Canyon del Oro runner winning fight vs. anorexia

The cross-country season would begin in a week, and Bridgette Doucet needed to know: Could she run for the Oro Valley Canyon del Oro team?

She talked to her parents, Jeff and Carrie, and her high school coach, Rick Glider. Her nutritionist and therapist chimed in as well.

Doucet, a junior, had been diagnosed with anorexia the summer before her freshman year. She always was a wisp of a young woman — even when she ate normally she'd weigh maybe 112 pounds — but now she was down to about 100 pounds. Everyone who loved her worried what a cross-country season might to do her body.

"We all had to decide if I was going to run cross country and possibly end up in a hospital or get better and see where I am in track season," Bridgette said.

Finally, Jeff and Carrie decided their daughter wouldn't run. They had seen what anorexia had done to Bridgette's older sister, Heather, how she needed to be placed in an in-patient facility in Wickenburg and receive her meals through a feeding tube.

That wasn't going to happen to Bridgette, even if sitting out the season broke her heart.

"We didn't want to take any chances," Jeff said.

Jeff and Bridgette are standing in the afternoon sun Saturday, Jeff shading Bridgette with his hat. Bridgette has just finished second in the girls Division II 1,600-meter final, duplicating her finish from the 3,200-meter run Wednesday.

Bridgette is all smiles, despite getting passed on the final lap by Flagstaff's Tatiana Gillick. There is a not a note of disappointment in Jeff's voice or body language, either.

"She's amazing," Jeff said.

Imagine having a child who loves to run and is good at it, too. But she has an eating disorder and her idea of getting in shape is to starve herself, believing that the less she weighs the faster she'll go. Would you let her run? Or would you be worried that every step and every race were bringing her one step closer to that feeding tube?

"When Bridgette runs, it's like watching a ballerina," Carrie told the Arizona Daily Star. "That grace and that beauty and talent that God gave her. However, for her, it's also like watching the dance of death because it's very difficult for her to maintain that balance that she needs.

"I don't care what medal, what title or what record she breaks. That means nothing to me if she's not alive."

It was an idea that pushed Bridgette to the edge. She wanted to be healthy and she knew how important proper nutrition was for an athlete. But the idea became an obsession, each pound she lost an affirmation that she was getting in peak condition for the cross-country season.

"The more on top of it I got mentally, the more physically weak I felt and the more I was spiraling down," Bridgette said. "It twisted everything that was good and healthy into something unhealthy, but it was something I didn't want to give up."

As the school year began, she had no choice. While her teammates were running cross country, Bridgette attended an outpatient clinic. She began to understand the difference between eating well and not eating at all. She slowly started to gain weight, and when track season began her support group agreed that she could participate, as long as there was constant dialogue between them. She takes supplements and runs no more than 30 miles a week, at least 10 fewer than Glider normally demands of his distance runners.

"She's healthier. She looks good, and she's kept her nutrition up," Jeff said, adding that Bridgette's weight is up to 108. "But it's a lifelong battle."

Doucet hopes to run cross country next fall. After that, who knows? Anorexia doesn't lend itself to long-range plans.

It's a one-day-at-a-time fight, and on Saturday, as her arms and legs pumped around the track at Mesa Community College, Doucet came out on top.

"It's the most impressive miracle," she said.

That it is.

Reach Bordow at scott.bordow@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/sBordow