Best Mom Tip #180: Run with them

Yesterday I got to realize a parenting daydream 9 years in the making.  In January of 2004 I had just finished coaching a high school cross country team, completed my one and only marathon to date, and began the serious "are we having kids now" discussion with my husband.  By April I knew I was pregnant with my first beautiful baby.

I knew she was a girl.  I would talk to her on runs, which I continued until 1 week before she was born when my doctor told me to stop because I was not helping her rather slow growth rate.  I would tell her that we were strong and healthy and that cool girls run.  I would tell her what made me nervous about becoming a mom (I hope I know how to love you enough) and what worried me about my body (why are you making my knees hurt so much?) and random things I was thinking about (do you think you'd like your walls to be blue like the sky?).

I would dream of having these conversations for real when she was old enough to run with me.  I could picture us taking the laps at our park and heading down the hill back toward our neighborhood.  I imagined a time when running together was like story time or bedtime-just something we did. Together.  I held (and still do hold) the hope that if we run, maybe we'll still have something in common when she's 13 and doesn't like me anymore.

So yesterday, I ran with my girl.  At 8 she is old enough to participate in most 5K events and she was interested in joining me-and getting a medal.  We went to the 5K that accompanies the Georgia Marathon so there was a lot going on and plenty to see.  We went to the race Expo on Saturday.  We rode the train in the dark and walked along the city streets with other runners.  We heard the national anthem together and cheered.  We watched the wheel chair start and talked about how impressive that is.

In the race itself, people told her how well she was doing and how fast she was.  I got to tell her about pacing and form and how to shorten and lengthen her strides with the hills.  And we chatted and passed people and jogged, very slowly, the entire 3.1 miles.  She's a rock star.  And my heart is full of my daydream come true.

Best Mom Tip #158: Run in the rain

I am sort of training for a half marathon. I say sort of because I have not actually registered. In fact, the next half marathon that I would be likely to run in is in January. So let's say I'm training for a 10k--that I may run through my neighborhood on a random Thursday morning.

Anyway, the point is, I've started running again. I love running. It makes me feel strong and tough and like I could conquer ANYTHING. You know, if ANYTHING involves jogging very slowly for 3 or 4 miles. Then I would need a break and some water and maybe to retie my shoe and then ANYTHING better watch out. 'Cause here I come.

I have now had enough children to recognize a pattern in my post-baby physical fitness recovery. I have learned that although I can lose the weight within a few months of stopping nursing, it takes me a full year to get my joints and muscles strong enough to run again. I have worked hard in the 14 months since Harry's birth and I am finally back to running. I love my dance classes and weight training, but running just feels different. It is liberating. It makes me feel like me again. It makes me feel like I could crush the really skinny moms with my gigantically muscular thighs. Although I doubt that will come up.

I ran in the rain this week and it was wonderful. Because it was not 95 degrees and because it feels very hard core to run in inclement weather. Granted, the only thing hard core about my life is that I occasionally touch human excrement with my bare hands, but running in the rain feels cool-girl tough to me right now. Like I should get a tattoo. Or go sky diving. Or both--maybe my tattoo should be of a parachute.

Running makes me feel like I could re-tile my water damaged kitchen floor by myself. And that I could probably just hang that drywall to finish off the attic closets while Jay is at work. Jay does not like to hear me say things like this because he occasionally comes home to find bizarre projects underway that result in us eating out for a week. He is right to be concerned.

Next week I will feel like the slowest runner ever and that I will never be able to break 5 miles and that my knees are just one more part of me that is inching toward the grave. But this week? I am invincible. This week I bought smaller jeans.

Best Mom Tip #156: Ignore the other moms, Part 1

I waste a lot of my mental time and energy comparing myself to other moms. This frequently happens at the YMCA, but it can be just about anywhere I go. I will come out of a class or in from a run looking like my face has been replaced by a giant beet and I inherited my hair from Grandma Medusa and I will see a tall, thin, graceful mom herding her children toward the car. She is slightly sweaty, but really, on her it looks good.

A lot of the super-fit moms are in the running club. This is why the running club intimidates me. They say things like, "I'm going to do 8 miles on Thursday." Then they jog off in their coordinating visors and running skirts. They also bond and chat while they run. I am capable of making one noise while running and it is a sound that, if you heard it coming from your dog, you would go ahead and have the poor thing put down.

I will later see these same moms at PTA and church and the grocery store and I will feel bad that they have long, flowing hair while I am still growing mine out from the decision I made two years ago to have 1-inch-long hair with pink and purple highlights. I'm not sure what I was thinking.

They dress well. They use "accessories." They seem to remember to put on makeup when they leave the house. Even the running club moms. I talked with one mom today who had on eyeliner under her visor. How did she get that to stay on? My actual skin was melting off of my face because it is August and this is Georgia. Turns out her kid sits across the table from my kid in the first grade so I am going to have to continue to feel inadequate in her presence.

I'm trying to overcome this problem. I recognize that my constant comparing myself to others affects no one but myself. I realize that it dings my self esteem and belittles my efforts at health, fitness, and my general sense of well-being. So I'm going to try. My first step is to actually get to know the people who intimidate me the most.

When my beautiful, size-zero friend Jill had a baby and still had to deal with the fact that her clothes didn't fit right afterwards, it made me realize that skinny girls feel the same way I do. We are all just trying to figure out how to function as moms and wives and co-workers and volunteers and feel good about ourselves at the same time. I will try to remember this again later today when I am faced with an amazon mother of 3 and her perfectly toned legs. Really. I'm trying.

Really.