Who I Am: Athletic Identity Ambiguity

I am a person who runs three or four times a week, covering distances ranging from a little under three to a little over ten miles. This weekend, I’ll be going for eleven. I am a person who is training for a half marathon. I am a person who, by March 17th, will have run 13.1 consecutive miles. But, I am also a person who only started running seriously a few months ago. I am a person who rows on a team and sets goals relating to rowing speed. I am a person who goes to the gym and sometimes neither runs nor rows, and lifts weights or uses the elliptical or the spin bikes. My identity in terms of exercise is, clearly, very diverse, which leads me to the question that I want to explore: can I call myself a runner?

 Even as I’m writing this first paragraph, I hear how ridiculous that sounds. Can I call myself a runner? I mean, of course I can. I can call myself whatever I want [just like I tell myself I’m edgy when I wear ripped black jeans]. What I’m really asking, I guess, is whether it’s meaningful to apply that label to myself. I feel the same way about the term “athlete,” which might be a better illustration of this paradigm. Whenever someone asks me if I’m an athlete, I can’t help but hesitate. I am an athlete in the sense that I play a sport on a team at my college. But then again, I’m not an athlete in the sense that they usually mean: I’m not a varsity athlete playing on one of the division teams here. My rowing team is a club team, occupying an intermediate space between varsity-level teams and intra-murals. We compete against other schools and we represent our college at the highest level that our school offers. At other schools, however, there are varsity rowing programs – and I am not an athlete in the sense that those rowers are, or in the sense that, say, the women on William & Mary’s tennis team are.

 Am I even a rower? “Rower” is not my primary identity, just as “runner” isn’t either. My identity is multifaceted. I’m many things: student, English major, honors-thesis-writer, person-who-prefers-blue-M&Ms [I swear they taste different than the other colors, it’s real, trust me]. I have a good friend who is working hard to take her rowing career to the next level – the Olympics. She rows like crazy and works out all the time, exhibiting a resolve and determination that I admire but definitely don’t have, at least in terms of rowing. I think what she’s doing is awesome. If she is a “rower,” however, how can that term also apply to me?

 In terms of identity, I’d like to propose that there are certain rites of passage, or terms of membership, whether those are implicit or explicit, that allow one to become part of a certain group or appropriately use a certain label. I’m not sure if this should or should not be the case, or if it’s even negotiable—but I am pretty sure that, as of now and for most examples that I can think of, it’s true. Take my identity as an English major. In order to claim that, I first had to submit my major declaration paperwork, which required that I take a certain number of English credits in order for that major declaration to be approved by the university registrar. So, the “rite of passage” for being an English major is that I’ve taken at least, say, four English classes. Before I filed that paperwork and took those classes, I could say that I aspired to be an English major, but I couldn’t say that I was one.

 Sometimes, like in that case, these terms of membership for identity groups are more or less straightforward. Being a member of Greek life requires that you’re invited to join a sorority or fraternity and you accept that invitation. Then voilà—you can claim membership in that group! Other times, it’s a little bit more murky. For example, take sexual orientation. You can identify as straight without having dated or been with someone of the opposite gender, and you can identify as gay without having been with someone of the same gender. But people might question those assertions, especially in the latter non-hegemonic case. So then what are the rites of passage for claiming a sexual identity? It’s obviously not so clear-cut as some other situations.

 Not to say that athletic identities compare on the scale of emotional or interpersonal weight to sexual identities, but I find that they can also fall into a cloudier category when trying to determine what puts someone on the in- or outside of that group. Let’s go back to my initial question: can I call myself a runner? When I think of people that I would describe as runners, I have a couple images in mind that I hope will help identify the “terms of membership” for labeling myself similarly. There are a couple factors in play.

 First, I notice that all people who run are not necessarily termed, my themselves or others, “runners.” For instance, earlier this week at rowing practice, we did a two-mile run as part of our workout. Completing that exercise does not, in my opinion, make everyone who did it a runner. So what does that tell us? Well, maybe it indicates the importance of choosing to run by one’s own free will [e.g. not because you’re forced to at practice for a different sport]. Maybe it also indicates that runners do running as a stand-alone practice, even if they also do it as part of something else. Think sports that inherently involve running: soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, softball. Are you a runner because you run in the process of doing a different sport or activity? I would argue that there’s a distinction between the two, although not necessarily a hard line.

 Alright, so now we have some parameters: to be classified as a runner, you must a) run by your own individual choice, and b) run as a stand-alone pursuit, not just as part of something else. And yet, it doesn’t seem like enough. That could apply to someone who has gone on one run that fits those restrictions, so let’s add another parameter that says you must c) run habitually. Still, our terms include someone who runs any distance, even if it’s under a mile. Do we think distance matters in terms of our definition of a runner? If so, what is the distance cutoff? Even our attempt to clearly delineate the rites of passage towards being classified as a runner leaves many questions unanswered. Do you have to compete at running, and at what level? Do you have to run at a certain speed? Must you have a goal that you’re working towards? What if you’ve taken a lengthy break from running and then pick it up again—are you still a runner during your off time? Can you be a runner at the same time that you hold a different athletic classification?

 I’m not going to attempt to answer all of these questions, or even any of them actually [sorry, so anti-climactic, I know]. But I think the take-away is pretty clear: it’s very difficult to accurately map the nuances of membership to some particular communities. And yet even as I say that, I still have this idea in my head of what a “runner” is, a concept that I find difficult to articulate, but can illustrate be example. I walk from my house to campus at pretty much the same time every weekday morning, and each day the same middle-aged woman runs past me going the opposite direction. I think of her as a runner. My boyfriend Dave used to do cross country very competitively in high school, but he doesn’t run anymore since he has taken up rowing and been injured since his cross country days. I still think of him as a runner. A friend from one of my classes runs a few times a week and is planning to run the same half-marathon that I am, although she has run that distance a few times before. I think of her as a runner.

 So what about me? What I’ve been thinking about – and maybe even gotten a better grasp on in writing this post – is that identity “rites of passages” or “terms of membership” are largely implicitly socially defined. In other words, they’re pretty much made up in our own heads based on arbitrary pieces of information that don’t necessarily tell the whole story. In many situations, it’s more difficult to define the terms of membership for a given community than we might think. Further, who exactly sets these boundaries and restrictions? Where have I gotten this idea that I’m unworthy of the label “runner” because of my shorter time engaging in that activity or my slower running speed or my limited distance abilities?

 Whatever societal or interpersonal forces are inhibiting me from embracing my identity as a runner, I’ve decided to let go of them. When I cross the finish line of my half marathon in less than a month, will I magically feel like a member of that group? I don’t think so—I think it’s on me to embrace my position as a runner. So today I’m doing it! I’m no longer going to be afraid that someone will judge me for using that term because of trivial and ambiguous societal stereotypes about membership in this community. If there’s something that you feel like you’re equally on the edge of, join me in diving into that. Do you ride horses but not yet consider yourself a horseback rider? Start throwing around that term. Do you play hockey casually but not consider yourself a hockey player? Introduce that title into your life. Committing to a group identity will only help you feel more comfortable enjoying that hobby and, I think, could enhance your positive mentality while you’re doing it.

 So as of Thursday February 21st 2019, meet the new me: Quinn Arnone, runner.