How Taylor Swift helps me run 🏃♀️
Taylor has been lauded for her songwriting, performances, business acumen, and marketing skills, but little praise has been given for her athletic skills (ahem, swiftness). Taylor Swift belongs in the echelons of elite athletes simply because of the work she put in for the Eras tour. The Eras tour, which is roughly 150 shows, features her singing 42 songs over 3 hours and dancing. She began training well over six months before the beginning of the tour to make sure she had the stamina for such an ordeal.
Her training regimen included running on the treadmill every day while singing the entire Eras setlist aloud—"Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs"—following a specialized strength, conditioning, and weights program at her gym, Dogpound, and doing three months of dance lessons.
If she were a man, she'd have a GQ video where she gamely talks about her diet and workout routine. Instead, we get this Time article (just sayin’).
I've long known Taylor to be a runner because of this Apple ad but really, it comes as no surprise to me. Millennials seem to love running over every other form of fitness, and somehow, this puts me and Taylor on the same page (other than a fondness for cinnamon rolls).
There is just something so cool about running. I don't feel cool doing it, but I kind of really hoped I looked somewhat cool (I have since been disabused of this notion, thanks to an advertising campaign by the Chennai Marathon team that used me as a model to promote the 2019* run). It's also kind of easy to do as far as these exercise things go — you kind of put on your shoes and just…go out the door. One foot after another. It's easy to do no matter where you are, and you can burn a lot of calories each time, provided you make a good show of it.
After many years, I have finally reached acceptable "good show" levels, but the runner's high continues to elude me. This is the driving force for a lot of runners — this elusive high that clears their heads and resets moods.
The runner's high is a transient state of euphoria coupled with lessened feelings of anxiety and a higher pain threshold, which can come either from continuous moderate physical exertion over time or from short bursts of high-intensity exercise.
Some run to seek a void within them but they are definitely insane.
Frankly, I've never felt anything other than remorse while running and a sincere desire to never do it again. This desire is smothered by the desire to lose weight and seem cool in a day or two, and I repeat the cycle.
But then I discovered The Zone. And it was all thanks to Cruel Summer. It turns out that the beats in the song help me go faster than I ever have. I ran 700m first at 5:54 and then a km at 5:55 — a world apart from my usual range of 6:15 to 6:25. I heard only my heart beat, the world contracting to me and the next step, and a floating out-of-body feeling. Usually, I always want to stop. But in The Zone, I could fly. It is a fever dream high in the quiet of the morning, and you know that I caught it 🎶.
All of this running came to be earlier this year when I realized that my conditioning work was non-existent and that the flab was flabbing in places I preferred it stayed away from. I also propitiously found a running partner, a fleet-footed fellow, who didn't mind my huffing and puffing as we ran loops around a nearby lake.
Running twice a week (but trying to run 3) put me in a somewhat confident mood to sign up for a near goal: the Kaveri Trail Marathon that I signed up for in 2022 but couldn't make. I had some trepidation because I was just rediscovering how to run again (every week was a new win in distance and duration) and I wasn't sure if the 10k would be too much for my knee.
Two years ago, I underwent surgery to remove a loose body floating in my knee. When my surgeon told me I'd be running in a month post-surgery, I thought he was insane (He is certifiably insane because even walking was tough for me). I found it hard to believe I'd ever be able to walk even long distances again with ease. I underwent hours of physiotherapy and exercise that involved insane amounts of single-leg work and hinges, wondering if I'd ever be able to squat at my max weight again without discomfort. I thought wistfully of the 10ks in the past (the last one I ran was KTM in 2019), wondering if I'd ever do them again. When I did attempt to push my boundaries by climbing Mount Agung last year, I found it extremely difficult (the descent was murder on my knee) and ended up straining my IT band and taking weeks to recover.
But the human body is really strange, and this is a happy ending because I made it.
My knee does twinge if I push it too much, but I ran ~10k (could be 10.5k) in 63 minutes! I even came second in my age x gender category (hurray for getting older and being a woman!).
It is a commendation for the coaches who believed in my ability to recover and never let me off the hook during the last 2 years of single-leg squat and hinge work. It's a commendation for me, the person who didn't stop running even though she hated every single minute of it.
I'm really proud of my effort because 2 years ago, I could not have imagined this. I did not dare to dream of anything beyond a pain-free existence and not feeling like complete shit when people around me could effortlessly do things that caused me so much pain (At one point, I demanded my gym start a "for injured folks only; people without injuries stay out" class).
Even when I woke up the morning of KTM, all I really hoped for was to finish it, pain-free. The timing and the last 300m at 5:25 (🎶 you know that I caught it), where I ran so fast I nearly threw up at the end, was the icing on the cake..