The Best Effort
Last Saturday, Girls on the Run of Bexar County held our end-of-the-season 5K. 104 girls, their running buddies, and friends and families showed up to complete this event, the goal the girls had been working toward for 10 weeks.
Even though we’re called Girls on the Run, we’re not exactly a running program. That is, our goal is not to teach girls how to run, although that certainly is part of what we do. Rather, our goal is to teach girls how to make healthy life choices, to set and reach goals, to respect themselves and others, to be confident. Running is the tool we use to do this, an incredible tool that yields incredible results.
For this race, rather than handing out 72 or so medals to the top three places, male and female, all age groups, we decided to give out only 6: Top 3 male and top 3 female. We weren’t concerned about how the girls placed. We’ve impressed upon them throughout the season that the point of the 5K was finishing, not winning. The fact that they showed up to the 5K meant that for 10 weeks they’d been giving it their all and were already winners. All that was left for them to do on race day was to cross the finish line. Time didn’t matter. Their best effort did.
The crowd gathered at the finish line to cheer the girls on as they approached, faces glistening, smiles wide. The first several finshers were men, the overall winner a retired colonel and cancer survivor. The next two were first-time 5K runners who looked just as overjoyed as the girls did when they crossed the line.
After a few minutes, we saw the first group of girls coming up over the final hill.
What we saw from our vantage point was this. Four girls ran hard, while their running buddies hung back, encouraging them to run. The four girls sprinted through the line, first and second place nose to nose, third and fourth a few steps behind, also nose to nose. First and second place were winded and flushed and smiling hard. Later, they beamed when I placed the medals around their necks.
What I discovered later, from a different vantage point, was this. The first two girls were in the program, completing the fall season. The third was an alumnus, who’d been in the program twice and was running with a friend. They all ran hard throughout the race, giving it their best, but as they neared the end, the alumnus and her friend found themselves gaining on the top two runners.
They could have passed them. Part of them really wanted to. But as they came up that final hill, they realized how important it might be to the two girls in front of them to cross the line first. They looked at each other, nodded, and slowed down their pace, just a hair.
They crossed third and fourth, winded and flushed and smiling hard. Time didn’t matter. Their best effort did. We couldn’t be more proud.
Or so we thought, until we saw the face of the 104th girl, who danced across the finish line, smiling all the way.
Confidence. Joy. The most beautiful medals to own. 104 of them last week. How can you beat that?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Confessions of a Lone Runner
I have always said that I prefer to run alone, before dawn. Running alone gives me clarity, helps me focus on my life, my day, whatever issue ails me. It opens my eyes to all I am grateful for, including the stars and sunrise and empty streets.
But I’m sure I run alone out of habit more than preference. I have always been a loner. We are creatures of habit, after all, and a loner gets used to being alone.
Strange, then, that I would end up here, director of an organization that empowers girls through running, that seeks to show girls through experience that they are the arbiters of their own lives and can do anything. Yet they need not do it alone. They are, rather, an essential part of a team—an entire community—and without their contribution the world is much less.
Girls on the Run, this fantastic organization I am blessed to be a part of, has the power to transform lives, not only girls’ lives, but the lives of the remarkable (mostly) women who support it. The organization cannot exist without the network of coaches and other volunteers who weave it together into a strong, beautiful, and resilient web that refuses to let girls fall.
Strange, then, that my task—the loner—at this moment in life is to connect the lives of these women and girls, to support them in their effort to build relationships and teams, to strengthen character, to grow.
Tomorrow is our season’s-end 5K. Over 100 girls will run this race with running buddies at their sides, families and friends cheering them on. When they cross the finish line, they will have gained the knowledge that they can do what they put their minds to. They will establish confidence through accomplishment. It is our hope that this confidence carries over into other areas of their lives and teaches them what it feels like to finish what they started—and that they are not alone in doing so.
This morning I ran alone, before dawn, anticipating tomorrow’s event, mentally juggling all the balls still in the air that won’t land until the race is over and the grounds cleaned up. I often think on these runs that we are placed in life not only where we can do the most good for others, but where others can do the most good for us too. A loner gets used to being alone and strives for independence, not asking for help. Never expecting it. Not understanding that interdependence is a much worthier goal.
