What We Can Learn From Madison Holleran
A few months back I was walking through a Barnes and Noble’s (Yeah they do still exist!) and I saw it, I’ve been wanting to read ‘What Made Maddy Run’ for a while now but seeing it on the shelves that day was a sign that it was finally a time to break into it. I’ve had my ups and downs with this book… not because it is a bad book, in fact it is a very good book, but because I saw a lot of myself in Madison Holleran.
I’ve kind of gotten into this before but college was a hard time for me, adjusting to the life of a student athlete Freshman year was hard. There is all of this pressure on you to be a contributing member of the team while you are increasing your mileage, increasing your homework load, and trying to adjust to life away from home. My story is a little bit different however, because I was able to get past this initial hardship and have a really good sophomore year… but then the storm came.
I have always had trouble with anxiety and depression but my junior year of college was about to put everything into a different perspective. I had put in my greatest summer training; I had reached 95 miles a few times and was really really fit but nothing seemed to be going the way it should for how prepared I was. Race #1 I broke my big toe which put me out of training for a few weeks, then I came down with patella tendinitis after my first workout back. Finally I was back to training and placed 2nd in my first race back and pr’d by 30 seconds in the 8k — this unfortunately was the high point of my year. I had come to put so much pressure on myself. Every run had to feel perfect, every workout had to be perfect and every race had to go exactly how I had planned it in my head. School was harder than ever because I was into my 3rd year classes and ultimately didn’t have enough hours in my day with running, work, school and needing the comfort of friends. I was in a bad way, but I didn’t feel like I could talk about it. This was a problem that I had to solve myself but I just felt so indifferent about everything. Everyday I would have this feeling of despair in the pit of my stomach — I stopped going to class because I fell behind and felt like I would be judged in class. Ultimately this all could have changed by talking to someone; my professors, a counselor, my coach, my family, my girlfriend… but ultimately I was stubborn and needed to fix it myself. I even went to the doctor because I thought I was having heart problems, I was having heart palpitations because of all of the anxiety/stress… but I just put on a face, acted like I was going to class everyday and then drove home thinking “what if I just drifted into oncoming traffic?”.
Ultimately I finally decided to talk to my counselor and my girlfriend about exactly what was going on. They pointed me in the right direction and after a few weeks of being mindful of my actions, stopping the cycle of avoidance and coming to terms with everything that had happened. It’s funny that I had built up these large consequences in my head but ultimately everyone just wanted to see me happy and wanted to help me — if only I could have convinced myself a few months earlier.
The stigma against talking about mental health is a topic near and dear to my heart. As a former student-athlete and college coach I have seen it time and time again; Athletes trying to put too much pressure on themselves and thinking that no one wants to be burdened by their problems. I want to present some statistics brought up by Kate Fagan in the book:
“suicide ranks as the third most frequent cause of death among student-athletes — behind accidents and cardiac failure.”
“As of 2014 fewer than 25 division 1 athletic departments employed a psychologist on staff.”
“28% of female student-athletes and 21% of male student athletes reported feeling depressed”
“48% (48!!) of female student-athletes reported feeling anxious and approximately 14% said they had seriously considered committing suicide.”
and in my experience… those numbers are conservative.
It really is a good read, if not a bit triggering if you have had a similar experience. I will be talking about it on the podcast Friday — I have a big podcast planned so make sure you subscribe to the “Running Through It” podcast on iTunes to make sure you hear it.
What are your thoughts on the book? Is there anything you wish it could have portrayed better? Has there been a time where you felt like you couldn’t talk about your anxiety/depression?
Alright friends I’m always here to talk if you need me, just email me at Justin@anthrophysique.com and I’ll be more than happy to talk.
Happy Running,
*All stats in this blog were pulled from Kate Fagan’s ‘What Made Maddy Run’ which were compiled by the NCAA.
