Once upon a time, I was a new member of my college’s club boxing team. Things were a bit chaotic. Our club had a cashflow problem, and the league was run by volunteer coaches, all of whom had been hit in the head a lot during their own boxing days. Fight spots for women in my weight class were scarce, and there was nothing I wanted more than to earn one of them.
We needed to be in good enough shape to stay safe in the ring, and we were told if we showed up to practice and worked hard, it might help us get matched for fights sooner. To demonstrate our commitment to the team, we had to go to daily practices, help with fundraisers, and meet three days a week at 6 a.m. to run.
I always approached every athletic endeavor like it might be my last chance to play. If I wasn’t pouring my heart and soul into the job, it felt kind of pointless. This made our Friday distance runs a problem. Going slow felt boring, but I also couldn’t sprint for miles on end without wanting to throw up or have an asthma attack. Normally I burned out early and struggled slowly for the rest of the run, nursing cramps and shin splints along the way.
I wanted a sanctioned opportunity to punch someone, though, so I kept hanging in there in the back of the pack. And as the weeks went by, the runs got easier. One Friday, after weeks of struggle, I found it in me to keep pace with the faster portion of the group.
Early on, I started gasping for breath. Up to that point, things had always gone downhill once I started worrying about throwing up or not being able to breathe. On this day, I stopped worrying about puke. I knew I had been training for months and that my legs and lungs were strong enough to keep carrying me. I just needed to give myself the chance to get over the mental hurdle.
My teammates were treated to the sound of my death rattle for miles, but eventually we made it to the end. As I caught my breath, our team captain spoke up. He was a handsome, tough, intelligent, hardworking heavyweight whose group emails cracked me up and who had a talent for inspiring the team. Evidently, he had been listening to my death rattle, because he told everyone he was impressed with how I had worked hard and kept pace with him the whole time. I hobbled back to my dorm, embarrassed but smiling in the hazy sunrise.
This incident alerted me to a few things. One, tuning into how I really felt had worked much better than getting spooked by my ragged breathing. Two, it felt fantastic to run faster and further than I ever thought I could before. And three, I was excessively happy about that particular guy giving me that particular compliment. Deliriously happy, you might say. Now wasn’t that interesting?
Over the next few years, I did earn fight spots, many of them. I continued to run, and though I never exactly looked forward to it, I made peace with it as a way to stay in boxing shape. And shortly after my college boxing career ended, I married that team captain.
Amateur boxing felt like the perfect sport for me. It was a fun way to release any stress or negativity I had bottled up, not that I ever bottle things up. When I trained and fought, I held nothing back. I laid it all on the line and I couldn’t blame anyone but myself if I didn’t get the results I wanted. When I won, I was on top of the world.
The flipside of this mindset is that when I wasn’t successful, it felt like a personal, almost moral failure. Of course, I “knew” that winning isn’t everything, because I grew up watching PBS Kids. When teammates lost, I told them the most important thing was that they’d gotten in the ring and tried. I said this with complete sincerity. But as my own sworn worst enemy, I could never believe my own advice.
A Time of Growth, Literally
Before I had children, I cherished the belief that I could always conquer a physical challenge if I cared about it. I thought if I didn’t meet my goal, then I hadn’t tried hard enough. In my first pregnancy, it became apparent that the reality is more complicated than that. It was exhausting to just eat Goldfish crackers. This frustrated me, but even I was not dense enough to miss a lesson this obvious. I wasn’t tired because I was a wimp. I was tired because I was growing a person. It wasn’t just about me and how much I could push myself. My energy was finite, and it was being diverted elsewhere.
Still, I noticed something. Before, I had loved athletics because I loved playing and competing and winning, even if the only person I was beating was myself. When I was pregnant, my exercise became about maintenance instead of progress. But exercise still made me happy, even when I had to drag myself through a workout and there was no competition involved. It was just biology, but I’d never taken the time to appreciate it that way before.
One evening I was sitting in the gym, watching my husband play basketball. At that time I was equipped with a belly shaped exactly like a basketball, so I couldn’t join. I was flipping through some magazine when I came across a training plan for running a half marathon.
Ooooooh, I thought, that looks fun!!
This is a perfect example of how hormones, exhaustion, and boredom can combine to addle a previously sane brain. I hung that training plan on our fridge, where it remained for many years, unused.
And Baby Makes Three… I Mean Four… Make That Five
Pregnancy is a silent, hidden1 slog that takes almost a year and results in an unrepeatable new person. It is not a glamorous path, but the payoff is pretty spectacular. My children taught me what numerous bad sparring sessions, missed goals, and lost fights did not. My best effort mattered, but an exhausted effort still meant something. And sometimes a happy ending was less about what I could control and more about good luck.
