Zoë Rom

June 12th, 2025

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9 min read

I used to downplay how much I cared about running. Not because I didn’t care, but because I did. A lot. Like, build-my-life-around-it care. Plan-my-weekend-long-run-first care. Spend-more-on-gels-than-groceries care. And caring too much felt dangerous, and extremely silly. How do you explain to your adult friends with mortgages, toddlers, and diversified investment portfolios that you’re trying, sincerely and earnestly, to be slightly above average at jogging through the woods in a hydration vest that smells like fermented gummy bears?

I didn’t want to be seen as “trying too hard,” or, god forbid, “thinking too highly of myself.” Wanting to be good felt like a risk. So instead of backing myself, I’d shrug it off. I’d say, “Oh, I’m just out here for fun,” or “I’m not fast, I just like the trails.” I wasn’t softening the blow; I was quietly cutting myself out of the story.

I guess you could say I’m an athlete. But for a long time, I had a hard time using that word without cringing like I’d stepped on a LEGO.

I guess you could say I’m an athlete. But for a long time, I had a hard time using that word without cringing like I’d stepped on a LEGO. I’d rather be a close-up magician who only knows one card trick and insists on performing it at every party like it’s the Prestige. Trail running doesn’t have a super clear hierarchy, and even though I know my UltraSignup ranking better than my credit score (and frankly trust it more), that still hasn’t translated into anything resembling athletic confidence.

There’s no finish line that officially anoints you. No confetti cannon that goes off when you hit Peak Athletic Identity. So instead of claiming it, I kept that label at arm’s length. I worried that calling myself an athlete would sound presumptuous, or worse, invite someone to test me. Like the second I said it out loud, I’d be handed wraparound sunglasses and told to recite my FTP while doing walking lunges to Sandstorm. 

Am I an “athlete” if I do pushups on my knees, once pulled a hamstring reaching for a tortilla chip, and sometimes need a recovery snack after unloading the dishwasher?? I used to think “athlete” was a term reserved for the guy at the group run who rips off his $300 Satisfy shirt, drops a sub-7 mile, and calls it an “easy shakeout.” I didn’t want to be mistaken for him.

Honestly, I didn’t even want to foam roll within a five-foot radius of him.

But here’s the thing: being ability agnostic means treating yourself like a freakin’ great athlete, regardless of your pace, your race history, or the fact that you’ve shown up to more runs in mismatched socks than you’d like to admit.

It means you fuel like an athlete, not like someone who fell asleep to a Jillian Michaels audiobook and woke up thinking they had to “earn” their calories. You warm up even when no one’s watching. You do your strength work, not for #gainz, but because your knees filed a formal complaint. You buy the shoes that don’t wreck your feet, even if they’re hideous. You skip the workout when your body says nope, not because you’re lazy, but because you’re wise, and you’d like your hip flexors to still function in a week.

It’s giving your sport, and yourself, the respect they deserve. No prerequisites. No finish line required. Just care.

Being ability agnostic means giving yourself the kind of care you’d give a Real Athlete™, because, plot twist, you are one.

It means you stop waiting for someone else to validate your effort. You stop holding out for some milestone to grant you permission to care. You just decide: this matters to me, so I’m going to treat it like it matters. That’s it. That’s the whole deal. It’s not delusional, it’s just generous.

But the truth is, being an athlete isn’t about being the fastest person out there. It’s about caring. It’s about showing up. And I think more of us deserve to own that label, not because we’ve earned it through some arbitrary metric, but because we’re out here doing the damn thing.

Somewhere along the way, many of us internalized the idea that in order to care deeply about something, we have to be innately gifted at it. That we need to earn our right to show up with heart. To try. To improve. To belong. But that’s not what trail running is about.

Trail running is gloriously, wonderfully made up. The distances are often arbitrary. The terrain is weird. The elevation gain might be absurd. A “50K” might be 34 miles, or it might be 28. We’ve made peace with the fact that the points don’t matter. So why not make our own meaning?

I think it’s time we start treating ourselves like we belong, not in spite of our pace or race results, but regardless of them.

I think it’s time we start treating ourselves like we belong, not in spite of our pace or race results, but regardless of them. Being ability agnostic means giving yourself permission to care. To go all in. To be curious about what’s possible, not because you’re guaranteed a podium, but because you are worthy of the effort.

It means celebrating your own commitment, your own process, your own quiet excellence. And it means letting go of the idea that you have to be exceptional in someone else’s eyes in order to take yourself seriously.

At some point, I realized no one was going to meet me at the trailhead with a clipboard and say, “Congratulations! You’re officially a serious athlete. Here’s your laminated card and a lifetime supply of Body Glide.” There’s no calendar day when your VO₂ max hits a magic number and you wake up transformed from “just some lady jogging through the woods” into an athlete. It doesn’t happen like that.

Like going broke or falling in love, it happens slowly, then all at once.

One day, I just decided to take myself seriously. Not because someone else gave me permission, but because I was tired of acting like my effort didn’t count. And when I did, something shifted. My runs felt more intentional. My training had more purpose. Even the fun parts felt fun-er, somehow, because they weren’t floating untethered anymore. They were anchored to something solid: identity.

One day, you stop minimizing. You stop qualifying. And you start treating your passion like it matters, because it does. Not self-importantly. Just… honestly.

What’s the worst that can happen? You believe in yourself, and it turns out you’re not amazing, you’re merely spectacular? One of the 0.03%¹ of Americans brave and fit enough to tackle a race, off-road, longer than a marathon? 

Because honestly? Anyone who shows up and runs a race with heart, whether it’s 5 miles or 250, is already pretty damn amazing.

So go ahead. Care deeply. Run hard. Romanticize your long runs. Brag about your blisters. Cry at the finish line if you want to.  Write your own story into the weird, wiggly lines of the trail. And don’t you dare apologize for wanting it.

You don’t have to be fast to be fierce. You just have to start.

1. Yes, really. Only about 0.03% of Americans run an ultramarathon in a given year. Here’s the math: there are roughly 60,000–75,000 ultramarathon finishers annually in the U.S. (according to UltraRunning Magazine and UltraSignup). Even accounting for repeat runners, let’s say 50,000 unique humans toe the line. Out of a U.S. population of ~330 million, that’s about 0.015%, and we’re being generous, bumping it up to 0.03% to cover race directors, aid station legends, and people who think about signing up while eating nachos.

Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning, become a professional clown, or be given positive feedback on LetsRun.

Aid Station

Inspiration

Zoë Rom