Play: Pushing, not plodding

Although our plans for the long weekend included a sport a day (college football on Saturday, over-30 soccer Sunday and the Tufts 10K Monday), it was Friday night's dinner with my friend Carole that got me thinking about the value of sports.

Carole is many things --mother, blogger, career woman-- but not a sports enthusiast. Still, over burgers and beers the conversation turned to what she considers her hyper-competitive nature.  As she bemoaned her need to be the best, my own hypo-competitive personality was thrown into stark relief.

I know that competition spawns excellence. But as it also invites failure and disappointment, I have long retreated to the safe haven of apathy. When a competitive situation arises, I smile politely and slowly back out of the room.  I loved basketball as a kid but gave it up to avoid try-outs.  I withdrew from sorority rush days before it began, unnerved by a roomful of girls scrutinizing me.  I don't fly Southwest anymore; the jostling for position necessitated by their lack of seat assignments gave me a stomachache.

This is not what I want for my girls.  Much as I adhere to the youth soccer league's no score policy, I truly wish that Big E cared enough to keep a running tally.  When I lament her politely abandoning the ball to any defender who challenges her, my husband dismisses my concern by telling me that she's smarter than all of them.  I like to think this is true.  And still, I know from experience that the world is skewed more to those who are first to the ball than those in the top reading group.

I thought maybe this weekend's events would provide me with some teachable moments for the girls:  this is how one cheers on one's alma mater, this is a penalty kick...please don't grow up to be a pushover like your mother. 

The football game, it quickly became clear, would not be the place to inspire an appreciation of competition.  Within the first few minutes, our University of Richmond quarterback threw an interception that resulted in a game-ending injury for him and a touchdown for the other team.  It didn't get better from there.  The only teachable moment came when a sloppy coed in faux-denim leggings and facepaint whiskers plopped herself onto the visitors stands and slurred "Richmond sucks..."  The take away: leggings are not pants.

The soccer game was equally fruitless.  Over the last couple of years, the girls have seen enough pushing, shoving, swearing, sweaty men to inure them to the competitive spirit out on the pitch.  They did marvel, though, at the artificial turf's ability to at once look like dirt, and yet not be dirt.  Perhaps there's a lesson there, but not the one I was looking for.

And so it landed on me to create the teachable moment with my race.  I thought I had an idea of what the takeaway would be.  On my training runs, I had reminded myself that all I really had to do was keep my breath steady and put foot in front of foot.  At the time it seemed an apt metaphor for life.  Yet when I found myself in that pack of 8,000 women all heading to the same place, I felt less slow and steady wins the race than go big or go home.

So, instead of plodding safely and breathing evenly as I'd envisioned, I jostled, struggled, surged, and gasped. I finished six minutes ahead of my target time, beat 5,645 of the 6,696 finishers, and felt elated for having actually competed.

The girls were less interested in my triumph than in the Happy Meals that my father had bought them while I was running.  But that's okay.  I learned the lesson and now I can teach it.

Dream: Tufts 10K for Women, redux

This summer I tried to get Big E to train for a one-mile fun run.  She liked the idea of the two of us running in a race together, but our training sessions were not as productive as I'd have hoped.  We'd lace up our sneakers, fill our water bottles, and head to the track.  After about a quarter of a lap, she'd stop dead, put her hands on her hips and glare, snarling, "You just want to make me run."

Pretty much, yeah...but I get it.  Running is good, forced running not so good. 

I don't shy from exercise.  My evening gym sessions are my Prozac and a jog through the park on a fall afternoon is a treat I look forward to all day, but a race is quite another story.  Recently, I tried to explain this to my husband, who delights in the organized competition of his weekly soccer games. 

"I think it all goes back to high school," I told him.  "There was the gun shot and then you're running through the woods and someone's right behind you, trying to catch you. I think that memory scarred me."

He cocked his head at me with incredulity and a trace of horror, "That happened to you?"

"Well," I explained, "That's basically how a cross country meet goes."

His eye roll told me that perhaps I had overstated my case, but something bad did happen to me in high school and it involved running ...and my mother.

When I was a sophomore, I was in the best shape of my life.  I was in my second year of running cross country and had yet to discover the boys or starvation diets that would mar subsequent seasons.  My mother, who had been a runner for as long as I could remember, asked me to join her in the Tufts 10K in Boston.  Since 6.4 miles was no big feat to me at that point, and (more to the point) since the few times I'd run with her since starting my cross country training I'd bounded off and left her safely in my dust, I agreed.

At the midway point of the race there was a turnaround that allowed those who were on the return leg the satisfaction of seeing the faces of all of those who could not keep up as they chugged on behind.  I can still see the flood of surprise and, I was sure at the time, elation that crossed my mother's face when she saw me plodding along the first leg as she made the return.

At the time, it filled my legs with cement and my head with excuses (untied shoelaces, crowded water stations...and on top of that I just wasn't in the mood).  Insult to injury came as I tried to redeem myself with a big finish.  I heard cheers from the crowd as I took off in a glamorous sprint.  And then I saw the inspiration for all those cheers: not 15-year-old me, but the sprightly octogenarian who finished just ahead of me.

And in October, I'm going to do it again. Maybe I'll have a triumphant day and redeem myself; though it's entirely possible, to my mother's immense credit, that she will beat me.  More importantly I'll prove to myself that if I keep my breath even and put foot in front of foot, I can get through it --and 20 years later, I hope I'll be old enough to appreciate the value in that.

Besides, I know I could so beat my 6-year-old in that fun run...if only she'd let me.