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“As personification who has mislaid touch pinch reality, I for illustration to clasp a patient grasp connected it now,” Mary Cain says while we locomotion done a palm-tree spotted field successful California.
She’s telling maine why she insisted she constitute her ain memoir, This is Not About Running, without ceding nan communicative to a ghostwriter, arsenic happens pinch galore athletes. “My communicative is truthful analyzable … location are truthful galore bad actors that I deliberation it forces nan scholar to clasp nuance, and I don’t deliberation you spot that very often.”
At 29, Mary Cain is simply a decade removed from her acquisition arsenic nan United States’ highest dream for a middle-distance way prima since Mary Decker smashed women’s world records up and down nan stat expanse successful nan 1970s and 80s.
Cain group 4 different nationalist precocious schoolhouse records arsenic a teen, and arsenic a 17-year aged made nan world championships successful nan 1500m, finishing 10th successful a section of pros. But alternatively of heading to assemblage to tally D-1, she was contacted by Alberto Salazar, a famed moving coach astatine Nike’s Oregon Project, who convinced her to springiness up assemblage way and spell pro, pinch him.
What followed was, arsenic she describes it successful her memoir, a hellish 4 years for Cain during which, she says, Salazar became emotionally abusive. Cain specifications a coach who was obsessed pinch Cain’s weight, isolated her from her ain parents, sent her to a sports “psychologist” who was not credentialed, and ignored her clear signs of suicidal ideation, disordered eating, and self-harm (Salazar has denied immoderate wrongdoing and he and Nike settled a lawsuit brought by Cain successful 2023 alleging nan abuse).
While nan media wondered what happened to Cain arsenic her times sewage slower – assuming she’d mislaid her world-class talent because, arsenic nan stereotype goes, female runners occurrence retired erstwhile they get hips – arsenic she tells it, she was fortunate to make it retired alive.
The Cain who walks maine done Stanford’s picturesque field connected an early outpouring time successful Palo Alto, California, is almost unrecognizable from nan young female successful nan pages of her book, aliases nan New York Times op-ed video successful 2019 that gave her nationalist vulnerability aft she claimed Salazar was an abusive coach.
The second-year med student scootered crossed field to meet me, wearing a front successful her agelong golden-brown hair, a flippy reddish skirt, and achromatic Dr Martens boots. We spell to nan apical level of nan building truthful she tin show maine nan gym she goes to betwixt classes. “I for illustration to look retired that model while I do squats,” she says, pointing astatine nan position of nan distant Santa Cruz mountains.
The time before, she’d taken a five-hour agelong exam – it’s finals week – but after, alternatively of going location to remainder aliases study more, she met up pinch friends to watch Bridgerton. Staying up precocious and socializing alternatively of obsessing complete schoolhouse is simply a sign, she says, of her ain growth. “I conscionable deliberation it’s really important to study from what I went done and make judge that I ne'er get sucked into nan thought that this is everything, again.”
In This is Not About Running, Cain describes successful an immersive present-tense her years arsenic a teen phenom who says she was forced into an highly unhealthy mentality. The communicative begins, surprisingly, not pinch Salazar, but pinch a precocious schoolhouse coach and teammates (and their parents) who bullied and ostracized Cain for her talent. When Salazar called, offering to commencement training her erstwhile she was conscionable 16, she gladly dove successful for a alteration of scenery.
At Nike, Cain describes a squad of group who look to person been afloat alert of Salazar’s strategies but allowed them to flourish.
She writes scenes successful which nan capacity coach for nan Nike Oregon Project, who she was told was a sports psychologist, allegedly ordered Cain to toughen up erstwhile she revealed she was cutting herself. Salazar’s leader and nan past vice-president of trading besides allegedly told Cain cutting her hairsbreadth would thief her suffer weight but he wouldn’t fto her, because past she would “not look good”, and that she needed a different bra because everyone could spot really immense her breasts were. The female who measured her assemblage fat percent asked Cain to submerge herself successful h2o for astatine slightest 30 seconds 4 different times, because Salazar wanted nan astir meticulous reference possible, and ignored her pleas that she felt panicked nether nan water.
Her teammates, she writes, were conscionable arsenic ungenerous. Once, connected nan measurement to training, 1 took a telephone telephone while she sobbed successful nan backseat of nan car connected nan measurement to a training tally because she was suicidal, different described her depressive episodes arsenic “acting for illustration a child”.
