websites or much information other than books and what our coach would tell us, so we didn’t know all the different aspects of training athletes have full access to now like rest, recovery, fueling, etc. Even if I could have had access to all the advances in technology and sports, would more knowledge have made a difference for me? Maybe, maybe not. Looking back, I probably was just growing and maybe anemic, who knows? My body needed time to change and adapt but no one told me that could happen and I didn’t have an awareness of that. The amount of technology, information, and knowledge now has made the sport so much better, not just in a physical sense, but a mental sense. There’s more awareness around mental health, puberty, and all the things teenage runners are dealing with, and you should take advantage of the resources you have to stay healthy and in the right mindset. Because I placed my whole identity on my running performance, it was even more frustrating and devastating when I didn’t race well. It’s so much healthier to have a more balanced approach where you look at your life and yourself as a person as a whole with running as a part of that and not let it overtake everything else. (If you want to hear some great perspectives on healthy running balanced with taking care of your body, check out the Instagram accounts by Abby VanderKoi at Running on Ice Cream, or Taste By Grace).
During my senior season of cross country the Spring Arbor coach had been talking to my teammates and me about attending and I had already accepted a small scholarship. I knew I wanted to keep running competitively but my confidence was lacking, and I wasn't sure I was able to compete at the collegiate level. When I attended cross country camp, I was a mile behind everyone else on every run and the assistant coach had to keep waiting for me in the back. They were likely thinking, “What kind of dead weight did we just get?” I moved to campus to start school in the fall of 1997 and when I started practicing with the team, it was apparent I was still struggling. I could barely keep up with the slowest runners and many times walked. I loved school, I was happy there, I had great friends, and adjusted well to everything else, but I just felt absolutely exhausted and incapable.
SIDE NOTE: This is a great time in life to give yourself tons of GRACE and PATIENCE, as you are adapting to a major life change and it can be physically and mentally overwhelming. Also, seek out mental health support at your school or in your community. Athletes have some of the highest rates of mental health crises because of the immense pressure and expectations they put on themselves, so it’s ok to not be ok.
A great resource to follow on Instagram is Hope for Athletes - she posts a lot of great content including the firsthand stories of athletes who felt that their identity was completely based on sports and they had to find a balance in their lives.
The first collegiate race of my freshman year was at Kenosha, Wisconsin, and there is a GIANT hill at the beginning (a half mile, actually). You should look this course up: it’s ridiculous. I made it about 200 meters before I just stopped at the bottom of this hill, looked up at it, and stopped and quit. I could not run any further. I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t injured, I just couldn’t run. I felt worthless, hopeless, and completely humiliated. I just turned around, walked back down, and cried. My coach, who was still at the starting line and had seen what happened, put his arm around me and we walked down the hill. The next time I raced, the same thing happened. And then again. Three races in a row, I started and just quit. I just couldn’t run. For those of you runners listening, you understand this is the lowest you can get in a race: to stop running and quit is the ultimate failure. I can honestly say I’ve never felt more discouraged in my entire life. I loved running and it was everything to me: my passion, my dream, and my identity. I had never not wanted to run. But now, I thought, “Maybe I should quit. I’m no good anymore.” I didn’t think I could hack it as a collegiate runner. To their credit, my teammates nor my coaches never made me feel any less a part of the team. But this small voice inside me kept saying, “Don’t quit. You’ll never know what could be. You’ll always wonder. You’ll always regret it”
I thank God for whispering to me in those moments of doubt in his still, small voice because that changed my life. If you had told me then what would happen in the future, I wouldn’t have believed you. I would have laughed and said, “That’s impossible”. But sometimes, small miracles and people who step in at just the right time change the trajectory of our story.
The next meet we had was on our home course. My team captain, a senior named Liz Stewart, came up next to me at the start line and said, “Meran, I’m running with you the whole race. You’re not going to quit this time”. I tried to argue with her because she was much faster than me and would be forced to run slower, but she was adamant. Liz stuck by my side that entire time: she yelled at me, encouraged me, bossed me around, and said I wasn’t quitting this time. She is the only reason I made it to the finish line. She sacrificed her race - and her last home meet ever - to make sure I finished mine. I didn't realize it until much later, but Liz had approached my coach and said she wanted to do something to help me overcome my mental block and discouragement, and he agreed that she could run with me. I'm so grateful for her thoughtfulness and compassion.
