The Girl Runner's Pocket Dictionary

By Allison Snyder

Ass-tape (ǎs-tǎp) n. 1. Assortment of sticky products, such as duct tape or super glue, used to keep a girl runner’s bikini-like briefs, known as butthuggers, from sliding into a wedgie position while racing. The faster her legs turnover, the stronger the ass-tape must be. (N.B. There’s no corresponding entry in the Boy Runner’s Pocket Dictionary.)
 
Aleve (ālēv) n. 1. Tiny blue pills given to girl runners in copious amounts when they complain of aches in their IT band, or quad, or plantar fascia. When consumed with every meal, these pills numb the pain enough for the girl runner to believe Coach is right, and the pain is in her head.
 
Battle (bǎt’l) n. 1. What Coach likens every race, every practice to. This is a tactic he learned from his coach, who learned it from his coach, who learned it from his coach, and so on. Some say this tactic can be traced to Ancient Greece, when only men were athletes and sport’s purpose was military training. Indeed, Coach often reminds girl runners they are lucky to be competing, as in, “No one was paying girls to run when I was in college.”
 
Coach (kōch) n. 1. A person who takes note of a girl runner’s athletic talents and fosters these talents by plying her with inspirational stories about other athletes, encouraging her to reach for seemingly impossible goals, and reassuring her when she falters. 2. A man who keeps a packet of sunflower seeds in the back pocket of his white-washed jeans and recruits girl runner to his university by promising to make her his next star, a promise made believable by the stats on his bio. 437 All-Americans, fifteen National Champions, ten Regional Team Titles, and on, and on. This latter definition of Coach will, over time, swallow the prior.
 
Confidence (kǒn’fi-dәns) n. 1. What running gives an awkward, gangly young girl who is taunted for her flat chest and lagging pubescent development. In the gym class mile, when such a girl passes the boy who threw spitballs down her blouse proving her flatness when the spitball came out the blouse’s other end, that girl will, for the first time, believe she can do something big with her life. 2. What Coach will say a girl runner has too much of after she goes out too fast in a race and is outkicked in the homestretch. 3. An elusive quality a girl runner will spend much of her life trying to reclaim.
 
Distance (dǐs’tәns) n. 1. Coach’s classification of a girl runner type as in, “I can tell by your quad to calf ratio, you’re a distance runner.” 2. An intangible, invisible line between the imagined woman the girl runner thought she would be and the broken woman she becomes. This distance is measured in metric but given a girl runner’s experience in converting 5 kilometers to 3.1 miles, she will make such conversions with impressive speed. The distance is measured at the lowest moment of a girl runner’s adult life, like the day she searches for a pharmacy after waking naked save for the sequined camisole draping her chest, with no more than an ache of a memory about how she got to shag rug in the apartment of a disco-loving frat boy turned crypto miner, because intoxicated is the only way she ever undresses in front of men.
 
Dumb (dǔm) adj. 1. The level of intelligence Coach expects of his athletes, as in, “Act like a horse. Be dumb. Just run.” Coach will advise a girl runner to drop classes like Advanced Regression Analysis and take Pre-Calculus—a class she aced junior year of high school, and when Coach says, “You’re here to compete on the track, not in the classroom,” she will listen because he’s paying the bills.
 
Eating Disorder (ēt-ǐng dǐs-ôr’dәr) n. 1. What a girl runner will tell worried parents she does not have, no matter how many times she flees to the bathroom after dinner or how many carrots she consumes to fill her stomach after a fifteen-mile run. 2. What Coach claims happens when a girl runner eats too much.
 
Female-Athlete Triad (fē’māl’ ǎth’lēt’ trī’ǎd’) n. 1. A condition that occurs when overexercise and undernourishment result in a loss of period, low energy, and decreased bone density. This condition is described ad nauseum to girl runners by the nutritionist brought in by the University’s Athletic Director, after another girl runner is committed to an in-patient eating disorder clinic. While the nutritionist talks in a sing-song voice about amenorrhea and osteopenia, Coach sits in the back of the room sucking on sunflower seeds, rolling his eyes. 2. Something all girl runners on Coach’s team aspire to brush up against without crashing into.
 
Femur (fē’mәr) n. 1. The largest bone in the skeletal system, stretching from hip to knee. When cracked by a hairline fracture again and again, this bone becomes the container for the words of the Girl Runner’s Pocket Dictionary, where they will be carried like inalienable truths.
 
Fit (fǐt) adj. 1. Magical sensation when a girl runner’s body is in prime condition, such that her cadence turns over so fast, she floats, dissolving the boundary between body and air. This sensation is why a girl runner loves running more than anything else. 2. Coach’s directive to an injured girl runner as in, “Stay fit,” which translates to, “Don’t gain weight.” 
 
