Mary Cain Tells Her Story—and She’s Not Holding Back

You might know Mary Cain as the running prodigy who burst onto the scene at age 12, or remember her joining the elite Nike Oregon Project under Alberto Salazar at 16. Now, in her memoir This Is Not About Running, Cain tells the full, unsparing story of what followed. The following is an excerpt.

I strap on my five-pound Nike wrist weights in the parking lot. I start my stopwatch and head off campus. I think my power walk would look weird on my usual running route. For my daily runs, I loop the 300-meter fields near my dorm. Continuously. For 45 to 75 minutes. I flip directions to keep it interesting. Some people call me crazy for running on such short loops, but I enjoy it. It’s easy to zone out. But for these walks, I don’t want anyone to see me.

Maybe I’m crazy saying this, but I’ve been a little worried my behavior might make people think I’m crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m totally fine. I just cry a lot. And I am hungry a lot. And I’m tired a lot. And maybe sometimes, occasionally, here and there, I imagine killing myself. But no one can see that I think that daily. They can’t. But if they were going to, I think it’d be when I’m power walking across campus with wrist weights. I’d judge that girl. And if I’d judge that girl, then I can’t risk my classmates seeing me like that. Because maybe then they’d see those new, not-so-good thoughts.

Alberto received my hydrostatic weigh-in results. I couldn’t access the file when he forwarded me the email, so he just told me the results. It’s clear I have extra fat that I must lose. I don’t really understand the metrics, or what’s standard, but I trust that the Nike rep and Alberto know their stuff. So if there’s fat for me to lose, then I have to commit to shedding it. I weigh 115 pounds.

So I’m not really taking an end-of-season break. To shed the fat, I’m supposed to go on long power walks with my wrist weights. And still do daily core.

Last year, my fall buildup in running was so gradual that I didn’t even hit 40 miles per week of running until late November. I loved the slow build after a long season, but this year we can’t afford to do that. Alberto says I’m far behind the other women on my team. So I need to fast-track my fitness. And that means bumping up my mileage, continuing to cross-train more, and doing a third track session each week. This unanticipated extra session is hard to build around my class schedule, but Alberto is adamant that I need it.

I glance at my Nike GPS watch and see that I’m nearly at 60 minutes, so I head back toward my dorm room. To hit the full time, I do one extra loop of the parking lot, too embarrassed to be seen power walking back and forth in front of my dorm.

***

“The Oregon coach says she’s fat because she can’t stop eating bagels and pizza,” Darren says, sitting on the bench outside the Bo Jackson building.

He takes up a lot of space, crossing his ankle over his knee and leaning back, with his arms spread up on the back of the bench. He looks smug as he talks about the college girl. I sit on the turf, stretching. I just finished a workout without crying. Well, I started hyperventilating near the end, but there were no literal tears. Maybe I’m toughening up.

I chug some water and listen to Darren. We’re doing a quick psychology session before I head back to the school campus. He’ll drop me off.

“I work with that athlete all of the time,” Darren says. “She’s a total head case. Worse than you. She also really does have a pizza problem. She tells me she likes to go because it’s her chance to hang out with friends. Pathetic,” he says. He glances at me as I zip my warm-up jacket. “You haven’t gained nearly as much weight as her.”

I smile. I can’t help but be relieved that he’s talking about someone else’s weight. But an even deeper part of me envies her. Alberto and I used to go to an Italian place near his house and I’d always order a pizza. Now I just order salad. The last two times I got pizza he made a comment when my weight was up the next day. I miss pizza.

Darren compares the Oregon girl and me during every psychology session. He is the sports psych for the both of us. The University of Oregon pays him to do psychology work with their team.

Some of the girls Darren compares me to, I have come to dislike. But I feel bad for this girl. She’s also having trouble losing weight like her coach wants. But my own relief at being called less fat than her outweighs the discomfort gnawing at the back of my mind.

Over the last few weeks, my weight has started to yo-yo. After initially dropping to 113 pounds, my weight has creeped back up to 117. I haven’t done anything differently with eating. I don’t know why I’m not still losing weight.

It looks like my face is bloated most days. So Alberto thinks I’m constipated. Or that my lack of a period is making me hold more water weight.

He’s asked his doctor friends, and they say this is a legitimate theory. His solution to my weight problem is for me to cut out salt. That way my weight will be down in no time. He told me Sonia O’Sullivan ate just apples the days before races to drop weight, so that’s also an option. Go on a short-term fruit diet to quickly cut. My stomach growls just thinking about it. Hopefully cutting salt does the trick.

Excerpted from the book THIS IS NOT ABOUT RUNNING, provided courtesy of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2026. Reprinted by permission.