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afterward, I felt awful, worse than before I had stuffed myself. It was a vicious, terrible cycle, and one that I hid completely. I’m sure my parents suspected, but if they had ever confronted me I would have become furious. My parents stayed silent, true to the culture of our family. They never wanted to do anything that might upset me—the one in the family who made them the most proud.
    I became friends during this time with a fellow runner from Colorado. We had met at several national meets, and somehow we realized that we shared a secret. We confided in each other at meets and in the letters we exchanged about bingeing and purging. But she was the only one who knew, or at least the only person who acknowledged my behavior. Our friendship was incredibly reassuring for me because it made me feel like what I was doing was safe, good for me even. She was a great runner, and she threw up after she ate, so clearly there was nothing wrong with me doing it. It became our bond, a bond in sickness and obsession.
    While I was considering colleges, I originally dreamed of going to school in California. I wanted to live a life completely different than the one I’d always known in Wisconsin, where I could train under the palm trees and spend weekends at the beach. Stanford was among the many schools to recruitme because of my national standing as a runner, but my top choice was UCLA. My parents didn’t really understand what it would mean for me to attend a prestigious school like Stanford, and my dad suggested I go to a small school in Stevens Point, so I could be close to home. I knew I could never compete at the level I dreamed of unless I went to a school with a top track program. But when I began the application process, it became clear that my poor grades would make it difficult for me to get into many of the schools, even with my gift for running. I barely squeaked into UCLA, but as much as they wanted me for their running program, they made it clear that it wasn’t going to be easy for me to maintain my place there.
    And then I met with Peter Tegen, who coached the women’s running team at the University of Wisconsin. Originally from East Germany, he had an aura of greatness about him, and he was known as one of the best coaches in the country. The university had a summer running camp for the best high school runners in the state, which I had attended, so I had met Peter and he had seen me run. My sister Kris was a freshman at the university and on the running team, so I continued to see Peter at her events. When I visited on my recruiting trip, it was clear that all the runners on his team had a huge amount of respect for him. During the practice I sat in on, I watched with interest as Peter walked into the room and the entire team immediately stopped talking or goofing around. As he spoke, they hung on his every word. I was so impressed with him and what seemed like his drive to get his athletes to succeed. I even liked that he didn’t recruit me as aggressively as other programs. It just wasn’tin his nature to be pushy or flamboyant, and this made me even more convinced that his priorities were in the right place and that he was the ideal coach for me. The University of Wisconsin had just won the national championships in cross-country, so becoming part of the best running program in the country was also very enticing. How could I not attend the university in my home state, which was so proud of me and had done so much to support my running? Peter also told me during my recruiting trip that another Wisconsin runner I’d also become friends with during state meets, Mary Hartzheim, was attending Wisconsin on a full scholarship, and that clinched the deal for me. “Where do I sign?” I asked, in my mind already decorating the dorm room I would share with Mary.
    I, too, was granted a full scholarship to the university. Madison was two hours from Stevens Point, so I could still visit