My first marathon, 15 years ago, was a cry for help. A silent cry, it turned out, because I told almost no one. I signed up for the race in Fresno, Calif., to try to erase a bad year. I figured if I pushed my body hard enough, it would somehow clean my slate and absolve my sinsTwenty-three and footloose, I had gone to help her with her daughter. But I didn’t last long because my sister’s drug addiction was too hard for me to be around. I wish I had been mature enough to stay, but when you’re young and your loved ones don’t want your help, it’s easy to leave. I spent cold evenings out on the National Elk Refuge, logging 18-mile training runs in the dark. No one knew where I was or what I was doing, and I didn’t care—I didn’t believe I was worth the safety checks of friendships. I was punishing myself. I avoided any romantic entanglements and thought about my affair constantly, but I never told any of my friends or family about it. I thought if they knew they would agree that it was unforgivable.The race made me feel lonelier. I saw my family a couple times, cheering me on, but I still felt invisible. At mile 20, my ankle started failing me. I wanted to cry, but crying took too much energy. Men older than my dead grandfather were passing me. Women in metallic wigs were passing me. I was ready for it to be over.The marathon was supposed to put an end to my bad year, but my bad year continued. A few weeks later, I tore a tendon in my thumb. But as luck would have it, that bad thing led to a good thing when, at disco night at a local bar, a guy named Evan would notice the dance moves of a woman with a small pink cast and think (as I would later learn), “I want to end up with a woman like that.”