Strange that on this morning’s run I didn’t feel alone.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Cross Training, Island Style
Usually, I post on Fridays. I missed last week, but I have a good reason. No, my dog didn’t eat my post. Better: I was in the Bahamas.
It’s ok to hate me for a minute or two. I can take it.
I took my running shoes with me, intending to stick to my training plan. In fact, I wore them on the plane. Then threw them in the back of the hotel room closet. And didn’t take them out again until I left.
I did, however, manage to get in some training.
I walked a lot of beach. 
Snorkeled with my sister. 
Saw lots of cool sea life. 
But mostly, spent quality time with my mom and sister.
This morning it’s 30 degrees, and I’m wishing I was waking up to steel drums playing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” instead of the local news telling me to put on my ear muffs.
Nevertheless, it’s back to the training plan, Texas style. Guess I better find my running shoes.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Standing in the Hall
When I was a kid, my room was my sanctuary. No boys allowed. I drew pictures, posted signs, and did what I could to make that abundantly clear. My brothers, occasional literalists, came close to observing the letter of the law, but never the spirit.
They stood just outside the door’s threshold and dipped their toe into my room.
I’m in. I’m out.
I’m in, I’m in, I’m in. I’m out.
When they got brave, they jumped in, whole bodies piercing the forbidden zone. And then quickly out. And in again. And out.
It makes me laugh now, but it made me furious then. When my brothers entered the room, it was only for a brief moment, yet it was enough to set me off. Still, it’s not like they were all in.
For the past few months, I’ve been dipping my toe into my life’s rooms. There are lots of exciting, promising, and fun spaces I have the opportunity to enter; and there are an equal number of spaces that pose some daunting challenges, some rearranging of furniture and even some disposal of junk.
Rather than walking through the door and owning the room, I’ve been jumping in and out. I haven’t been all in.
I’m not sure what this means to my family, friends, colleagues. If anything. I don’t know how I show up in the world, through their eyes. But I do know that living tentatively feels like standing in the hall.
I made the decision to pick a room and move in. Including owning my training. A couple of weeks ago, I said I made the decision to run the Austin half in February, but that I probably wouldn’t register for the race for another month or more. That’s not really playing all in. This week, training started. And I registered. I’m in.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Giving Thanks
“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Getting Squirrelly
My dogs made a new friend this fall. A squirrel decided to vacation in the oak tree in my back yard. The tree’s branches stretch in a long line between my roof and the greenbelt behind my house, and the squirrel runs laps through my backyard on nice days.
It was the squirrel that befriended my dogs. Befriend, terrorize, whatever you want to call it, the outcome is the same. He sits in the branches and chatters loudly, calling my dogs out to play. Then he plops himself down on the roof overlooking my deck, back legs splayed out like a butterfly and front legs daintily crossed, and stares calmly down at my dogs as they bark wildly. They can do this for hours.
I’ve watched the squirrel get fatter, lazing about on the roof, as the weeks have progressed. It’s been a great year for acorns, and there’s loads of squirrel food on the ground. (I sometimes I have to remind my dogs that they’re not squirrels and shouldn’t eat acorns. You know how it is. Friends mimic friends. They see the squirrel root around in the yard and want to root around too.)
But I haven’t seen the squirrel around much since the time change. My dogs keep vigil on the deck, searching the branches and roof for signs of him, but he hasn’t called. My guess is he’s holed up with his acorns, getting ready to hibernate.
I know how he feels. Once the time change hits, I want to do the same thing.
Seems like every year between Daylight Savings Time and Groundhog Day, my motivation to get out of bed early and work out dries up like the leaves. I find myself sleeping in and foraging the pantry for all kinds of food I know I shouldn’t eat. For me, that’s a bad combination: zero exercise + loads of goodies = blah. I end up feeling terrible by Christmas.
This year, I made a conscious decision to not be like our new friend the squirrel. Instead, I decided to be proactive. The only way I can get motivated during the coldest, darkest days of the year is to make a plan:
- Make a date. I selected a race and a date: Austin Half Marathon, February 17. It was an easy race to pick—14 weeks out from the day of decision, and my friend is running it. As I recently discovered, running a race is so much more fun with a friend by your side.
