Move|When Lifelong Runners Are Forced to Quit

For most of her adult life, Jamie Panzarella ran most every day, often lost in her thoughts, barely aware of her body. “I felt like a horse — free and wild,” she said. “It was almost like dreaming.” Over the years, she completed five marathons and more than 20 half marathons.

Then, a few years ago, the sensation changed. Her toes — slowly rigidifying from a form of degenerative arthritis — no longer bent properly, and over time she became acutely aware of every excruciating footfall. “I never got the groove anymore,” said Ms. Panzarella, who is now 51 and lives in Austin, Texas. The dreamy dissociation she’d relied on for years was gone.

Her doctor soon spelled out the stakes for her body: “You have a finite bucket of miles,” she recalled him saying. “Do you want to run through them all now, or do you want to be able to go for a hike with your grandkids when you’re in your 70s?” It was time to stop running.

For the roughly 50 million Americans who run regularly, it is rarely just exercise. It is therapy, meditation, community and identity, often all at once. When the body finally says no, the loss can be staggering.

Dimity McDowell, a co-founder of the running community Another Mother Runner, published a book this year about her experience with that transition, “The 27th Mile.” Ms. McDowell went on what turned out to be her last run in January 2020, after years of ignoring hip, knee and hamstring pain, and even her doctor’s gentle suggestion that she “consider not running anymore.”

“Quitting running is like contemplating a divorce or the death of a loved one,” Ms. McDowell writes in the book’s introduction, “something we think about a lot but don’t want to verbalize, lest doing so actually gives the thought momentum.”