Three Ways to Honor Sherry Arnold
A bib, created by Races 2 Remember, for Sherry’s virtual run.
In the weeks since Sherry Arnold, the mother runner and teacher from Sidney, Montana, has gone missing, her disappearance made national news. Even People magazine covered it. (I wish they would’ve factchecked the word “jogger” in the headline; she was—as we all are—a runner.) Sadly, her body has not yet been found–the FBI are still on the case–but her family, including Beth Risdon of Shut Up and Run, is eager to honor her memory. In a beautiful post, Beth writes, “I won’t focus on the evil parts of this story. I will say there are two malicious, heinous men who did this and thousands upon thousands of loving and good people who have reached out in support. It’s not even a close contest. The good continues to outweigh the evil by a long shot. That’s where I will put my attention.”
That’s where we’re putting our attention too. I was very teary the day that Sherry was proclaimed dead, and I know plenty of you were too. Another Mother Runner Phoebe wrote on FB, “The Montana Mom, Teacher, Runner won’t be coming home. I’m a wreck over a person I never knew….” Exactly.
I didn’t know Sherry, but I knew her: I knew she loved on her kids; I knew she thrived on a good run; I knew she wanted to make a difference in the world through teaching and adoring her students; I knew her priorities must have included health and personal goals and the regular endorphin rush; I knew I would’ve instantly liked her and wanted to be her friend.
Beth is spearheading a two-pronged effort to honor her cousin, and we want to support her and spread the word.
First up: a virtual run. On Saturday, February 11th, we encourage you to grab your BRF’s, your family, your running club, your neighbors, anybody and everybody who wants to run with Sherry in their hearts.
Some details:
:: The run starts at 9 MST; if you can make that time, great. (I hope you can; I want the earth to shake in Sherry’s honor.) If you can’t, just run when you can.
:: The distance is up to you. Go fast, go slow, go fartlek, go short, go long. Just go with the knowledge that Sherry will be watching from above–and with you every step of the way.
:: You can print out a pdf of the bib here. If it’s raining, Beth wisely suggests laminating it with packing tape.
:: Beth (and we) would love to see pics or blog posts of your runs; you can e-mail her at beth@shutupandrun and she’ll get them to Sherry’s family.
Second up: an opportunity to donate. Beth writes, “Sherry Arnold, a runner, mother, and teacher, went for an early morning run on January 7, 2012, and never came home. Sherry’s goodness, courage, and strength prevail; she is not defined by the tragic way in which she died. Please help me support Sherry’s family by donating to a fund for her children, Holly and Jason.”
Third up (my contribution): remember Sherry when you don’t want to run. When you’re dragging and are fighting the run with every ounce of your being; when you get to mile 11 of a half-marathon and are cursing the last 2.1; when the ___________ (rain, hills, wind, your IT Band, whatever the handicap du jour may be) is making your legs feel leaden and your heart even heavier, remember Sherry. You get to be a runner and feel the wind, the road, your quads, your exhaustion, your smile. Lucky, lucky you.
Tell Me Tuesday: Layering Lessons for Winter Weather
Oh, we know this well: This photo was taken near where Dimity and I first ran in the snow (alas, not together)
If you’ve read Run Like a Mother, you know that Dimity and I were both introduced to running as a cross-training tool while rowers at Colgate University. The school is in central New York where, during the winter, it snows like it rains here in Portland: every.single.day. Some of my most vivid memories from the collegiate era of my life is of running head-on into driving snow, past open fields that let the wind whip unabated for miles. Somewhere there’s a photo of me pre-run, outfitted in red, wool union suit with gym shorts over that and a hooded sweatshirt (cotton!! Quelle horreur!) on top piled over a tee or two (again, cotton). I shudder at the thought.
Yet, 25+ years later, I’m proud I didn’t let the weather stop me from running. And this weekend on our Facebook page, a lot of mother runners testified to the same: Tami ran a 16-mile race when it hit a “high” of 20 degrees; Tammy did 16-mile training run, solo, in Wisconsin sleet. (Makes me wonder if “Tami/Tammy” means “badass mother runner undeterred by crappy weather” in some language.)
Still, some moms were asking what to wear, like Nicole, who fretted that it was 9 degrees and her winter gear is only rated to about 20 degrees. So I figured it was time for a primer on running in craptastic weather, whether it’s frigid, snowy, or wet.
-Dress like it’s 10 degrees warmer than it really is. Maybe it’s just me and my hot blood, but I despise overheating while I exercise. You should feel chilly, if not almost cold, when you step outside. On my 18-miler this past weekend, my forearms were cold for the first few miles, but I never regretted my choice of a vest instead of a jacket.
-Have escape hatches built in, like a zip neck on your shirt, sleeves that can easily be rolled up, mittens that convert to gloves, arm warmers that can be pushed down or pulled up. My favorite? A Sugoi jacket that converts to a vest. One of the single most versatile garments I own.
