Biking and Kate Sanborn have become quite acquainted with each other in 2023. Some would even call them best friends. While the professional marathoner would have preferred to be out on the roads running for the entirety of her Olympic Trials prep, she’s had to adjust and adapt to the circumstances that life has thrown at her.
Sanborn’s ability to adapt and adjust to the various trials and tribulations that she’s endured has allowed her to grow stronger as a person and a runner ahead of the Olympic Marathon Trials, where she looks to compete for a spot on the Olympic Team.
Coming off of a remarkable performance that included a new personal best marathon time of 2:29:19 at the California Invitational Marathon last December, Sanborn was looking to carry the momentum that she built into the 2023 season. Soon thereafter, she started dealing with various ailments that halted her progress.
“It’s been a quarter life crisis,” she said. “I think people experience their midlife crisis, whether that’s – they buy something expensive, or they just completely flip on their head and do something completely different with their life. I think that for me, it’s just the health quarter life crisis that has forced me to, really, really sit with a lot of things that have happened in life and just kind of endure through it and grow. So it’s a period of growth.”
Sanborn suffered a series of injuries and illnesses that she’s had to overcome. Some of those injuries and illnesses included a sacral stress fracture, a stress reaction on her pubic symphysis, sun poisoning, low iron, two tick diseases, severe anemia among other issues. The difficult times that she endured in 2023 made her prone to wonder why her 2023 campaign was full of troubles, hard aches and pains.
“For me, I kind of sit here and I’m like, okay God – I know that everyone has the stuff that they have to go through and there’s a reason for it. I don’t really get this. I don’t know why and I know that asking why isn’t really going to solve it either,” she said. “But for me, I had at least five periods this year where I would just sit and it’s like, what did I do? Did I do something in a past life? Did I do something in my current life? What did I do? What did I mess up? Am I a bad person – did I need to, like have all this crud? And I know that I’m not dying, so people have people who have it worse. But just with the addition of more and more and having to then sit with not just the things that have happened this year, but things that have happened in years past. As you go through troubling times, you can’t help but think about other things that have happened. So it all just kind of adds up.”
Sanborn said that she dealt with a good deal of rock bottom moments over the course of 2023. Those moments that she endured led to reflection, which led to growth.
“I’m not gonna say that I completely figured all of it out,” she said. “But I think in this period of like, extreme growth, and just suffering, and just kind of hitting quite a few rock bottoms this year. And I think this year, it’s been a period where I’ve had to have some forced time to just sit and just really assess, you know, not just the things going on presently. But why do I feel the way that I feel about all of the things that I’m going through right now? Ultimately, that’ll end up bringing up past things that I’ve gone through because the way that you handle emotions and the way that you respond to things is developed through the way that you’ve learned to cope with things in the past as well. So this year, like it’s been a, it’s been a period to really challenge myself to respond and, like, grow in the way that I respond to things. So I think it’s been a good time to take my own medicine and just keep people in my corner and learn that you don’t need to be hyper independent, cope with things by yourself.”
In the midst of the chaos that she endured, Sanborn found joy that helped her stay afloat. She credits her former neighbor for helping her to see things through the lens of faith and to provide the love that she needed. Her experience dealing with injuries and illness also gave her life-lessons that she carries with her.
“It’s okay to care a lot about everything,” she said. “It’s not okay to forget how to care for yourself.”
Sanborn believes that the obstacles that she’s had to face this season was a bit of a blessing in disguise for her. It’s given her a unique outlook on running, and as she continues to ease her way back into running, it’s made the process enjoyable.
“I’m not gonna say that I’m thankful that it happened, but in a way I am because that was the rock bottom of the year,” she said. “And I was like, I get it. This is what I needed this year – to learn to sit with the emotions, sit with myself. And you know what, I can’t run right now, and that’s okay. All summer I was trying to cope with all the diseases and sickness that I had, and low iron. And I was trying to cope with it with high mileage and everything, and just kind of working through putting my head in the sand and just putting in the work. But to an extent, I was getting a little burnt out. And I think this injury kind of saved me. I’m going to be honest, it saved me from entering into a burnout hole where I think right now I probably would be a little fizzled out even entering into a build for the trials, I think that this has actually given me a really good shot. It forced me to take a step back from running, do different types of movement, learn to enjoy different types of movement, have the right relationship with exercise and movement – and slowly incorporate running back into that at the proper speed, and really embrace and enjoy getting back into that.”
With the Olympic Marathon Trials only a handful of weeks away, Sanborn is recharged and excited to train and compete against some of the best women in the United States. The injuries, illnesses and setbacks gave her the spark that she needed for February’s race.
“Any injury that I’ve had, it’s always given me a bigger fire on the back end,” she said. “So knowing that and getting this injury, you’re like, I’m gonna be hungry as crap like on the back end of this, ready to rock roll, really crave the training, really crave racing, which is what I needed. I needed the spark to come back because I was going through all that health stuff after CIM. So I was just a hole for motivation. So it really did kind of light a fire under my broken ass.”
