By Jennifer Kirby
For Vickie Leff, exercising has never been about being the fastest or the fittest. She describes herself as a back-of-the-pack racer who doesn’t have a personal trainer, doesn’t join group workouts, and has no desire to enter a triathlon. “Bikes hurt my butt,” she says, “and swimming scares the crap out of me.”
Running, though, is another story.
Three decades, six marathons, and two kids ago, as a master’s in social work student in Boston, Leff was assigned a year-long internship in oncology and hematology at Beth Israel Hospital. Shortly after completing it she began her first job in oncology, as an oncology social worker, also at Beth Israel.
She spent her days counseling and providing support services to cancer patients and their families – work that she found extremely rewarding yet inherently, inescapably, stressful.
“I felt very fortunate to be able to work with people at that time in their lives; it was really a gift for me to be able to walk that journey with them and be of any assistance whatsoever,” she recalls. “It was a very rewarding profession, but also very dramatic, very emotionally intensive.”
She needed an outlet, some way to rejuvenate for the work she loved. A friend suggested she try running. “It was no more an epiphany than that. I am not an athlete by any stretch, but I did start running,” she says. She was hooked right away, for the mental and emotional benefits as much as the physical ones.
“[Running] gave me a chance to find some perspective,” she says. “I felt really re-energized when I finished.”
Leff continued working in the field of oncology in Boston for about 15 years. Whether she was working directly with cancer patients or in more of an administrative role, the stress was a constant.
“After working with folks who are dealing with life and death, or trying to help them and their family through that, it leaves such a weight on you – not in a begrudging way, but it’s a lot to be thinking about and it’s very intense,” Leff says. “So to do something that’s mundane and simple and easy was a very refreshing activity. I didn’t have to think about it. I’d put the shoes on and I’d go and enjoy the music or the scenery.
“It would give me a chance to maybe remember somebody in a clear, focused sort of way and not have them bundled into the whole bunch of people I was working with. Finding something that would bring some clarity and perspective is extremely helpful, and running does that by the nature of it. It’s so concrete, so literal. Thinking about one step at a time or counting your breaths or just making sure you don’t run out of breath, really focuses your brain.”
At 36 Leff had her first child and career-wise, “everything stopped.”
She and her husband decided to move their family to Raleigh, where they could afford for her to not work while they raised their children. As she transitioned from the stresses of working with cancer patients to the pressures of her new caretaking role, that of mother – and soon the mother of two children under 2 years old – the relief of a good run was more vital than ever.
“It was very handy that I had already developed this method of stress relief and alone time,” she says. “Running translated wonderfully, thankfully, into my life.”
Those children are now 16 and 18, Leff’s rejoined the workforce, and she still doesn’t consider herself an athlete, though she has a pretty impressive running resume, including completing six marathons (she’s working on her seventh) and writing a book called “RunnerMom,” published in 2003. The book grew out of her passion for running and helping other people, especially those who aren’t “athlete types,” discover that it’s “such fantastic, easy, cheap, immediate mental health.”
“I just love it when people do it for stress relief. I think that’s what it’s best for,” Leff says. “Running is perfect for being selfless and selfish at the same time. You can do 20 minutes and get a pretty good response out of it. You don’t have to run a marathon.”
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Jennifer Kirby is a freelance writer and copy editor who lives with her husband and two children in Pinehurst. www.JenniferDareKirby.com