-Wear a wicking first layer–and that includes socks and undies (if we haven’t convinced you to go commando yet). Having a sweaty garment stuck to your body, trapped underneath other layers, is a sure-fire ticket to getting chilled and being miserable. Wear a synthetic fabric that’ll pull sweat off your hard-working body and move it toward the outer world.
-If you need an insulation layer, fleece, down, synthetic fill, and wool all make smart choices.
-Go lightweight on your outer layer, unless you favor the terrarium effect. Go for a jacket with lots of zippers and mesh inserts—escape hatches for built-up heat and moisture. I say forego a hood—too much flap-flap-flap when not in use—and opt for a hat instead.
This baaaaaadass sheep knows how to stay warm in the snow.
-Get wooly. No, not suggesting you let your leg hairs grow long enough for insulation. Instead, invest in a wool running top. It’s true what they say about this natural fiber: It keeps you cool when it’s hot, and warm when it’s cold. And it retains heat when it gets wet, as I was reminded when it started raining around Mile 10 of the weekend’s run. Wool socks are a must-have for running outdoors in frigid weather—Dimity loves Balega ones.
-Remember accessories: A fleece beanie really can make the difference being comfortable and miserable. A brimmed running hat is my BRF on rainy days. And lightweight running gloves keep my mitts warm, and then can be stashed in my waistband or held if I get too hot. In colder temps, consider a balaclava to keep your neck toasty and warm the air before you suck it in.
Now your turn to share: What’s your go-to gear in cold or wet weather?
My Trials in Houston
Yep. What I needed to hear.
January 17, 1977: My mom, after giving birth to my little sister, starts bleeding uncontrollably. She is enveloped by the soothing white light that people who come close to death talk about, and makes the conscious choice to stay on earth with her three girls. There will only be three: she has a hysterectomy to stop the bleeding.
January 17, 2012: I am bleeding uncontrollably in the ER of a random hospital in downtown Houston. (I, however, have not given birth.) I have no soothing, reaffirming white light moment; instead, I am just terribly frightened and lonely and can’t stop crying. (I sent SBS home around 11 p.m. on Monday night, since our presentation–the main reason we went to Houston–was on Tuesday morning.)
When I am admitted around 3 a.m. so I can have a blood transfusion, I can’t sleep. Lying in a lumpy hospital bed whose linens smell too flowery sweet, I search “hysterectomy” and “recovery time” on my Blackberry. I am positive I will need to have my uterus out in Houston because there is no way this bleeding will stop otherwise, and I want to know when I can get home. All I want to do is be home.
“I just want to go home,” I barked at Dr. Higgenbotham, the ob/gyn who visited me mid-day Tuesday, when she asked me how I was. I brought out the bitch because I wasn’t sure what else to do to get attention; I asked for a Sprite at 8 a.m., and it didn’t come until 1 p.m. I couldn’t find a call light for the nurse, so I had SBS call the hospital to have a nurse check on me. Three different people came in from housekeeping over the course of four hours to empty the trash, but nobody cleaned the floor where I’d made a mess.
The sweet doc was as awesome as her Seuss-ian Higgenbotham name. “You poor dear,” she said, “I read your chart and felt so sorry for you.” I softened a bit. She started talking to me like I was a friend, not a patient, and acted like she was going to hang out for hours with me. She told me her priority was to get me well enough to get home. Phew.
I mean awesome: Despite having delivered two babies, she went back to her office to get me some meds to slow the bleeding. She knew the hospital didn’t carry them, and she had samples in her office. They expired at the end of December 2011, but she was cool with giving them to me, and I was more than cool taking them.
Awesome again: I have pretty significant fibroids, and she went through all the options for them with me, giving me the scoop on everything from IUD to full uterus a-goner. I asked her what she would do, and she wrote down all the things I needed to ask my Denver doc.
Awesome x 3: Still, I couldn’t think straight and had somebody else’s blood (thankfully) dripping into me and I hadn’t slept in what felt like forever and there were gross stains on the ceiling I had to stare at and I was in downtown Houston and I live in Denver and the bad daytime television made me feel lonelier than ever. “I’m just so alone,” I cried when she asked if I felt better.
“You are not alone,” Higgenbothem replied very matter-of-factly, “This happened for a reason. Maybe we were supposed to meet. Maybe the universe has a plan for you…” and she went on, giving me this speech that I can’t remember very well. But I remember how it made me feel: soothed, reaffirmed, purposeful. Like I was supposed to be in a random Houston hospital on January 17th, 35 years after my mom was in a hospital for a similar reason.