Another strange coincidence; Liz and I actually both lived in the same house as teenagers - my dad took over her dad’s job and her family moved out and we moved in, never knowing that one day we would eventually become teammates. We even had the same bedroom at different times in our lives. Crazy, right?
After I finished my first collegiate race, it was a mental breakthrough for me. I just had to get one done to pick my confidence up a bit. I was like, “Ok, I can do this, slow but steady”. I was able to slowly improve over the next few weeks, but I had a long road ahead of me. At least I knew I could finish a race and it wasn’t the end of the world anymore. Thank God my coach, Bill Bippes, saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. He could have just written me off - I mean, running a 23-minute 5K as a collegiate athlete is not exactly setting the course on fire, but he challenged me and pushed me past my perceptions of my limits, and without his guidance, my career would have been a different story. He saw my potential and believed I had more in store than what I would have settled for.
What happened after that was a miracle. I cannot find the words to describe it any other way. Anyone I’ve ever told this story to has heard me use that word: miracle. One day, on a long, hilly dirt run on Grover Road out in the country, I was running along and I could feel a definitive change in my body. I felt light and filled with joy like this misery and drudgery of running so depressingly all the time was just gone. To this day, I can remember this moment in every detail: the road, the sky, the trees, everything. It is a moment that is etched in my mind forever. I don’t know how it happened, it just did.
So I was running along and I was going faster and faster and before I knew it I was running past the girls on our team and then up close to Coach in our team van. Coach Bippes leaned out the window and was like, “What’s going on?”
I exclaimed, “I don’t know!” This continued for a few days, then a few weeks; out of nowhere, I was just running incredibly fast and feeling incredibly good. I couldn’t explain it. It was like someone flipped a switch on me from slow to GO. I called my mom and said, “You better come to the meet this weekend because I think something’s going to happen!”
That weekend it was the conference meet. I had pretty much dreaded every race in my career. Now I loved running, but I would get so nervous and anxiety-ridden. I couldn’t eat, I’d have trouble sleeping, I’d go to the bathroom 598 times. This time, I felt excited, confident, and pumped! I couldn’t wait to get on the starting line: I just had this feeling that something amazing was going to happen. The gun went off and I just felt so GOOD! I was running and passing people I had this song in my head, “Ain’t nothing gonna break my stride, nobody’s gonna slow me down, oh oh, I got to keep on moving!” Have you heard that one? Yeah, it was in my head the whole time. We went through the mile mark and the guy’s team was already done racing and cheering for our girls and they were yelling, “Go Kelly, Go Liz, Go...MERAN???!!!” They were as shocked as I was. I ran the race of my life and finished in the fastest time in my entire career by almost a full minute. It was incredible. It lifted my spirits and filled me with joy. It was just the beginning of something amazing.
That mindset was a huge shift for me and began a new mentality of approaching my races. The fitness was there: I’d done all the workouts and all the miles, but now I BELIEVED in myself. Clearly, I’d had some kind of physical transformation, but the mental transformation was just as significant and powerful. I had performed well, so I gained more confidence, which in turn encouraged me to believe I could run even better. This positive cycle fed itself just like the previously negative cycle had.
Find a mantra to repeat to yourself. Find a song that gets you hyped. Find something that makes you feel EXCITED to race and helps you focus on the positive. It’s going to be uncomfortable and there’s going to be a level of pain, but WE ALREADY KNOW THAT. Embrace it and move forward. I used to blast, “Bittersweet Symphony” on my Walkman as I warmed up. That’s right, a cassette tape player with a pair of headphones with a CORD. Whenever I hear that song to this day I still get that pre-race feeling.
Hot tip: Try smiling while you're running. It will change your life.
