There’s a white, oval, vinyl bumper sticker on the back of my Subaru Crosstrek. It’s been through hell. The edges have curled in, and the once-black numbers have mostly faded to gray. It’s lived on three cars and survived a few minor fender benders. My friends have seen it and asked, snidely, “You still have that on there?”
Yes, haters. I do. I earned it at 25 when I raced the 2013 Runner’s World Half Marathon. I trained for months, ran a decent 2:15:56, drank all the postrace beers, and did what any giddy first-time finisher would do: I bought the 13.1 sticker. It was like a medal I could show off in traffic, and the varsity jacket I never got to wear in school.
I wasn’t a great athlete growing up. I played some Little League baseball and after-school soccer. But I certainly wasn’t a runner. That was a sick form of punishment that gym teachers doled out. The first time I remember truly hating running was in the sixth grade, when I hid behind a tree during the mile. I watched my classmates circle the field while I played it cool and waited for the perfect moment to blend back into the crowd.
Many years later, I got a job at Men’s Health magazine, in the same office building as Runner’s World, where everyone hit the pavement on their lunch break. The culture was intoxicating. And, because my one true north star in life is FOMO, I badly wanted to join them.
So, I signed up for a 5K. Then a 5-miler. Then a 10K. I got a Garmin watch. I learned what negative splits were. Eventually, I committed to the half. Training for that race was the first time I’d ever stuck with something athletic. Over the next several months, I followed a structured plan, gradually built up mileage, and said things like, “Can’t go to the bar tonight, I have a long run in the morning,” with a totally straight face. Who the hell was I?
A real athlete, finally.
So, the sticker. I couldn’t really explain why it’s still there, all these years later, until I learned about a concept called the “extended self,” which consumer behavior expert Russell Belk, PhD, introduced in a landmark Journal of Consumer Research study in 1988. Belk found that your possessions can become a part of your identity, and when you lose them, you feel like you lose some of yourself. (Cue my friends: “Dude, it’s a sticker. You can buy another one for, like, three bucks.”)
Weirdly, Belk’s research even suggests that your car can act as your “second skin,” and you feel pain when it’s altered or damaged. So I asked him: “Is my 13.1 sticker basically a tattoo? If I dare scrape it off, will it leave some kind of psychological wound?”
Exactly. “It’s probably better if it slowly wears off from the sun and rain,” Belk says. “A natural death paralleling fading memories rather than ripping the Band-Aid off.”
Belk pointed out another psychological layer at play: I literally pressed the sticker onto my car, and his research shows that “we treasure things we’ve touched.”
But there might be a bit of a loophole, courtesy of Suzanne Shu, PhD, and Charlene Chu, PhD, who study why it hurts to let things go. In a 2023 paper in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, they found that having a small, symbolic memento from a meaningful life event can soften the blow when you lose the tangible thing tied to it. Specifically, taking photos of hard-to-toss items can make parting with the originals easier.
“A picture of the bumper sticker, perhaps even alongside a picture from the race, can help ease the pain of giving up the sticker itself,” Shu told me. “It delays the finality of the ending.”
Eventually, it will end. My sticker will flake off into little pieces and rest in peace somewhere on the side of I-78. Before that happens, maybe I’ll follow Shu’s advice and take a picture of it to preserve my accomplishment. Until then, it stays. Because it reminds me of the time when I proved that I could do hard things. I could fall in love with what I once despised. I could change my idea of who I was and, crucially, who I wasn’t.
Now, here’s the truth: I haven’t exactly been the best runner since then. Over the last 13 years, I’ve had speedy, consistent stretches, followed by extended stints on a DL, and a recent sabbatical where just about the only running I did for a solid year was chasing my toddler around the house.
But occasionally, when I’m getting into my car and catch a glimpse of that sticker in the right light, I remember what it felt like to go from the kid who hid behind a tree to the guy who ran 13.1 straight miles on purpose. It means just as much to me now as it did back then, and it always will.
For that reason alone, I’m never taking it off.