- Pen it in. There are many great training plans to choose from. I follow Hal Higdon’s 12-week training plan. Seeing my entire plan laid out on paper with my times penciled in as the weeks progress really motivates me, so I keep a paper copy of my training rather than an electronic one.
- Post it up. I tack my training calendar on the fridge 2 weeks before my official training start date. I need time to see it, absorb it. Reassure myself that I can do this. I’ve done it before.
- Blab. The best way I know of to commit to a race is to tell everyone I know that I’m going to run it. To say it makes it so.
- Get moving. Although I’ve been “pretraining” for a long time, “real” training begins once I mark my times in pencil on my calendar on Day 1. This time around, I think the first week will be the hardest, partly because Week 1 begins the Monday after Thanksgiving and partly because the mornings are getting colder. On the bright side, maybe my start date will prompt me to not eat enough to feed a family of 4 on Thanksgiving.
- Register. I usually register for a race after I start training. This time, I will likely wait until I’m about half way through training. This race is a big one for me. I haven’t run a half marathon in over two years and, to be honest, I’m a bit afraid. I haven’t run more than 6 miles since I injured my hip two years ago.
Isn’t that the way? Fear is the biggest deterrent I know: Fear of injury, discomfort, cold. Failure. But not this time.
As much as I may be afraid that I can’t run a half marathon, my bigger fear is that I will become like the squirrel and find my way out of a hole sometime toward the end of winter, wondering where all my time—and training—went.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )Utility
A shiny new red lawnmower is sitting in my garage. I was forced to buy it last week when my old one finally died. Old is the operative word. The dead lawnmower was blessed with a long life, having been manufactured when I was still in high school, roughly sometime around the invention of the combustion engine. Three years ago when I took it to Sears for its annual servicing I was told that they don’t make most of the parts to service it anymore. I knew then that it was just a matter of time.
I borrowed my sister’s lawnmower to cut my grass while I waited for my new lawnmower to arrive. My Chihuahuas disappeared somewhere in the long grass, and I couldn’t wait much longer. Her mower is still in my garage, next to my shiny new red one. I am hoping she forgets it’s here, in case the grass grows a little more and needs one last cutting before fall decides to stick in Texas.
My mower is so shiny and red and new that I really don’t want to use it, to muck it up. I’d simply like to leave it sitting there in my garage, fresh and clean like a shiny red apple.
My friend chuckled when I told him about my new lawnmower holed up in the garage. He suggested that I might be a bit odd.
He may be right. It seems to be my habit to use items longer than they should perhaps be used and to delay using new items simply because they are shiny and new.
I have the same habit with running shoes.
I own 5 pairs of running shoes, yet run in only 2 of them. I received my newest pair as a birthday gift in March. I didn’t wear them until July, and even then I ran in them only on nice days. When it rained, I wore my old shoes. My new ones were so shiny and silver and nice that I didn’t want to muck them up.
The rest of my running shoes have graduated to other uses, like walking the dogs or mowing the lawn. My lawn mowing shoes are relegated to the garage. Once bright blue and white, they are now a dull green and brown, treads worn off. But useful nevertheless. They’ve cut many a lawn.
As I considered my lawn mowing shoes and my habit of holding on to things until they can’t possibly be used any longer, I remembered where those shoes had taken me. They were the first pair I bought that were strictly for running. They saw me through at least my first 2 half marathons and multiple shorter races. More miles than they should have seen. Passed down from one use to the next. And not ready to be retired yet.
So what’s wrong with utility? Or with appreciating the things that are shiny and new?
I wore my new shiny silver shoes this morning to run in the fog. They flashed in the dim light of each passing car, marking my presence on the road. Seems my new shoes are not so new anymore. They’re finally working their way into my comfort zone.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Seeing Stars
San Antonio is the first big city I’ve lived in since I started running 13 years ago. Before now, I’ve lived in small towns or on the outskirts of big ones, far enough away from neighbors that I didn’t have to worry about loud music or closed curtains.
I love San Antonio, and I’m glad to live here. But one thing I miss about living away from a city is stars.
