Running Ruminations

COVID has brought life into a weird relationship with time, where everything seems to be progressing both incredibly slowly and nauseatingly quickly …simultaneously.

Add to the COVID backdrop the (public, private, communal, individual) reckoning related to police officers killing George Floyd (among many others, unfortunately, like Breonna Taylor or Ahmaud Arbery) and the subsequent sudden, crisis-level, ubiquitous emergence of Black Lives Matter, and hot damn, when we talk about “living history,” I think last week was one for the books.

And as I said last week, I’d argue that it’s a good thing. I should be talking to my white daughters about why Black Lives Matter and what they and we can be doing to make this world a better place for our Black and POC brothers and sisters worldwide and specifically here in the US and SJ. All of us should be talking, listening, learning and committing to change because all of us are imperfect and live in an imperfect society.   

That said, talking to your kids about police brutality, or racism, or why Black Lives Matter (and what that means) can be a little more fraught than talking to them about something a bit less nuanced, like, say, why they should not lick streetpoles (or other stupid and gross stuff kids do). I’m not a parenting expert, nor do I want to tell other people how to parent their kids, but I’d argue that all of us should be talking to our children candidly about all of this stuff on developmentally-appropriate levels. My four year-old doesn’t necessarily know what “racism” or “white supremacy” means, for example, but she does know what it means when something is fair or unfair. Obviously it’s not the same, but it’s a start, and we can continue the conversation as she grows up. My nine year-old understands everything much more profoundly, so we’ve been talking about everything a lot more and in better detail and nuance. She has also been reading about it in her issues of The Week Junior, so she has the contextual understanding (or at least the beginnings of it) to know that none of it is an isolated incident.

I believe that we owe it to our kids to try to break or at the very least, diminish, the insidious racist and white supremacist cycle that has predated our (parenting or otherwise) existence in this country; inaction here is complicity. The conversation can’t change if we don’t bring it up and talk about it.

Having the conversations (plural), doing the internal work, educating ourselves (and our progeny), financially supporting organizations and/or individuals doing valuable, meaningful work in the field so we can all do better — I think all of that is more valuable than simply throwing up a black square on IG or making a grandiose statement online. Theatrics are just that after all, theatrics. 

So when everyone is going through a reckoning about how so many of our brothers and sisters in humanity have been treated — how we, ourselves, may have been inadvertently, unknowingly, unconsciously treating them — and millions of people are continuing to get sick and die of a novel coronavirus, as has been the case for 13 weeks, how the hell do we talk or read or write about anything else?

Conveniently, as is the case with running and marathoning: we pace ourselves.

We cannot burn ourselves out because the work is too important; our commitment must be lifelong. Something, every day, will be more far-reaching than a lot all at once and then nothing for indefinitely thereafter. Be the tortoise, not the hare. 

So here we are, thirteen weeks into COVID-dominated life, and SJ began to “open up” a bit last week, with last week Friday being the first day that in-person retail and al fresco dining could open. My family and I aren’t chomping at the bits to go out to eat or go shopping in an enclosed space with tons of other people (tbh that sounds like hell rn), so life around these parts hasn’t changed a lot. For my eldest, mid-week last week we learned that her swim team would be resuming practice soon (contingent on permission from the health department) with all types of modifications in place, so she has been counting down the days until she can be back in the (outdoor) pool. Swim lessons for the youngest can’t yet resume because of how high-contact it is between students and teachers (since they’re in the water with the kids, versus the coaches being on deck for team practice). It was also within the last week that the county announced that families can spend time with other families with whom they don’t reside, preferably outdoors, socially-distanced, and in very small groups (like two families together, tops). It’s all a start and comes at a pretty good time, too, since the kids’ last day of school was last week Friday. 

Camp MOM is in full effect! 

On occupying time and settling mental unrest: 

Cooking: If the front half of COVID was all about tacos, I think I’ve transitioned from that delicacy to homemade hummus. I feel like my blood is part hummus at this point. It’s so good (falafel, too, but that’s more work). However, I have to give a hard pass on dessert hummus; I was sad (also very pissed!) that I lost an entire can of chickpeas to that effort. Never again.  

Running: My running continues to be of the however long I want/however fast I want/whenever I want mentality, which is just lovely. Wolfpack is having a monthlong elevation challenge in June, so it has been fun to try to go a little out of my way each day to get some hills in … or not, again, depending on how I feel. A’s 5k training is going well, and she just recently began cracking 3 miles on our runs together. She’s about to have her run/walk ratios change, too, so it has been pretty cool for her to see how she’s getting faster and stronger. She wiped out on our run on Monday and got a small road rash from it, but she got up and finished, bloody knee and all. Some days are harder for her than others — as is the case for any of us — but she has kept at it. We’re at about week 7 of a 10-week program for her. I’m so proud.

Oh! And good news: Janet and I began running together again last weekend! That was another item that the health department said was ok (exercising outdoors with people with whom you don’t reside, socially distanced, that sort of thing). I know that some people had already begun exercising with their friends (or that they hadn’t stopped… ), but I didn’t want to take any chances and played by the rules all along. It has been *so* nice to be back with her!! 

Last week Boston also announced that the rescheduled September date was cancelled — making this year’s race a virtual endeavor — which, while not surprising, was still gutting to a lot of people. Who knows what will happen for Boston 2021 (or any races in the early parts of the year, for the matter). Global Running Day was also last week, but in the big scheme of the aforementioned personal/individual/global/societal unrest surrounding Black Lives Matter and COVID, it seemed like it wasn’t nearly as big a deal as it usually is.  

Listening: So many podcasts, not enough time. I especially recommended the most recent episode of Keeping Track with Alison Désir,  and KT’s earlier episode with Sally Kipyego. The most recent three or four episodes on NPR’s Code Switch podcast were also really interesting and pretty heartbreaking. Lauren Fleshman and Jesse Thomas’ Work Play Love most recent episode was pretty fascinating, too. I’ve added a handful of new podcasts to my queue within the past couple weeks, but if you have some to share, please do! (I think I will need to start running doubles daily so I have an opportunity to hear them all, unless I will just begin wearing earbuds constantly around my kids, ha). 

Reading: I didn’t know who Samantha Irby was, but when I saw her newest book of essays (Wow, No Thank You.) on my library’s ebooks homepage, I thought eh, what the hell, I like essays. She is so funny, and disgusting (in the best possible way – I mean, my heart goes out to anyone who has to write about inconvenient bowel habits because damn, I get it), and honestly I looked forward to going to bed each night because it was the last thing I read before shutting my eyes (and I tried to muffle my laughter each night so as to not wake up my better half). I’m also now in the process of reading Me and White Supremacy, Between the World and Me, and Mindy Kaling’s Why Not Me?, tempering the heavy with the light. I hope that I can finish all of them before they’re due because other people are waiting for them (good, but dang! Pressure is on). Oh, and I also subscribed to Layla Saad’s podcast but haven’t listened to it yet. The kids and I knocked off another few novels in the last couple weeks, too — mostly Beverly Cleary stuff and Bean & Ivy books — and I’ve been doing a deep dive into age- and developmentally-appropriate more diverse lit beyond the stuff they’re most familiar with. (There’s *so* much good stuff out there, much more than I knew about).

Stuff Your Kids Can Do: Make some bath bombs. It’s messy (good for outdoors) but fun, and it makes bath time a bit more entertaining. Summer project? Sure. We did it during homeschooling, too, and they had a lot of fun with it. 

Looking Forward to: …tomorrow (Thursday) ARP opens!!!!! I am so excited to go back to run there!!! 

Have a good rest of your week, stay healthy, be well, read and listen, and take care. xo