In the fall of 1996, when New Jersey's foliage was ablaze and I had pubescent hormones pulsing through my little woman body, I wanted to be a runner. Elegant and nimble, I had dreams of becoming a tough independent force flying down windy country roads. I also had a crush on a smart-ass guy, and I imagined we'd fill the cross-country team bus with sparring flirtation on the way to practice. But mostly, I wanted to be a runner.

It did not particularly surprise nor faze me that I was the slowest in the bunch, and thankfully, it didn't seem to matter much. Though we were a team, our goals were largely focused on beating our "personal best."  Rather than empirical scores based on what other people can do, your personal best is exactly what it sounds like: the best you can do. There was no need to beat the spindly-legged seven-minute milers (good, cause that was never gonna happen), I just had to improve on my best time. And for that brief period in my life, I was part of a group of women who were encouraged not to compare themselves to anyone around them. Our successes were related solely to what each of us could do.

So I cruised along on woodsy trails, sweating like a madwoman during innumerable torturous drills, as I aimed to get faster and stronger. I was in a deep sort of awe at what my body could do, how it responded when pushed, and how gratifying it felt to work so hard. For two years I ran with the team, until my jock days were defeated by my trying-to-be-cool phase, and I started smoking cigarettes at the local diner after school.

High school, thank god, was a long time ago, and I quit smoking a while back. And while I've never thought I would want to bring anything from high school back into my life, I find myself suddenly nostalgic for the idea of the personal best. What would we all lose if we stopped comparing ourselves to everyone out there? I have a hunch that this is a case where there is no there there, and that we can all lose a ton of junk taking up residence in our precious mind-space.

I'm tired--no, exhausted--and frankly fed-up with this push and pull with my body. It's a body from dairy farmer stock, and will always be of the curvy, hourglass figure, more Marilyn than mini, more bombshell than boyish. When I sit down to think what I want from my life, losing weight isn't on the list at all.  Baking the just-right apricot tart, living in Paris, having a gaggle of fat, pink babies, and owning a red bicycle--yes please. But losing weight? No.

But we all, no matter our shape or size, want to feel great about the bodies we inhabit. Scary-skinny starlets, fad diets, guests on Oprah, and ab rollers create incessant, meaningless chatter that gets in the way of our ability to think clearly and reasonably about ourselves, our bodies, and what's most important to us. As I've learned from Weetabix, fuck that noise. What if we tuned out all the staticky garbage from out there and tuned in to finding a personal best that's actually relevant?

Are you choking on my earnestness? Well here's something serious to chew on: I'm trading in weight-loss goals for fitness goals. If there's one thing I know about myself, it's that I am most at ease in this skin, and most impressed by these legs, when I focus on what they can do rather than what they look like. And the rest, I know, starts to fall into place from there.

I want to be a runner again, and I want to run five miles. Somehow this has become my gold standard of fitness. I'm learning again how to run without hyperventilating or giving up after five minutes. Intervals and tempo runs (speeding up a wee bit past my comfort zone) are a challenge, but when the Beastie Boys are blaring through my headphones I feel like I can take flight. And there's nothing more gratifying than folding my torso over my legs afterwards, stretching out the muscles that can do a lot more than I think. --Sarah McColl

What will be your personal best? What goal are you working toward? Tell the comments, or wax polished and poetic for 800-1000 words to get a Guest Post. E-mail sarah_mccoll@condenast.com