Fold (fōld) v. 1. Technique for pinching a girl runner’s scapula, side stomach, mid-bicep, and center-thigh with a shiny caliper to determine her body fat percentage. 2. How the skin of a girl runner’s stomach sags over itself when she achieves the desired body fat percentage.
 
Fro-Yo (frō-yō) n. 1. Fat-free, sugar-free, icy concoction served in the campus dining hall that girl runners consume massive amounts of because it tastes like cold air so there can’t be many calories in it.
 
Gap (gǎp) n. 1. The space between a girl runner’s thighs that indicates her quadricep muscles have not gotten too big. Girl runners will check for the gap by pausing at every mirror until looking like a runner becomes more important than being one.
 
Girl Runner (gûrl rǔn’әr) n. 1. The word used by Coach to refer to the athletes on his team, and though, at eighteen, nineteen, twenty, a girl runner may think of herself as a woman, she is not.
 
Gray Rocking (grā rǒk-īng) v. 1. Technique used to endure Coach’s worst rants about lack of dedication, or fitness, or talent. When Coach screams at an already heartbroken girl runner who just lost the biggest race of her season, he will do this when her teammates are present and as he screams— You’re worthless, You’re a fuckin’ embarrassment —a girl runner will imagine herself an impenetrable rock as her entire body rattles with shame. This technique will enable a girl runner to dissociate, but the body and mind are porous, this solution is only temporary. 
 
Hall of Fame (hôl әv fām) n. 1. An honor bestowed by a girl runner’s university to coaches based on their bios. This accolade is also bestowed on athletes nominated by Coach. A girl runner who asserts her autonomy in the face of Coach’s win-at-all-costs training methods will never be nominated or inducted, no matter that her victories—All-American honors, A National Title—are stats on the bio earning Coach’s induction.
 
Heifer (hěf’әr) n. 1. What girl runners call a girl runner who runs fast despite a higher-than-desired body-fat percentage.
 
Hills (hǐls) v. 1. Coach’s favorite workout because there’s a maple tree where he can suck on sunflower seeds and scream split times at the girl runners circling him again, and again. n. 1. Green outcroppings a girl runner will, in the years after graduation, run to the top of, searching for that elusive confidence.
 
Investment (ǐn-věst’mәnt) n. 1. A girl runner who has been allotted scholarship money from her university. Every investment carries a different amount of risk, and thus, Coach regularly re-examines these investments and retains the power to eliminate any girl runner who turns out to be a bad investment.
 
Ladders (lǎd’әrs) n. 1. A girl runner’s favorite workout, which involves a series of intervals with brief periods of rest in between. Each interval increases in duration until reaching a peak, and then climbing back down the ladder. Girl runner loves ladders because of the way the world clicks into a cadence of soles slapping rubber, and her pulse throbs through every muscle, every bone, every tendon, until her feet are no longer touching earth, just skimming the surface. 2. What a girl runner will climb during her all-consuming corporate career because proving herself worthy with seventy-plus hour workweeks is easier than asking who, exactly, she’s trying to prove her worth to.
 
Letter of Intent (lět’әr әv ǐn-těnt’) n. 1. Document signed by a seventeen-year-old girl runner committing her legs, her body, to Coach in exchange for college tuition. The signing of this document is photographed by local newspapers because it isn’t the sort of thing that happens often in a girl runner’s hometown. In the photograph, a girl runner usually wears an unfashionable striped button-down and sits at a table, awkwardly gripping a pen, while her beaming parents stand behind her, hands on each bony shoulder.
 
Megastar (měg’ә-stär) n. 1. What girl runner is in her hometown during the years when she breaks records, wins titles, and floats through her days, carried by bottomless potential and the certainty of a promising future. 2. Coach’s nickname for the girl runner who returns to campus sophomore year after losing fifteen pounds she didn’t have to lose and then wins a national title before her tibia breaks in three places.
 
Mental Health (měn’tl hělth) n. 1. Something that is never discussed in the University’s Athletic Offices and never accounted for on Coach’s bio.
 
MRI-Hum (ěm’är’ï’-hǔm) n. 1. The whirring noise a girl runner hears as her body slides into the tubular machine after two months of telling Coach something is wrong with her quad, after two months of Coach saying it’s in her head, after two months of taking five Aleves with every meal and praying he’s right because she can’t afford the tuition if she turns out to be a bad investment.
 
Ninety (nīn’tē) n. 1. Percentage of collegiate women’s running teams coached by men.
 