Cain near nan Nike Oregon Project successful 2016 while suicidal, self-harming regularly and suffering from a terrible eating disorder, but she spent nan adjacent 3 years thinking: “I dream Alberto still loves maine … I americium nan failure. I was bad. I was fat.”
From location to present has been a agelong travel of treatment mind and body. She kept moving successful those first years aft leaving Nike, and kept getting injured. “I was still truthful profoundly depressed and confused astir my body.” The accent fractures communal among women athletes who person knowledgeable disordered eating and underfueling while overtraining (medically known arsenic Relative Energy Deficiency successful Sport, aliases Reds) were 1 culprit, but location was another, much mysterious ailment, too. Cain’s little correct limb and ft were experiencing numbness that sewage progressively worse if she ran for excessively long, and eventually, moreover aft stepping shorter distances.
The communicative that Cain had been saddled pinch by nan media and her coaches arsenic a phenom was a acquainted 1 for a young female runner: that her profession could extremity astatine immoderate infinitesimal from injury, puberty, aliases burnout. “That really gets successful your caput and I deliberation it really damaged maine much successful nan years wherever I was going done this really chaotic beingness wellness rumor wherever I couldn’t consciousness my leg,” she says. “I was hopeless not to fulfill this prophecy.”
Then, successful 2019, nan United States Anti-Doping Agency released a 270-page study connected Salazar that yet banned him from way for doping violations for 4 years.
Cain publication nan full study successful 1 sitting, and yet realized Salazar had not been honorable pinch her astir definite medications she had seen him springiness different athletes, for illustration L-carnitine infusions successful higher than allowed doses. The study besides cited him for trafficking testosterone and attempting to tamper pinch doping results. It made her deliberation astir nan thyroid medicine and diuretics she says he often pushed connected her.
The lightbulb went on: her coach, whom she was hopeless to please betwixt nan property of 16 to 20, had not been who she thought he was. Weeks later, while texting Alexi Pappas, an Olympian and friend, astir processing each of this news, Pappas sends her nan interaction accusation for a New York Times editor, who says she could constitute thing up. Within hours, nan editor asks Cain to travel to nan offices, wherever they changeable a video of her describing her acquisition pinch Salazar.
Within days, Cain’s op-ed went unrecorded and lit nan moving world connected fire. “The New York Times piece was almost much of a commencement versus an end,” she says.
The Nike Oregon Project disbanded soon after. And, by 2021, Salazar earned a life prohibition from SafeSport because of intersexual and affectional misconduct.
But Cain emphasizes that Salazar’s prohibition does not lick nan rumor of athletes’ maltreatment successful running. In fact, she says, it’s much akin to “cutting disconnected nan caput of a hydra”.
For moving to change, she says, it will return acold much than her speaking out. And she knows her communicative will ruffle immoderate feathers, arsenic she has nary hesitation calling retired conscionable really profoundly nan system’s flaws let actors for illustration Salazar to flourish – and names names successful doing so.
“I consciousness very profoundly that if you were unkind to a child, you should activity connected that … and if you consciousness uncomfortable pinch my perspective, I dream this gives you nan opportunity to really beryllium pinch immoderate of those things,” she says.
Shortly aft nan op-ed came out, nan numbness successful her limb sewage bad capable that Cain stopped moving for 2 years. She played rec shot connected Pier 40 successful New York City, did pilates, and engaged successful intensive talk therapy.
By autumn 2022, Cain decided to return nan MCAT – she’d dreamed of being a expert since she was a small girl, erstwhile she idolized Marie Curie. She felt for illustration a moving profession was astir apt disconnected nan array by then, but if she was going to beryllium a expert she’d for illustration to cognize if she could locomotion and guidelines for agelong periods of time.
Dismissed clip and again by doctors because, she felt, she was a female jock who had intelligence wellness problems connected her chart, she’d almost fixed up seeking a diagnosis. But her mother yet asked her father, an anesthesiologist, to deed Cain’s knee pinch a reflex hammer and return a look himself.
When he realized 1 of her legs looked larger than nan other, he surmised nan problem could beryllium vascular, truthful her mom entered nan symptoms into Google on pinch “vascular” and came up pinch a possibility: popliteal artery entrapment syndrome (PAES).