When I took up running, I lived in Guam. If you want to see how small you really are, live on an island for awhile. I never comprehended how vast the sky is until I could see it unimpeded by buildings, light, or smog. There were few well-lit routes to run, but the sky was so clear and bright, especially when the moon was on either side of full, that lights weren’t really necessary. And the bonus? I regularly got the privilege of running under shooting stars and meteor showers.
The skies above Salado, Texas, where I moved when I came back to the States, were nearly as clear as in Guam. Minus the shooting stars and meteor showers. Nevertheless, I ran in the dark, under starry skies, eyes always up in search of constellations.
Darkness has its drawbacks. When you’re unaccustomed to your route you run the risk of tripping over roots or falling into potholes. But if you tread the same dark path enough times, your feet learn where the sidewalk ends, leaving your eyes to pursue higher things.
Now that I live in the city, I am learning to refocus my gaze. We all know the trick of running up hills: Train your gaze a few feet in front of you instead of on the horizon. Trick your brain into seeing a straight, level path instead of an incline.
My gaze has been cast down not so much to level the hills with my eyes, but in an attempt to avoid treading in the dog poop thoughtless people leave behind. You run the same sidewalks enough times, you learn where to take the detour into the street.
I still love to run in the dark and am fortunate to have a few stretches on my route that fall outside the puddles of streetlights. I find that when I’m running through the darkest stretches, my eyes automatically look up, searching for the pattern of stars that lets me know where I am. I guess I’ve trained my eyes well after all. And tomorrow when I set out on my path, maybe I’ll be fortunate enough to see stars.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The Big Question
What do you do when you can’t run? The obvious things come to mind: Swim, bike, walk, join a gym. But that’s not what I mean. Not exactly.
What do you do when you’ve been running for years, when running is as much a part of your day as brushing your teeth, when it’s become so rooted in your identity that you don’t know who you are apart from it. When losing the ability to do it feels like losing a loved one or a limb.
It sounds overly dramatic, I know. I used to be a non-runner and always thought there was something a little off about those people who lamented life when they were forced to stop running. Until I became a runner. And then couldn’t.
When I injured my hip nearly 3 years ago and had to stop running, I lost a piece of myself. I felt like someone I loved had died. At first I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I cried daily. Sunk into a depression. Sat at home alone, not wanting to see my friends or even talk to them on the phone. I think I was startled as much as I was depressed. I truly did not know how much of my identity was tied to running until running was taken away.
Fortunately, I gradually worked through my injury and began to run again after more than a year.
But I was reminded of this loss lately. A friend’s husband recently broke his leg so badly that, as my friend put it, his x-ray looked like the inside of a Lowe’s. A lifelong runner, he now finds himself unable to run for at least the next 10 months. My friend’s eyes developed a distant look as she finished telling me his story, as if her husband had gone some place far, far away and she was trying to remember what he looked like.
Finally, she said, “What do you do when you can’t run?” She didn’t expect an answer, and I’m glad. The only one I can think of is, you wait.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Taking Time
I don’t have time.
Can’t fit it into my schedule, don’t know how it will get done, it simply won’t happen, there is just not enough time.
If I could plant and grow a pumpkin seed for every time I heard time as an excuse for not exercising, the Great Pumpkin would be rising from its patch nearly every night.
But I don’t buy it. We all have time. The same amount, every day. What we choose to do with it is up to us. We base our choices on our priorities, those people, principles, or things that mean the most to us.
When I’ve led a priorities exercise in workshops, I’ve found that two things are often glaringly missing from people’s lists: their health and their God. Even if they tell you in conversation that their health and their spirituality are two of the most important things in their lives, when pressed to list priorities, neither make the list.
Why not? I ask.
No time.
One reason for this may be the way people view time. They take time to do the things they want or need to do. They take time, for instance, to attend a meeting. But while there, they’re not actually present in the meeting. They’re busy checking email or texting or making notes about a dozen unrelated things.
They are subtracting time from their day, eliminating tasks one by one.
Maybe instead of taking time, people can learn to give it. To add something worthwhile to their day, their sense of well-being. To their actual, physical well-being. We seem to put emphasis—more of ourselves—into the things we give, so why not give something, a gift, to ourselves? Why not time?
There is always enough time. What are you going to do with yours?
I’m going to run.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )« Previous Entries Next Entries »
More Than Running... 