How running has made me a better parent Part 1

3 running tips you can apply to being a better parent

We all have vivid moments from being a child. One for me that stands out as particularly bright and true is the desire to run. More specifically sitting in a car on the long drive to my grandmother’s house from NYC to Long Island, the city scape making way to rows of corn, passing one expansive field after the other and wanting nothing more than to run as fast as I possibly could across it.

There may be some physiological reason for this, some puzzle piece that might give image to my psyche that I am choosing to forego, for this post at least. What I am really referring to here is the call for something wild and difficult. This genuine need to be at the edge of something large and cut right into it. A calling, an inarticulable desire to throw oneself into effort and joy. Becoming a mother and being a runner was, and still is, the closest thing to this feeling that I know.

I found myself in the first few years of my daughter’s life not only stress running in the winter darkness, but applying the wisdom of running to the practice of raising a person. Without going too deep into my life story, I wanted to offer a few of those metaphors and insights that I have learned from being both a runner and mother.

Actual footage of my toddler outrunning me in worse footwear

1. Embrace the Animal

Fancying myself somewhat cerebral, I always carry the idea that if I just learned everything, read every book about parenting, I would at least FEEL prepared. Especially when I was pregnant and about to give birth I thought, “I just need to learn how to do this.” In practice, I wasn’t putting a lot of confidence in my body. I’ll also say that the pull toward curiosity and self-education is not a bad one. Far from it. But when you start to doubt yourself and what you are really able to do, then you might be letting your mind get in the way of what your body can do.

When you’re running, there is always a point when you check the time, or think you can’t go further. The running becomes hard. But when you learn to stop thinking and let your inner animal take over you allow space for your body’s intelligence and its abilities. Getting out of your body’s way, you learn to trust and admire what it can achieve. As a runner and mother, I put a kind of faith in my body. A body knows what it needs and you have more instinctual knowledge than you give yourself credit for, probably.

2. How to stay in sustained effort

The early days, months (years!) of parenting are tough. They require a lot of us, everything in fact. The demands are physical and emotional and the period of adjustment to this is not at all easy. Trust me, I am not here to say that because I love to run that this was any easier. I would not lie to you! During this time I cried from exhaustion, I soothed when I wanted to be soothed, and accrued minor injuries from sleep deprived clumsiness, like all of us.

I did, however, find myself recognizing that this is a period of effort. With any sleep regression, new school, milestone, change a family can sustain, there are these periods. Learning how to be in something hard and stay in it can keep you away from stories like, “everything is always so hard,” and can give you the confidence to know you can endure.

Something I have always appreciated about running is that everyone starts at the beginning. The person running an iron man did not start with running an iron man. They built their way to it. Motherhood, first time mothers especially, is a little like the couch to 5K. We all start at zero with a teeny, vulnerable, and needy human and overtime we build knowledge, stamina, and the self belief to go the distance. Because of this when people say it gets easier, I always think, maybe I’ve just gotten stronger.

3. Lampposts

When you go on a long run, or any run that’s harder than you are used to it’s always going to feel difficult. Maybe running 10 miles or 1 mile feels impossible. You’re 2 miles into a 5 mile run and you start to think, “there’s no way I’m going to finish.” Too much time in that thought and you’ll be more inclined to never finish. Sometimes the entirety of something can be too large. But can I make it to the next lamppost a few feet away? Can you make it to the next lamppost after that? Maybe I can’t make it to bedtime, but I can make it to snack, or nap, or music class. This kind of thinking has taught me how to “lean into” time a little bit. Surender even to the hours and let them pass. How to not be enemies with limits like time and distance and let it, for lack of a better term, “flow.”

In a sense, ignoring (if that’s the right word) the largeness of time opens the space to be more present. I can’t be constantly engaged with a child from 6am to 8pm, but I can play now for a few minutes. I’m thinking especially of those early days, freezing temperatures, boredom, exhaustion. Bedtime felt a zillion miles away, the finish line an apparition. Taking a long run or long day piece by piece, lamppost by lamppost makes something hard into something manageable.

Thank you for reading this piece. This is part 1 of 2. Hope to see you back for the second part!