No Pain No Gain (nō pān gān nō) interj. 1. Mantra hanging above a girl runner’s bed in her dorm room. 2. What Coach says when a girl runner expresses concern about an ache in her left knee or right hip that will, over time, reveal itself to be the deferred pain of another stress fracture in her femur.
 
Perfume of Chlorine (pûr-fyōō’mәr әv klôr’ēn’) adj. 1. The smell emanating from an injured girl runner who spends hours in the pool to ensure she stays fit and doesn’t become a bad investment.
 
Prick (prǐk) n. 1. Sharp sensation when Coach pinches a girl runner’s ass and says, “I want that gone.” 2. A word sometimes used by girl runners to complain about, while also normalizing, Coach’s behavior. For example, after a pinched ass, girl runners may say, “He’s just being a prick,” or “All men are pricks.” 
 
Recruiting Brochure (rǐ-krōōt’īng brō-shōõr’) n. 1. A glossy promotional catalogue with details about Coach’s team and their accomplishments given to a girl runner’s parents when Coach visits their home as part of his efforts to recruit their daughter to a university that girl runner long thought out of reach because of its high tuition and low acceptance rate. “She’ll be on the cover soon,” Coach says as he eats the brownies a girl runner’s mother baked for him. The more he talks about his team, the more a girl runner, like her parents, will believe him. And when Coach leaves, the girl runner’s parents will tear up with pride for a future that had, until then, been unimaginable.
 
Re-Occurring (rē’ә-kûr-īng) adj. 1. Something that is repetitive in nature, like the way a girl runner draws running stick figures in her spiral notebooks during history class, or the sound of a girl runner’s alarm at 6:03 A.M. every weekday, followed by one banana then running or swimming or weightlifting, or the dreams a girl runner will have for years after college graduation. In these dreams, a girl runner arrives to campus bloated beyond recognition and Coach makes her run hills while he sucks sunflower seeds and screams, “Not enough.”
 
Skittles (skǐt’ls) n. 1. Rainbow candy a girl runner loved in high school such that her mother sends care packages full of bags that are then gifted to the lacrosse team. 2. Drink made with low-shelf vodka and low-calorie purple Gatorade that tastes strangely like the rainbow candy, and is most often used to rehydrate after a poor performance and to forget the way Coach gripped a girl runner’s shoulders, shaking her into running smarter next time and specking her cheeks with his spit because that’s what happens when someone screams close to another’s face while sucking on sunflower seeds.  
 
Sticks-and-Stones (stǐks-әnd-stōns) n. 1. Not the only mechanism for breaking bones.
 
Tit-Reduction (tǐt rǐ-dǔk’shen) n. 1. What a girl runner will want after overhearing Coach describe her breasts as “too bouncy,” even though by all objective standards, girl runner’s tits are not reducible.
 
The Runner’s High (thә rǔn’әr’s hī) n. 1. A fantastical idea that if one runs far enough, the world will alight with magic, mostly talked about by those who never run. 2. A rare sensation that occurs when a girl runner returns to campus decades after graduation and is forced to take shelter from a storm under the bleachers at the track. There, she will smoke a joint while listening to the steel-drum patter above her, and when a rainbow arcs the sky, she will know, for the first time ever, that she doesn’t have to forgive him, she just has to forgive the girl runner who blamed herself for all the words she still carries in her bones. 
 
Undermine (ǔn’dәr-mīn’) v. 1. Tendency of Coach to dismiss the intuitive intelligence of girl runners in such a way that girl runners stop trusting themselves.
 
Victory (vik’tә-rẽ) n. 1. The state or fact of having defeated an opponent or of having achieved success. Over time, the presence or absence of victory will come to define a girl runner’s worth. 2. The last word a girl runner will scribble with blue ink on a scrap of paper in the days after the runner’s high. Girl runner will then light the paper and drop it into a metal bowl, like she did with all the other words. Then she’ll stand, body pressed against the counter, and watch the full moon rise in the eastern kitchen window, as the scribbled word fades and fades until there’s nothing left to burn.

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Allison Snyder is a writer living in northern New Mexico. In 2016, she traded a legal career in Manhattan for running shoes and a used car and set out to live a simpler, less material-driven life. Her work has appeared in The Masters Review, Ninth Letter, and New York Times (Modern Love), among other places. She is currently working on a satirical novel that explores the lasting aftermath when female bodies are commoditized at sport’s highest levels. When she’s not writing, she’s most often in the wild with her dog, Pippi. To learn more about her work, visit www.allisonmsnyder.com or find her on Instagram at allisonmsnyder.