I still often reflect on how differently things would have been if I hadn’t kept the faith. I never would have enjoyed the career that I did. I don’t like to talk about or focus on myself, but please hear what I’m trying to say in the context of understanding the amazing potential and possibility in each of us. How could a quitter become All conference, All-American, a National Champion, win titles with her team in cross country and track, and set multiple school records? I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams that when I was standing at the bottom of that hill quitting a race, I’d graduate four years later as the most decorated Spring Arbor cross country and track athlete at that time in school history and twenty years later be inducted into the athletic hall of fame. If someone would have told me that, I would have laughed in their face. But a lot of times we sell ourselves short. We say, “I could never do that. I’m not capable of that” But maybe you could, maybe you are! I never would have known what lay ahead for me, but God could see the whole picture.
I look back at my career with extreme gratitude and thankfulness for all the amazing adventures and experiences I’ve had as a runner. These moments in my life shaped me into who I’ve become and taught me to be determined, grateful, confident, and resilient. I never would have appreciated the successes I enjoyed later in my career the way I did because I had struggled for so long before that: honestly, I might have taken it for granted. Of course, I had to back up the belief that I was capable of winning with years of hard work, and progress didn’t always come in picture-perfect results. For every victory, I’d experienced an equal and opposite failure… or two or three. Did I still have off days and bad races? Of course. There were several big goals I had set for myself that I never achieved in my career, such as cross country all-American (I missed it by just a few spots, and that was a heartbreaking end to my senior collegiate cross country season). But because I had seen the bottom of that valley, the mountaintop seemed that much better, and I had a different perspective from which to handle disappointment. I knew where I started and it made me so thankful and appreciative for where I finished.
I’ve tried to take my experience full circle in the hope that maybe it’s the boost somebody needs, just like Liz did for me. She lives in California now and I haven’t seen her in over 20 years, but I did reach out when I was inducted into the Hall of Fame at Spring Arbor to tell her about my speech and how her sacrifice changed the trajectory of my career and has inspired countless others to come. For years after I was long gone from Spring Arbor, my coach told the “Meran Miles” story to girls who were discouraged or struggling in their careers, reminding them to Hold on! Persevere! Stay the course! I’ve told this story to my daughter as she’s struggled through some tough seasons. You’re not done yet!!
When you see success, be kind and gracious, and remember to encourage and inspire others. If you feel satisfied with what you’ve done and where you are, that’s great. Whether I had success or not, I would have still been a better person for the lessons I learned, the character traits I developed, and the opportunities I had through my years of running. Anyone can experience that, no matter if they’re winning or not. You don’t have to have a record board filled with your name to be successful and fulfilled in life. You're important and significant aside from anything you do in running.
I’ve had so many great memories and experiences in my lifetime. Some of my former teammates remain my greatest friends to this day. I met my husband running and we’ve watched our kids grow up and have some of these amazing experiences. I’ve traveled all over to run in races, like the Detroit Marathon, Chicago Marathon, Boston Marathon, trail marathons, and Ragnar relays; so many adventures are out there and you don’t want to miss them. Even though my fastest years are behind me, there are still goals I set and train to achieve. I run because I love to and want to: I still CAN run and I never take it for granted.
You know, sometimes we never get answers. Sometimes we never know why. Sometimes we just have to trust things are working for our good. Do everything to the best of your ability and even when might feel it’s not making a difference, trust that the work will eventually come together. Think how long it takes a professional runner to see results! Hang on to the love that first brought you to the sport; your WHY. WHY do you train? Why do you race? Why do you spend so much of your time running? Are you satisfied or do you know there is more potential inside that you have yet to discover? There will always be someone faster, but there is always room for you to learn, grow, and change. There will be seasons of great gains and some of regression or recovery. You don’t have to dismiss or suppress your disappointments, but you don’t have to live there all the time: acknowledge them and let them drive you to the next thing. Put away fear and discouragement and trade them for hope. I didn’t believe what happened to me was possible, but the potential WAS inside of me and it lies inside of you, too. Give your best in everything in this life, because we only get one, and you have a purpose to your life. You never know what you could become, so get out there and chase those dreams.
Ecclesiastes 9:11 says,
"I have observed something else under the sun. The fastest runner doesn't always win the race, and the strongest warrior doesn't always win the battle. The wise sometimes go hungry, and the skillful are not necessarily wealthy. And those who are educated don't always lead successful lives. It is all decided by chance, by being in the right place at the right time…Time and chance happen to them all.”
So give yourself time, and give yourself a chance.
I’m always rooting for you.
