How I Swapped My Pointe Shoes for Running Shoes During Quarantine

By: Grace Savage

When you ask people how they spent their quarantine, you’re often hit with the same smattering of answers: “baked banana bread, “ “I binge-watched TVshows,” “I attended Zoom meetings,” or “ I was adapting to the intricacies of this strange new world we’re living in.” While I did all of these things as well, quarantine also provided me the time and space to delve into a world I never dared enter previously: mid-distance running.

To provide a bit of context, throughout high school and up until very recently in my college career, I was a fairly serious ballet dancer. For a period of time in high school, I had my heart set on ditching the college experience all together in favor of pursuing a corps de ballet position in a professional ballet company.

However, by the time I hit 18 the very thing that had been my greatest passion and first love in life had me feeling burnt out. After giving so much of my blood, sweat, tears, and TIME for so many years, I craved normalcy. As many dancers understand, the transition out of bun-headedness into reality can be extremely jarring. With serious ballet training comes an “all or nothing” mindset, leaving absolutely no room for personal exploration outside of the studio.

For my first two years of college, I was able to maintain a dance minor that gave me the freedom to continue to dance, and was actually very freeing in the sense that it gave me the opportunity to continue to do what I love on my own terms. In March of 2020 however, I made the difficult decision to drop this minor in favor of a more career savvy minor in Public Relations. At the time, I felt as though I had been torn from a fundamental element of my identity. With the Spring 2020 semester coming to an abrupt halt simultaneously, I was completely in limbo. After being cooped up in my house for weeks on end, and every studio in town being shut down-- I begrudgingly put on a pair of my mom’s running shoes and decided to go for a jog around my local park.

Frankly, it was horrible. After years of moving my body in one particular way and exercising only certain muscle groups, running felt positively foreign and utterly exhausting. I found myself needing breaks nearly every 100 yards, and making it through 1.5 miles may as well have been a marathon.

Yet, on my walk back home I found myself to be in a significantly better mood than I had been when I set out. “At least I did it,” I thought to myself.

This was back in April of 2020, and if you had told me then that running would be an integral part of how I plan my days now, I probably would’ve laughed in your face.

Slowly and steadily over time, I began to find a new type of satisfaction in completing my daily jogs that I hadn’t experienced in a long time in regards to exercise and fitness. With consistency, I began to see that I was able to run greater distances without stopping, and my pace was becoming increasingly more steady.

For my whole life, my idea of “fitness” and “being fit” directly correlated with dancing non-stop. Without ballet, I felt lazy, sluggish and even depressed,but with ballet I experienced feelings of burnout and mental exhaustion that built up over the years.

These emotions left me feeling guilty, because my relationship with ballet didn’t feel the same as it had when I was younger. Some of my fondest memories of ballet had been watching the older girls rehearse their soloist roles in utter wonder and awe, wishing with my entire heart I could someday be like them. When I finally did become one of them, it was rewarding, and those precious moments on stage were magical- but I was certainly not prepared for the nerves, pressure, and physical and mental exhaustion that occurs behind the scenes. Getting involved with running has shown me that not only is it okay to fall in and out of love with childhood passions, it’s completely normal.

Moreover, you don’t have to have one all-consuming passion! Adult life opens doors for you to explore all sorts of new and exciting things, and it’s okay to embrace them all.

On a more personal note, running has also redefined my relationship with my body, as well as my notions of what it means to be fit. As I’ve increased my distances from 1.5 miles to just under seven, I’ve witnessed my body and musculature change in ways that ballet might’ve deemed less than ideal.

I feel exceptionally proud of my body and all that it’s done for me over the past few months, and I’m grateful to running for proving that I’m far more capable than I ever imagined.

With this all being said, I don’t want to make it seem as though I went from bunhead to marathon runner overnight. It was and continues to be a really challenging journey. Trying to push my pace and distance in the peak of summer heat and humidity, or on days when I really just want to lay in bed can feel nearly impossible.

I still consider myself a dancer. If this experience has taught me anything, it’s that you can identify with multiple passions at once, and there is room for them all. Human beings are far too complex to be defined by any one trait, sport, haircut, outfit, job, etc.

To anyone who may be looking for a sign to try a new sport or activity as an adult, consider this it . I know it feels a little awkward to be a beginner in adult life, but it's more doable than you think. There is always a benefit to finding new ways to move and connect with your body.