Tales from another mother runner : triumphs, trials, tips, and tricks from the road : a collection from badass mother runners

268 Pages·2015·1.46 MB·English

by  McDowell

TALES FROM
ANOTHER
Mother
Runner
Other Books by
Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea
Run Like a Mother: How to Get Moving—
and Not Lose Your Family, Job, or Sanity
Train Like a Mother: How to Get Across Any Finish Line—
and Not Lose Your Family, Job, or Sanity
TALES FROM
ANOTHER
Mother
Runner
Triumphs, Trials, Tips, and Tricks from the Road
A Collection from Badass Mother Runners
Edited by Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea
To certified—and aspiring—
BAMRs everywhere
CONTENTS
Introduction
01 Ownership: You Are a Runner
Taking the Title and Running with It by Nicole Blades
I Just Try Really Hard by Meredith Atwood
Baby Bump and Run by Jenny Everett
MY RUNNING PATH
02 Perspective: A Mile Is a Mile
Running for My Life by Nicole Knepper
Mother Runner Defined by Kara Douglass Thom
Expectations Are Everything: A Tale of Three Half-Marathons by
Alisa Bonsignore
Defying Gravity by Dimity McDowell
WHAT A MOTHER RUNNER LOOKS LIKE
03 Support: You Can’t Go It Alone
Friends with Benefits by Tish Hamilton
Taking the Long Way Home by Heather Johnson Durocher
Running Apart by Jennifer Graham
UNSOLICITED ADVICE
04 Joy: Open Heart and Light Legs
Running with Jo-eey by Kristin Armstrong
Recipe for Double Digits by Adrienne Martini
A Ghost Story by Marit Fischer
CELEBRITY DREAM RUN
05 Strength: You Are More Badass Than You Thought
I Dreamed We Were Running by Alison Overholt
The Middle Finger by Susan Schorn
Up the Down Escalator by Michelle Theall
IN HER SHOES
06 Ambition: Dream Big, Step Up
Who Needs Prada? I’ve Got Coach. by Bethany Meyer
A Speck Through Space by Katie Arnold
Coming of Age by Sarah Bowen Shea
TMI, THE EXTENDED EDITION
07 Persistence: Hang on; You’ve Got This
If You Don’t Run, You Can’t Win by Terzah Becker
3.1 Miles: Taking Control of Me by Amy Bailey
Nine Runs, Nine Lives by Rachel Walker
TODAY I RAN …
Author Biographies
Acknowledgments
TALES FROM
ANOTHER
Mother
Runner
INTRODUCTION
I, Dimity, am in mile 21 of the Nike Women’s Marathon with my sister Sarah
by my side. By all accounts, we’re probably looking pretty capable for just having
run for more than three hours. I’m a spritely thirty-four, Sarah is five years
younger, and we’re charging as fast as mid-pack marathon runners do toward the
finish line. (Read: Walk breaks, previously reserved for aid stations, now happen
randomly and often.) I might even look cute. My long legs are sleek from miles
of marathon training, I got an expensive haircut less than a week ago, and I’m
wearing a black running dress, which is as Project Runway as running gear gets.
Okay, wavy, white sweat lines decorate the dress pits, and a Team in Training
coach—not my coach, mind you—on the sidelines just told me to shake out my
arms, so I’m clearly not the picture of Perfect Running Form, but all things
considered? Capable and cute.
On the inside though, I’ve fallen apart. I don’t think I’ll ever see the finish
line, and quite frankly, I have no interest in getting there. “This sucks. This
sucks. This sucks,” is on repeat in my head, not quite the you-can-do-it mantra I
need. I’m not listening to music, so I can’t power up Gwen Stefani and her B-A-
N-A-N-A-S to get me through. I’m D-O-N-E. The finisher’s silver Tiffany
necklace waiting for me at the end is about as enticing as a plastic spider ring
given out on Halloween in lieu of candy. Don’t. Want. It.
All I want? To not have to run another step. Ever again. Sarah is no help. In
her own world of hurt, she gets mad at me when I set a modest goal (run thirty
feet to that cone, then we can walk) and bail on it twenty feet into the challenge.
“You can’t do that, Ditty!” she complains. “Not fair.” Her words sting as much as
my left hip, which has flared up like a firecracker.
Although mile 21 of any marathon isn’t a particularly pleasant place to be, our
situation is worse because we went out too fast. Much too fast. Our first miles
were in the low eights, a very ambitious pace for most, and ridiculously so for
me; my longest training run was 16 miles because of a mid-training stress
fracture in my left heel. Despite knowing better as we cruised through the first
miles, I kept thinking, “This is awesome! We’re flying and banking time.” You
can’t bank time in a running race any more than you can open a savings account
that pays 25 percent interest. But rational thought has no place at a marathon
party when I’m wearing a cute dress and a sassy haircut; when my sister, who
makes me laugh like nobody else, is by my side; and when the crisp, fresh air of
hip San Francisco makes me believe anything, including twenty-six consecutive
eightish-minute splits, is possible.
Until I hit mile 21, and all I can think is, “WTF? Why am I doing this?”
As I hobble along, I can’t recall the reasons I’m out here. All I can concentrate
on is how much my leg hurts and how stupidly far 26.2 miles is to go. Rewind,
though, and I was running 26.2 because I needed to get as far away as I could
from postpartum depression, which hung over me after my second kid was born
like the fog that almost always clouds San Francisco Bay. I was running 26.2
because if I didn’t have a goal, a reason to throw back my covers in the morning
and get my endorphins flowing, I wasn’t confident I’d find my way back to some
happier version of myself, the self that wanted to engage with my husband, my
friends, the world. I was running 26.2 because it meant a weekend with my
sister, and my friends Sarah and Katherine, during which I’d laugh, achieve,
celebrate, shop, and, I hoped, feel joy—and kind of human again.
I wanted and needed it all so badly that after the podiatrist diagnosed the
fracture and I stopped at Wendy’s for a feel-better Frosty (not surprisingly, it
didn’t make me feel better), I immediately got on the phone with my coach to
come up with a plan B. The fracture was bad enough that it should’ve ended my
marathon goal, but that simply wasn’t an option. I didn’t want to watch others
race. I needed to go the distance myself.
After trailing Dimity’s easy-to-spot, 6’ 4”, dress-wearing figure since mile 9, I,
Sarah (her friend, not her sister), am less than a quarter-mile behind her, and I
am having my own marathon-inspired pity party. Thanks to sun and heat more
often associated with L.A. than San Francisco, my white tech tee is heavy with
sweat. I’m trendy, too, with my running skirt, but my thighs are having a
shouting match, arguing over which one is in more pain from chub-rub. A
hydration pack around my waist has chafed a raw spot on my lower back that
probably is only the size of a quarter but feels like a pancake of pain. My
marathon coach, Paula, a few feet ahead of me, is as perky and wiry as a
Chihuahua; every few steps, she yips an upbeat, “Stay strong, Sarah; you’ve got
this. You’re doing great, girlfriend!”
Which is a whopper of a lie, but I’ll get to that in a minute.