I know that many of you have suffered with fibroids, heavy periods and other lovely feminine uterine-based issues–lucky us!–and this little journey of mine will be yet another way to connect to each other. I’m the more modest one of this pair, so I won’t make you relive how many times I sent SBS out to CVS for more maxipads and super tampons (and peanut M’n’M’s), but I will obviously keep you posted on my progress.
I have a feeling I’ll be starting from square one–yet again–once I am finally able to run again. (The good news is that the fibroids might be contributing to my hamstring problem. Could be the best BOGO ever.)
Sure, I was throwing a major pity party for myself in Houston. Was it justified? Yep. And necessary to cope? Probably. But the party kind of ended when Higgenbothem left. She was right. I might have been physically solitary, but I wasn’t alone. The presentation Sarah gave on Tuesday morning had a line about how female runners travel in packs. Not only was my mom floating around me (and reminding me to use my manners), but our AMR pack kind of grabbed me and lifted me up and reminded me to stay strong and positive. Nothing good comes from negative mental energy; I had to point my toes towards the finish line and concentrate on crossing it.
Don’t quote me, but I’m pretty sure the blood I was given wasn’t type AB, but type BADASS.
Train Like A Mother: Outtake 1
Three of our favorite things: running medals, bikes with streamers (in the kitchen no less) and dora pj’s. (From runfastermommy.com)
Over 400 of you badass mother runners took plenty of your precious minutes to fill out the obnoxiously long survey we put together for Train Like a Mother (TLAM). There were so many thoughtful, insightful, funny answers—not that we expected anything less from this tribe—and if space weren’t an issue, we would’ve run about 10,000 more responses. But then TLAM would’ve been a kettlebell, not an orange book you could pull out of your diaper bag or purse to kill time at a park or a piano lesson.
One of SBS’ favorite phrases is “Waste not, want not.” (She tends to proclaim it as we stand in front of the airport security line before chugging 24 ounces of water in less than a minute. Seriously: I would’ve wanted her on my collegiate drinking squad.) I waste water more liberally, but neither one of us are wiling to waste any of your hard work. So as we countdown to the launch of Train Like A Mother in mid-March, every Friday we are going to publish a sidebar that, after much debate, sadly ended up on the cutting room floor.
Take It From A Mother: How do you display your medals?
“I have a [Restoration Hardware] hook in the shape of muscleman next to my bed. I look at it as I fall asleep or wake up, and it reminds me of everything I can accomplish when I put my mind to it.
—Amber (thinking about having a quilt made with her old cotton race tees)
“I store them in my drawer o’spandex.”
—Chandra (hopes to spend some time with a running coach because, “I feel like I bounce too much.”)
Dig this? You can pre-order TLAM on Amazon. (I can’t figure out how to link in captions: technically challenged.)
“I don’t. Finish medals, while an accomplishment, are not worth the hassle to dust.”
—Dedra (runs after her girls are in bed because she, “doesn’t want any fingers getting caught in the treadmill”)
“My husband and I accumulate medals, so we donated a bunch to Medals4Mettle [a non-profit that re-gifts the medals to individuals fighting illnesses]. We keep the pretty ones to adorn our Christmas tree as ornaments.”
—Katie (an ultrarunner, who logged 3,256 miles in 2010)
“They hang on the drawer pulls of my nightstand to remind me why I need to get out of bed.”
—Lisa (ran a marathon with a migraine. “I’d rather crawl over the finish line than have a DNF next to my name.”)
“They are in my son’s toy box. When I was younger, I displayed all my bibs, medals, and trophies. Since returning to running after a few years off, I’ve stopped caring about medals.”
—Leslie (ran (and won) her first road race at age 8)
“They hang from the rear-view mirror of my car. My 3-year-old sees them in the car and asks, ‘Did you run that race? Did you run fast?’ It’s such a boost at the end of a long day to answer, ‘Yes, baby, I did.’”
—Wendy (wants to sign up for every race she hears someone she knows is running)
“I don’t have any yet, but I’m scrapbooking my running bibs.”
—Jenni (favorite race: the Cupcake Race 5K. “Great incentive to run.”)
“We have a big armoire in the kitchen and I hung my first one there as a joke, as in, ‘What if I started hanging all my medals right in the kitchen?’ They’re all there now.”
—Laura (a serial racer, she does at least three 5Ks per month. “But probably more like five or six.”)
“They are all somewhere in the black hole of the toy room. Speaking of medals, when my older son was in 3-year-old preschool, we dug through my race medals for those that were gold and silver colored so he could wear them on ‘gold/silver’ day. All of the other kids were wearing clothes those colors; he was the only one sporting medals. When the teacher saw us walking in she exclaimed ‘Great idea! Are those all your father’s medals?’ I immediately responded, ‘No, they’re mine!’ I am still really put out by her assumption, and think of it nearly every time I see a medal lying around the house.”
—Jennifer (pre-kids she was all about massage therapy. Post-kids? “The best I can do now is have the kids walk on my back.”)