As my offspring are just as relentless as I am, the lessons kept coming. Trying to stay in shape with kids around has involved some setbacks. Having three people pulled out through an incision in my abdomen was surprisingly disruptive to my core strength, so I’ve dealt with that a few times. Then there’s the whole thing about babies needing constant attention to stay alive. Then there’s the thing about toddlers really wanting to poke their baby siblings in the eyes. Then there’s the thing about kids knowing when you’re trying to leave them in the YMCA childcare center and NOT. LIKING. IT.
In the blink of an eye, babies transform from defenseless lumps to crawling commandos who will not be denied the chance to chew on low-lying power cords. I can’t help but be impressed by such persistence, and I tried to bring that same energy to my own life. There were so many times I felt like my workouts were too lame to have counted. They weren’t intense enough, or they got interrupted too many times, and I had to admit defeat and move on with the day.
Despite all these obstacles, I noticed that even a ten-minute workout left me with more focus, patience, and goodwill for the rest of the day. This realization invigorated me. Even when staying active didn’t always meet my preconceived notions of what was tough enough, it was always worth it to try again the next day. Instead of needing every workout to be intense, I came to see each one as a small piece of a greater commitment to myself and my family. The timeline for progress was longer than I was used to, but good things would still happen if I just kept showing up.
Over the next few years, running was a small part of my fitness pursuits, but I mainly stuck with workouts that required minimal setup time. Eventually, our family arrived in a phase where I could really get serious about training for that half marathon. At this point we had three kids, which is precisely one kid too many to fit in a double jogging stroller. My husband sacrificed many weekend mornings so I could attempt to sneak out of the house to run, inevitability waking at least one of the kids in the process. Luckily for us, he has only gotten better at inspiring his team.
Long runs used to be annoyances I tolerated in pursuit of different goals. They became opportunities to get outside, listen to a book or music, and do something I’d never done before. My younger self may have been bored, but my younger self never ran that far.
I’m Just Here for the Journey… And the Medal. And the Shirt. And the Win.
I would be lying if I said I am now a peaceful guru who cares only about the journey and not the results. When I do get the chance to compete, I still feel as ruthless as ever. I still can’t stop myself from trying to pass my fellow runners. It’s just that now I have a better idea of when to cut it out.
When I did run my first half marathon last fall, I felt crappy for most of the race. I missed my goal time by two minutes, and I was annoyed because I had wanted to do better. Nevertheless, I was able to be nicer to myself about it than I used to be. After all, I do have a few other things going on.
I set my sights on another half marathon for the spring, but instead of doubling down on my training, I lightened my running schedule. It felt weird to cut back on miles and hope for better results, but I knew what I needed more than anything was to slow down and rest.
If there’s one thing I’ve gotten better at since becoming a mom, it’s using trickery, behavioral conditioning, and music to extract desired conduct. I’m not above using this knowledge on myself. A good playlist enables me to both ignore how gross my breathing sounds and run at an appropriate pace. In May, I set off on my second half marathon, heeding MGMT’s recommendation to control myself. When Evanescence told me it was time to wake up, I picked up speed.
The race was through my hometown, so as I ran, I had plenty of time to remember every embarrassing thing I’ve ever done, and also to think about taking lots of trips to the library with my dad. The weather was pleasant and the hills weren’t bad. I was making good time, but by mile 11, I was losing steam. I was trying not to think about puking, and that made me think of that long ago Friday morning training run. I thought about all the joy that followed that day, all the ways I have changed and all the ways I’m still just the same.
I knew I had it in me to meet my goal this time. But I also knew that simply powering through would not be helpful here. Instead, I slowed down until mile 12 so I could pick up the pace for the final 1.1 miles. And that turned out to be just what I needed to bring the whole race home strong.
My husband, team captain extraordinaire, brought my kids to meet me at the finish line and caught me when I nearly passed out after an ambitious hamstring stretch. We greeted my sister-in-law, who had also run and crushed the race, and my dad, who had come to watch. Then I went home, ate hamburgers, and took a nap. Even weeks later, my two-year-old still randomly says, “Wemember when I saw you on your run, Mom?”
These are joys I never thought to look forward to back when I equated slowing down with giving up. It wasn’t me standing in a ring, hand raised in solo victory. It was me among thousands, nowhere near first place but still achieving a goal I’d been working towards for years. I couldn’t stop smiling.
Now that I’ve watched my three children morph from zygotes to walking, talking nutjobs, there are two things I know for sure. One is that rest is essential to growth. The other is that life is short. Health is never guaranteed, and as my homegirl Minerva McGonagall would say, it’s just sheer dumb luck that I have mine right now. I’ve had times of thriving and times of healing, and I’m just grateful to still be moving, whatever form that takes. I’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other as long as I have it in me.
I do still like sprinting, though.
Well, hidden until I pass what I think of as the Pregnancy Event Horizon. This is the point at which strangers begin to stare at me in horror, their faces plastered with “OH HOLY SH!T SHE IS PREGNANT” grimaces, and I respond with a maternal smile that says “Yes, I am positive it is not twins, you mother******!!!”
Why are you so magnificent?