Sally McRae’s book: Choose Strong

Mercifully, I have about a week left before I need to start prepping for Fall term teaching, so I have been trying to finish up my summer pleasure reading list. Sally McRae’s book Choose Strong: The Choice That Changes Everything was on my radar because I follow her Instagram account yellowrunner, and I also recently discovered her podcast.* (I used to be super into trail running and even dabbled in racing, but a hip injury turned me toward mountain biking, which does not hurt my hip.) This is the last book in a series of books by women runners I admire that were published recently. I devoured Choose Strong in one sitting yesterday. The other books are Des Linden’s Choosing to Run: A Memoir and Kara Goucher’s book The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team. In hindsight, I wish I had bought the hardcopies of Goucher and Linden’s books just to keep them alongside McRae’s; I listened to the others on Audible on my bike commutes and while I worked in our yard, and these were both Spring term purchases with little time to loll about with a book for fun.

Though I don’t trail run anymore, I miss it, and I have continued to follow the sport closely and cheer for inspiring athletes like McRae — I’m one of a gazillion yellowrunner fans. I knew bits of McRae’s personal history from interviews I’ve listened to, but her book lifts the curtain and reveals a raw and riveting story of overcoming emotional and physical childhood trauma. As adults, we learn the ideas of family and love are extremely complicated and can be painful, but McRae and her siblings already knew this perhaps before they could remember. She developed a toughness and a sense of self out of self-defense and the need to survive in a violent household and with parents that really struggled to support five children on a poverty-level budget. She also had a very special relationship with her mother, Diane, who died from breast cancer at a young age and who is the definition of “choose strong.” If you’ve watched any of the documentaries of her races, you know that this a huge part of McRae’s “why” and her persona as an ultra endurance athlete. As a person and also as a racer, McRae “chooses strong” and seeks out opportunities to use her body to feel everything it can feel, from nauseating pain to the adrenal soar of winning and/or finishing grueling 100-200+ mile races that sound bananas to most people. You would be wrong to assume that “choose strong” is only a branding scheme or a book title; it’s more like a mantra or a way of approaching the world that goes beyond sport. It’s about learning and practicing self love. (Sally, if you read this, I would totally rock a Choose Strong hat!)

One of the most memorable and unique aspects of the book, I think, are the poems and other sections that speak directly to the reader. For example, between chapters 13 and 14, there is a poem called “Registration for Pain” printed over an image of the author running up a mountain with poles while looking back down the valley, over her shoulder. At her eye level, it reads: “To the dear hearts navigating a pain that didn’t come with a registration form. / I SEE you. / Your pain matters; / You matter. / Stand strong / and courageous. / You’re not done yet” (107). It’s as if the author says this directly to the reader, who is somewhere on the slope behind her.

Memoir can be a very self-centered genre, but I felt that Choose Strong not only addresses me but includes me as a reader and a person as part of its mission. For example, the book opens with a letter from the author to the reader asking us what we want to get out of the book, what we can discover about our own story and journey, and what we might need to overcome in order to tell it. The excerpt below is an early example of this. (WordPress won’t let me indent in a block quotation, so apologies for missing indents.)

If I had a text version of this book to process, I would like to learn how many times McRae uses the word “you” just to drive home the point that her memoir is as much about her audience taking her thesis to heart as it is about her childhood and her relationship with her mother Diane. (I absolutely loved learning about Diane and seeing photos of her.)

This book is all about authenticity. I remain compelled by the author’s question of how to tell my own story and what the most honest version of that story sounds like. As much as I would like to, I don’t think I will ever be able to run 100 miles on trails, but this book isn’t at all about running or even about endurance sports writ large. It is about the finish line at the end of life, introspection, life experience, and story telling as a means of self acceptance and connecting with others. Like McRae, I would have a lot of fear to overcome in actually telling my own story — fear of judgment from others as well as fear of my own shame. I finished her book and developed a strong (intentional word choice) urge to explore at least the possibility of the same kind of self-love and love for others through life writing and what it can teach that this book models.

*Book title links go to online ordering through Marcus Books, “the nation’s oldest Black-owned independent bookstore celebrating its 60th year” located in Oakland, CA.