Running Ruminations

In the absence of a PA USATF cross-country meet over the weekend, the girls and I ventured down to Morgan Hill for my big one’s swim meet, the second of the season. If you’ve never been to a swim meet, they remind me a lot of track meets — a lot of down time and lots of hurrying up to wait, punctuated by quick bursts of action — and it makes me appreciate how much my parents moved earth, wind, and water to try to attend as many of my own (track) meets as possible to watch me run very short distances, for very short periods of time, when I was growing up. 

Most people wouldn’t choose to sit around outdoors for 8 hours on a Saturday, and then again on Sunday, to watch someone swim for less than 10 total minutes each day… until it’s your kid, and your kid’s team, and suddenly, you can’t get there early enough, and you’re the last one out the door each day, too. 

Love propels us to do many things.  

As I’ve watched A grow and develop in the year or so that she’s been on the swim team — and since she began swimming with me, in a parent/tot class when she was about 8 months old — I’ve realized that watching her swim has taught me a lot: and not just in the obvious ways. Suffice it to say that before she joined a swim team, I knew very little about swimming; I was one of those fools who would pantomime different strokes because I could never keep them all (all 4 of them, wowwwwwwww) straight. I can’t tell you how to avoid a DQ in most strokes, but I can generally explain how to read a meet sheet and how to not miss your event. (We all have our strengths).

Instead, as I’ve witnessed my eldest daughter’s trajectory with her swimming and have watched her come into her own in the water, I’ve realized that her athletic experience has been teaching me a lot about my own, but with running. In no particular order: 

Keep showing up. Desi said it wonderfully. We all know that sometimes, the hardest step to take is the first. When my daughter first began with her team, she was typically pretty happy to go to practice (90 minutes, 3 times a week, minimum), but of course, as a then 7-year-old, there were times when she didn’t want to because of (insert whatever valid or invalid reason here). In these moments, I’ve often reminded her that sometimes, just getting out there to do your thing is the hardest part (and have recounted timeless occasions when I’ve not particularly “felt” like going for a run during a particularly grueling training block but went anyway and was ultimately happy about it). Even if she didn’t feel like going initially, it’s rare that she has regretted her choice later. The same has been true with me and my running; even if I’d rather spend the time I have to run doing (insert whatever else I could be doing instead), more often than not, I know I’ll ultimately be (happier, in a better mood, sleeping better that night, insert a myriad of characteristics here) if I get out there. Don’t rob yourself of an opportunity simply because your mood or motivation is falling short of your commitment. 

Comparison really is the thief of joy. This is a big one and a routine topic of conversation. For most of the past year, my eldest has been the youngest on her team, which has been both awesome and sometimes challenging. She periodically has days when she finishes practice feeling discouraged or bothered, and it’s not until I practically apply the Jaws of Life to our conversation that I can extract the ultimate reason for her woe: she’s upset she’s the slowest. Or doesn’t have as long a break between sets. Or can’t always finish the full set as prescribed. Or whatever. It’s often not until we have the conversation, wherein I remind her that she’s swimming with her teammates who have a good couple years-plus on her, that I can encourage her to put her doubts at bay, at least moderately. Don’t worry about what others are doing in surrounding (literal and figurative) lanes; keep your eyes facing forward, and focus on your own effort. It’s easier said than done for sure, but believe me, when I have gotten in my own head about my running of late and what it is versus what I think it should be, I have the same conversation that I’ve had with my eight year-old with myself. The only two things we can control are our attitude and effort, so simply worry about those. Nothing else is relevant, and no one is going to do your work for you.  

Learn, be patient, and enjoy the process. Learning how to do something for the first time can be seriously intimidating but also exquisitely fun. Progress can come in leaps and bounds, but if you’re accustomed to picking up things fast or “naturally,” whatever that means, when things become slow-going, it can be hard to not let the minutiae consume you. As my daughter has become a stronger swimmer, she’s naturally beginning to break-down everything to its component parts — to the positioning of her hands, where (and how many) hands should make contact with the wall, all that stuff — and it can sometimes be tempting to want to bulldoze through this process because it’s so.much.tedium. This stuff takes time. Progress may be really fast initially, but then it’ll seem like you have to fight tooth and nail for every half-second or second’s worth of progress. With running, much of the same applies. We may have the loftiest goals ever, but in order to realize them, or even work toward realizing them, we have to be patient and understand that it’s a process or journey to be enjoyed, not something to hastily mow over. There are always more aspects to learn, more material to master, and when we feel like we already know all there is to know, we probably couldn’t be more wrong. 

Helping others is intrinsically rewarding and motivating. It wasn’t until recently that another swimmer closer in age to A joined the team, and perhaps naturally, they’ve taken a liking to each other and try to work together as much as possible during practice. My daughter has been on the team longer and has more competitive experience than her peer, and I see her interacting with her teammate in what I could probably comfortably call a mentorship. My daughter obviously doesn’t know everything there is to know about swimming, but she knows enough to acknowledge that there’s a delta between her knowledge and that of her teammate, and she’s trying to correct it because she wants her to succeed. As running (and the long endurance stuff, in particular) has exploded in popularity over the past decade, marathons, halfs, and arguably even some ultra distances have become accessible and intriguing to the masses; “normal,” “everyday” people are figuring out that those big, scary distances really may not be as big and scary as they seem. You don’t have to be an RRCA certified coach to give new runners pointers as they begin their journeys, and you’ll likely find that doing so brings you at least a modicum of joy and helps reinvigorate your own training. Your experiences don’t need to dictate those of others, but if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to prevent someone else from making the same asinine mistakes that you made. 

I don’t know enough from a physiological standpoint to argue whether running and swimming are similar, and honestly, I don’t particularly care. As a parent who has been watching her child grow in the sport of swimming, I can safely argue that much of what my 8-year-old has been learning are lessons that I, too, have experienced (or continue to experience) as a runner — just with a different backdrop. 

I couldn’t be prouder of my girl and her commitment to her team and to herself, and honestly, she has been a huge source of inspiration to up my own running game. 

It’s somewhat mind-blowing that sport can have such a transformative effect on a person’s life — especially when you consider the actions at their basest parts– but here again, as both a witness and as a participant, it’s so completely obvious that that’s the case.