Great Escape
How I Learned to Run Away From My Problems and Like It
A 2016 Hillary Clinton speechwriter recalls what saved her
“You should just run a marathon.”
I don’t remember who made the suggestion, just how hard I laughed. I didn’t even like walking. I was the kind of person who stood still on escalators and moving sidewalks at the airport. (That’s what they’re there for.) I figure skated in high school, but that was 10 years and 40 pounds ago. And despite the signs posted around my office — “The 11th Floor Gym Is Here for You!” “Join the Healthy Snack Initiative!” — I was not making time for wellness.
Instead, I was working long hours as a speechwriter at a women’s health organization. My cardio was frantic typing, and I raised my heart rate by thinking about the fact that states across the country had enacted more abortion restrictions in the past year than in the entire previous decade. On top of everything else, I’d just gotten dumped. Running a marathon may not have been the most obvious solution to these problems, but suddenly I needed to prove I could do it.
That’s how, on a rare Saturday off, I found myself sweating on a treadmill in the middle of the running shoe store. I tried on one pair of sneakers after another until I turned to the hapless…
