Running has saved me from burnout more than once.

I wasn’t always a runner. In fact, I was the kid who huffed and puffed her way around the track to complete the mile run.

I found running, or maybe it found me. About nine years ago, I had just completed my residency, moved to a new place, and started my first attending job. I was a newlywed, and while I thought I would be spending my time enjoying a new home, a new career, and newfound wedded bliss, my world turned upside down when my wonderful dad was diagnosed with cancer. It was a period of great unease and stress. And yes, it was a period of burnout, though I didn’t recognize it back then.

Feeling like a bit of a fraud, I would tell my patients and families to eat healthfully, to exercise, and to make sure they were resting and getting enough sleep. But there I was, not taking my own advice. I decided that something needed to change.

I laced up my sneakers and jogged around the block for just five minutes. I did that for a few days in a row. Five minutes became ten minutes and then fifteen minutes. What kept me lacing up my sneakers? When I was jogging around the block, I found that all of the thoughts in my head grew quiet. What seemed like chaos before the run became calm during the run, and I loved that feeling. From my first 5k race to multiple half marathons, I kept going. Six years after lacing up my sneakers for the first time, I found myself struggling through burnout in medicine. I felt like I was on a never-ending treadmill, heading aimlessly forward without knowing how to step off, hit pause, or change direction.

Also at this time, I was training for my first marathon. I spent many hours with myself, deep in the calm, trying to figure out where I was headed. In my free time, I was reading about running, taking a deeper dive into run physiology, researching how to structure training plans and training cycles, engaging in discussions with my running coach, and answering the running questions of friends and family.

A dear friend, colleague, and physician coach, provided the question that stopped me in my tracks and forced me to pause. “What if you became a run coach…?” The seed that became Mindful Marathon began to grow.

And yet, I thought that somehow, I had to choose who I was going to be: pediatrician OR run coach? My identity felt tied to the profession until I realized that it didn’t have to be an “or.” I had the power to make it an “and.”

I am a pediatrician AND a run coach. I help make running easy and fun for busy professionals. Through Mindful Marathon, I have helped newer runners to first race distances from 5k to the marathon, to train smarter and not harder, to experience the joy of running, and to achieve confidence that spills over into aspects of their lives that they never thought possible.

We have the power to choose who we are going to be. What would it look like if you allowed there to be an “AND”?

Written by Michelle Quirk, MD, FAAP
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