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.”
A Layered Loss
Those who have to leave running behind give up much more than fitness, said Justin Ross, a licensed clinical psychologist in Denver who specializes in sports and wellness. “Running is one of the most reliable forms of mood regulation that we have,” he said. Remove it, and he’s seen some clients experience increased irritability, difficulty handling stress, low mood and even mild depression. “It doesn’t matter how far or how fast you run,” Dr. Ross added. “It’s part of how you’ve come to understand yourself.”
Many runners rely on the predictability of putting on shoes and heading out the door. Ms. Panzarella compared the feeling of watching runners now to seeing an ex with someone new: “I know you’re out there, I know you’ve moved on,” she said. “But I don’t want to have to watch!”
Ms. McDowell said that emotional pain caught her off guard. A psychiatrist told her that she was experiencing a kind of grief, and that she was allowed to mourn it.
“When you say you’re a runner, people automatically assume you are disciplined, you are ambitious, you know how to set a goal and go for it,” she said. “It has this sheen about it.” Letting go of that identity, she discovered, felt like losing a close companion. “I really thought of running as one of my best friends. I was ‘with’ running five times a week. And all of a sudden you have to say, ‘I have to step away from you.’”
Sidelined Slowly, Then All at Once
Some runners are forced to give up the sport not because of creaky knees or worn-out hips, but because of illness.
Matt Fitzgerald, 55, an endurance athlete, author and coach who has written nearly 40 books about running (with another, “Dying to Run,” coming out in September) and finished 50 marathons, got long Covid in 2020 and found himself unable to walk. “With most injuries, you can still find something else,” he said. But Mr. Fitzgerald found out through trial and error that exercise made him feel worse. He spent three years unable to run at all, came back partly a few years ago, and is now once again unable to run.
Years of uncertainty and increasing pain also brought running to an end for Maggie Boxey, now 47. Ms. Boxey had run two marathons and 15 half marathons and was dreaming of a 45-mile ultramarathon for her 45th birthday. But in February 2024, she went for her last run. She had been feeling exhausted after her runs for about four years, after a viral infection, during which she saw many doctors, but found no answers. “I was like, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said.
A week after her last run, she was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. She soon learned that every post-run crash over the preceding years had been a sign of the illness progressing. She has had more health setbacks since then, she said, and now uses a wheelchair and is mostly bedbound.
“Every time I moved to a new city, running was how I met new people,” she said. “It was the way I explored the world. It was my meditation. It was my socialization. Losing that, it was so hard.”
The Road Ahead
For those navigating the loss of running, the goal shouldn’t be to immediately find something to replace it, said Jack Lesyk, a sports psychologist in Ohio. It’s to rebuild a sense of self. He described it as a seesaw: “As the runner identity fades, something else has to rise on the other side.”
Dr. Ross finds that people who make this transition most successfully “tend to separate their deeper values from the specific activity,” he said. “For example, someone may believe that what they love about running is running itself, but when we dig deeper, we often find they value challenge, mastery, adventure, community, discipline or personal growth. Running was simply one expression of those values.” The task then becomes identifying new ways to express those values.
Dr. Ross admitted that many people don’t find a “perfect replacement” for running — passion rarely works that way. “I encourage people to approach this period less like they are searching for the next great love and more like they are exploring,” he said. “Try things. Stay open. Allow yourself to be a beginner again.”
Mr. Fitzgerald found his next act by opening Dream Run Camp, an adult running camp where he coaches runners. “If I couldn’t run,” he said, “I wanted to at least serve other runners.” Ms. McDowell has taken up long-distance hiking. Ms. Panzarella discovered tennis, a sport that demands she focus on the present moment. It gave her something running never had: no room to drift at all. “If you’re not paying attention, you’ll get hit in the face,” she said.
None of them would claim it’s the same. But the community, the movement, the time that belongs only to them — those parts, at least, they’ve found again.
Not everyone arrives at that place through struggle. Jim Shapiro, a 79-year-old teacher in Manhattan, ran across the United States in 1980 and then across Japan in 1986. He once ran a 24-hour race in England. But he recently had a total knee replacement — with a second one pending — and he can no longer run at all. He said he had occasionally felt jealousy watching others run, but now he mostly feels something closer to completion. He ran so many miles, for so many decades, that his body simply reached its limit.
“You can’t outrun old age,” he said. “We get a gift. And it’s a gift of uncertain duration. You make of it what you can.”
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