The problem – a musculus that grows excessively quickly successful nan backmost of nan calf tin commencement to trim disconnected humor travel to nan remainder of nan limb – is rare, but tin beryllium caused by overtraining successful young athletes. She went to 2 different doctors pinch nan possibility, but they some did an MRI while she was laying down that gave a mendacious antagonistic report. This disappointment her moreover more. “I’m medically literate,” she says, “and of people an MRI isn’t going to show thing if this is simply a vascular information successful nan measurement that they had maine do it.”
Cain yet reached retired to a well-regarded sports medicine expert she knew, Trent Stellingwerff, who sent her a database of 3 specialists who treated PAES, peculiarly successful athletes. Only 1 was successful nan US. Cain flew retired to spot Jason Lee astatine Stanford successful February 2023. “I had trained myself not to outcry successful beforehand of doctors, because it felt for illustration a decease sentence”, she recalls But arsenic soon arsenic she sat successful Lee’s office, she crumbled and instantly apologized.
His kindness shocked her. “He said: ‘This is truthful upsetting, you conscionable told maine you were a master jock and you can’t do nan point you loved to do immoderate more, that’s a normal response.’”
Her trial for PAES came backmost positive, and Lee called her pinch nan news. “He said: ‘I ever prevention a mates room openings, I telephone them my Golden State Warrior openings. You’re a Golden State Warrior to me, do you want to travel in?’”
The measurement Lee treated her changed her cognition of what a expert could and should be. She was amazed not only that Lee believed her, but that he had been truthful benignant and consenting to dainty her truthful quickly, moreover arsenic a female master jock who hadn’t competed successful years.
Two weeks later, Lee operated. Six weeks aft that, Cain took nan MCATs.
She applied to and sewage into Stanford and Harvard, but her acquisition pinch Lee – and her successful room – swayed her afloat toward Stanford.
That summer, she prepared to move to Palo Alto to commencement aesculapian school. While she still hasn’t ruled retired a competitory comeback, Cain is focused connected a different beingness extremity for nan clip being: rewiring her body.
That intends a batch of intensive PT type exercise, and trying her champion to return it easy connected runs. “I went for a tally this greeting and it was nice. You know, nan full clip I was like, I’m really thirsty, but that was my only complaint.”
And she’s seeking that benignant of nuance and groundedness successful each parts of her life. She doesn’t spot aesculapian school, wherever she lives connected field and gets to enmesh pinch a mini cohort arsenic a do-over of her achy undergrad years.
“I’ve had a batch of group inquire maine if I regret things … I was abused. I can’t regret that. The group who did it should regret their actions.” Instead, she is immensely grateful for nan group successful her med schoolhouse class. “After going done nan acquisition I did, [I thought] ‘Am I profoundly unlikable? Am I being abused because I americium a problem?’”
Now, she says, having friends who cognize her profoundly has been healing. Intensive CPT (cognitive processing therapy) helped, too.
The thought for penning nan book successful coming tense took guidelines successful immoderate of nan CPT therapy assignments she did that helped her reframe those years. “What I developed was specified a consciousness of self-hatred. Ultimately that’s why I self-harmed, why I was suicidal, why I had an eating upset . At its halfway I hated myself … because of nan actions of others. But nan problem was that I truthful developed a self-hatred.”
Undoing that self-hatred has been a agelong process, arsenic has undoing nan suppression of her ain feelings she learned while moving pinch Salazar.
“I did not recognize until 3 years agone what hunger felt like. Because I had been convinced by Alberto [Salazar] that that sensation was not hunger and that it was for illustration mittelschmertz (the symptom of ovulation), which doesn’t make immoderate consciousness biologically.”
She explains this while we eat tofu wraps and sip iced coffees astatine an outdoor picnic table. “It was really chaotic to 1 time aftermath up 1 time and beryllium like, ‘that’s hunger’.”
Today, Cain seems quiet for nan future. While she has been moving pinch Lee connected PAES investigation – they dream to people a insubstantial soon – she’ll commencement her clerkships successful different specialties this summer. “I’m honestly truthful funny to spot what happens, to find thing that I yet recognize I really want to do.” She laughs. “I’m benignant of conscionable happy to beryllium here.”
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