When Running Stopped Feeling Like Me
Perimenopause and Running Took Something I Never Expected to Lose
Perimenopause and running colliding is something nobody warned me about. Not my doctors, not my running community, not anyone. This episode is about what happens when perimenopause and running intersect in a way that threatens the one thing that has always been yours. It goes so much deeper than paces and miles. And I think it is time to talk about it out loud.
Running was the first place I was ever truly free.
Where the Freedom Came From
In college I had nothing. I ran everywhere: to class, to work, everywhere. Not because I was training. Because it was how I got through.
When you are sweating hard enough running those kinds of paces, it is a lot easier to hide the tears.
Running gave me something I did not have anywhere else in my life at that point. Freedom. And I have never let it go. My eighth grade class had a thing where they described each person. Mine was the Energizer Bunny. She keeps going and going.
That has always been true.
Who I Was as a Runner Before All of This
For decades, running was completely predictable. Every marathon, every long run, every training pace, consistent. I ran the Kauai Marathon six times, with over 2,500 feet of elevation gain. A genuinely hard race. I placed in my age group repeatedly.
Before forty I was always around the four hour mark in marathons. Reliable, predictable, like clockwork. I never needed to walk. Running all 26.2 was just what I did. It was never a struggle.
That was the runner I knew.
The Fortieth Birthday Marathon — Where the Consistency Broke
In September of the year I turned forty, I ran Kauai. Then I went to Maui. That is when my dad called and told me he had cancer.
He was the one who encouraged me to go run Honolulu anyway and celebrate my birthday. My friend who always ran Kauai with me came to run it too. Over Thanksgiving I saw my dad and he seemed totally fine.
Then I was boarding the plane to Hawaii and my sister texted me. Dad was bedridden. I was shocked. There was nothing I could do. I shut down my phone and got on that plane.
Race morning I started running my usual pace. Consistent. Steady.
Then mile sixteen happened.
I stopped on a course for the first time in my life. Not because of my legs. Because I broke down crying. I stood there on that course and I let it out. Then I picked myself back up and I finished.
That race is still my over-40 PR. And nothing has felt the same since.
Looking back now, I wonder how much of that shift was grief and how much was the very beginning of perimenopause. I will probably never know. But that day marks the moment the consistency broke.
Shingles at 40 — Another Clue Nobody Connected
In April after I turned forty, I got shingles. They were absolutely miserable. The doctor told me I was too young to have shingles.
Yet there I was.
At the time I thought it was stress from my dad’s diagnosis. Maybe it was. But looking back now with everything I know about what was happening in my body, I have to wonder. If you go back and look at my Garmin data from before shingles and after, the pace shift is right there. Clear as day. Something changed in my body that spring and it never fully came back.
Another clue. Another thing nobody connected.
February 15th — The Austin Half Marathon
Then came February of this year.
Valentine’s Day the estrogen crash hit. My whole body hurt in a way I had never felt before. The Austin Half Marathon was the next morning.
My Achilles felt like they might snap just getting out of bed. My bones ached. Every single step of those 13.1 miles was a struggle from start to finish. My SPI Belt teammate Amber, SPI Belt is an incredible Austin-based company and a total staple of my running life, stayed with me the entire race. She knew.
At the finish line someone on our team took this photo. Big smile, medal in hand, arms wide open, the Capitol building in the background. When I posted it everyone said how happy I looked.
Nobody knew.
That photo is everything about this episode. You cannot always see perimenopause from the outside.
The Unpredictability Is the Hardest Part
Here is what I need people to understand about perimenopause and running. It is not just that running gets harder. It is that running becomes unpredictable.
Some days I still run a 7 or 8 minute mile. Those days are everything to me. Those miles make me feel completely alive in a way I will never be able to fully explain. Even if the miles around them are walking miles or slower miles, those moments are a small piece of the old me. I hold onto them.
Other days I cannot make it a quarter mile.
Same body…same fitness…same training. No warning, no pattern, no explanation.
A few days ago I set out for a run. Sleep score 90. Body battery 100. Resting heart rate 43. HRV 64. Every number said I was ready. About a quarter mile in I stopped, started walking, and said a word I will not repeat on this podcast.
Because the freedom I have always counted on was not there.
This is not a fitness problem. This is an estrogen problem. Estrogen swings wildly as ovarian reserve depletes. Some days it holds, some days it crashes, and your body goes with it without warning.
It used to confuse me. Now I recognize it. That recognition does not make it easier. The question that still haunts me is whether I will ever feel like that runner again. Whether I will ever get back to the freedom that has been mine since college.
I honestly do not know yet. But I am not done trying to find out.
What HRT Is Actually About for a Runner
Hormone replacement therapy is not about getting the ceiling back. At least not at first.
Estradiol stabilizes the floor. Once levels build, the unpredictable crashes should stop because I will no longer be dependent on failing ovaries for estrogen production. The wild swings that make me unreliable to myself should stop. And I will stop wondering which version of myself is going to show up at the start line.
I have been on progesterone for a couple of weeks. The estrogen gel is still building. This is the beginning, not the payoff.
Perimenopause and Running — Going Back to Honolulu
In December I turn 49. I am going back to Honolulu.
The same marathon where it all started to change. The same course where I cried at mile sixteen on my fortieth birthday. This time with HRT on board, with ferritin being treated, with omega-3s being rebuilt.
I do not know what that race will feel like. But I am going to find out.
Because running has always been my freedom. And I am not ready to let it go.
Not a time. Not a pace. Just myself again.
Listen to This Episode
If you have had that quarter mile moment, or that 7 minute mile moment, or both in the same week — you are not alone.
Listen to When Running Stopped Feeling Like Me here:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | jamapantel.com
Keep Listening
This episode is part of the health arc. Start at the beginning here: Something Was Wrong and Nobody Could Tell Me Why
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