And of course, now we gotta know, how do you display your medals? (Bonus points if you include a random fact about your running with your response.)
Tell Me Tuesday: Staying Safe
Caroline, of Canadian Runner in Exile, was one of the countless mother runners who honored Sherry’s life by running for her after her death was confirmed; Caroline dedicated her half-marathon on Sunday to Sherry.
A female runner was found dead in the North End of Central Park when I lived in New York City. I had recently started to think of myself as a runner, and when I didn’t start my day with soothing, exhausting miles in Central Park, I was at loose ends. The news made me sad, rattled, and most of all angry; like many 24-year-olds, I thought of it on selfish terms. I couldn’t accept the idea of running being taken away from me.
So I did something that was totally stupid: The morning after I heard the news, I left my apartment on the Upper West Side at 6 a.m. on a Saturday, blaring my Madonna mix on my Walkman. I had to own my route and feel strong and invincible; if I stopped running, living in NYC would not have been tolerable.
The death of Sherry Arnold shook me–and everybody else–to the core for so many reasons: We can all put ourselves in her mother runner shoes, and the idea of a motherless family is just too much to fathom. More importantly, now that my perspective has (thankfully) widened a bit, I don’t want her story to deter mother runners to start or continue running. The idea of that makes me as angry as the situation in Central Park did about 15 years ago.
I do want you all to be as safe as possible, though, so I want to review some Running Safety 101:
- Cover your tracks. Tell somebody where you are going: your exact route, when you expect to be home. If your husband has the groggy drools going on when you leave in the morning, write him a note to back up your verbal message. Or text somebody with the same info, and tell them if they don’t get another text from you by xx:xx time to please call you. I always tell Grant if I’m not home without 10 minutes of when I should be, come look for me.
- Get a running buddy. Seriously, safety comes in pairs.
- Opt for boredom and safety over exotic routes. If you have to do tedious one-mile laps in your ‘hood with street lights instead of an unlit park because it’s pitch black at 5:30, so be it.
- Be aware. Yes, blaring Beyonce’s Run the World (Girls) gets you pumped up, but her voice takes away one of your vital senses: hearing. If you’re a gotta-have-tunes girl, try to run with just one earbud in. Keep the volume low enough that you can hear yourself talk at a normal voice. Keep your head and eyes up; when you get all slumped and downward gazing, you look more like prey than predator.
- Carry your phone and some form of ID, like a Road ID, and anything else that makes you feel safe, like pepper spray or mace. I don’t carry any weapon-like things because I doubt my ability to use them if the situation would arise. I’m just not that coordinated and bold.
- Use your internal compass. We were talking about this over dinner the other night with three mother runners–Kathy, Laura, and Terzah–and Kathy mentioned she’d never approach a stopped car. I totally get where she’s coming from, but if it’s a woman behind a minivan wheel with two kids in the back, I feel okay helping her with directions. You may not; again, do what feels right to you.
- Don’t be shy. If you feel threatened, seek safety however you can. Ask a fellow runner if you can run with them until you’re in the clear. Knock on the door of a house you don’t know. Yell for help; make a raucous.
- Take a self-defense class and up your confidence.
- If a car seems suspect–they’re driving slowly by you or passing by you multiple times–make eye contact with the driver and let them see you’re alert and paying attention. Memorize their license plate, then get to a safe place. (That’s another Kathy tip.)
- Final Kathy tip: She says hi to everybody she passes; she wants them to remember her face and her hair color if the need arises.
Do everything you can to stay safe, then go and enjoy your run. You still run to feel good, to feel powerful, to feel alive, vibrant, and strong. You run because 99% of the world is good, and because you can’t control everything.
Now you tell us: What do you do to stay safe on your run?
Also, wanted to let you all know that we’ve been in touch with Sherry’s cousin, Beth from Shut Up and Run, about raising money in Sherry’s honor. Once we get those details ironed out, we’ll spread them far and wide.
Goal Setting, Goal Keeping
[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.pagatim.fm/shows/amr_011212_101423601.mp3]
Go for goals: Dimity and Sarah eschew the word “resolutions,” preferring instead to talk about New Year’s goals. The mother runners impart advice and insight about making goals—set the bar high, but not too lofty–and attaining them. They talk about the importance of having a contingency plan for when life backfires on you and your planned workout. Along the way, Sarah nearly laughs herself silly, and Dimity tosses out an award-winning array of pithy aphorisms. (Sarah must be rubbing off on her!)*If you’re digging our podcasts, we’d be super-grateful if you’d take a minute (because we *know* you have so many to spare!) to write a review on iTunes. Many thanks.
**Also, the quickest way to get our podcasts is to subscribe to the show via iTunes. Clicking this link will automatically download the shows to your iTunes account. It doesn’t get any simpler than that!
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