June 2012

The Ladies Reminisce about Running Together

Together in the studio at last – with Jonah, our darling producer.

Together at last! On a recent visit to Portland, Dimity and Sarah finally get to record a podcast sitting within spitting distance of each other. (Thankfully the mikes served as spittle-shields.) In honor of the occasion, the mother runners relive runs they’ve taken together—from a sweltering 10-miler along the banks of Lake Michigan to the Nike Women’s Marathon (the genesis of their books) and a few Seattle-area jaunts. And Sarah admits to contemplating getting a tattoo.

[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.pagatim.fm/shows/amr_062812_101710401.mp3]

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.

**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!

***Or visit our great friends at Stitcher and subscribe to our podcasts there. Stitcher has been nominated as one of the best Apps ever.

Time to Talk Dirty: Mud Run Lingo

This gal is seriously kicking ash!

Few things I love more than silly slang; as I wrote once on here, it’s reason #8,521 why I love my husband, Jack. In Train Like a Mother: How to Get Across Any Finish Line – and Not Lose Your Family, Job, or Sanity, we have an Another Mother Runner Dictionary in the back with definitions for terms such as “barnacle buster,” “googly eyes,” and “releasing the cracken.” (Crack open our orange baby to see what they mean!)

So when a PR gal emailed us a bevy of catch phrases to toss around at mud runs, we had to share them. (They come from the CustomInk website where you can order T-shirts to wear for an upcoming Warrior Dash or Muddy Buddy.) And what better day to, um, talk dirty than TMI Tuesday, right?

Bale Out – when you run and leap to secure footing on the hay bales, only to realize you didn’t get enough momentum and have to try again

Bake n’ Cake – standing in the sun until the mud that covers you becomes a dirty crust

Barbie-Queue – the line that forms at the barbed wire obstacle while people observe others and figure out their strategy

I’m dazzled by her pearly smile–and clean face

Belly Slop – when you wrongly assume a mud obstacle is slick enough that you can slide on your stomach, and instead plant yourself stomach-first in the muck

Birthday Suitors – those men who choose to complete mud races in various stages of undress, or in Speedos

The Electric Slide – the maneuver you use to avoid live electrical wires in particularly challenging mud races

Fon-dudes – men so totally covered in mud they look like they were dipped in a chocolate fountain

The Freshwater 15 – the weight that your clothes and shoes gain after going through the first water obstacle

Kicking Ash – clearing the fire hazard in one glorious leap

Lemming  – to jump off of a tall obstacle mindlessly following those in front of you without regard for your personal safety

Somebody get this woman some “mud suds”

Mud Suds – the well-earned beer you down after crossing the finish line

Official Debriefing – the recounting of your race tales while disrobing; usually held in a parking lot

Slip Slops– what any pair of previously functional shoes becomes after you’ve completed the race

Souv-in-ear – the keepsake dirt you find in your ear three days after the race

Stick in the Mud – what you become as a result of a Belly Slop

Sting Operation – when you’re finally able to shower and feel every one of the previously unknown cuts and scrapes

Tire-Ran-Ass-Sore-us – the creature you become after successfully navigating dozens of tires

Woodstocks – generic term for the farms, fields and other hinterlands that host mud race events

Lay it on us, mother runners: Do you have any “dirty words” to add to the list?

 

Tell Me Tuesday: Running While Female?

Sarah and her family. (From the Lexington Herald-Leader)

I wish I weren’t rerunning this post, which I just wrote in January, but sadly, another mother runner was recently killed while running. On Thursday morning, Sarah Hart, a pregnant mother of three, was strangled as she returned from a morning run with her sister; she turned back early because she wasn’t feeling well. Authorities found her body and her potential killer quickly–details are here–but…I have no words. Just ugh.

I don’t think I can take another story about a mother runner meeting an untimely end, so here’s a rerun of my attempt at keeping all of you lovelies safe. Rest in peace, Sarah; we will carry you in our hearts and through our miles.

********************

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.)
  • Say hi to everybody you pass; you wants them to remember her face and her hair color if the need arises.

Finally, an addition to this edition. Don’t be dumb when it comes to traffic lights. A 60-year-old accomplished runner died on Saturday morning here in Denver at a busy intersection; he was crossing against the signal. Another ugh. I know I’ve done it–I’ve got this car beat, I tell myself–but the reality is, thousands of pounds of metal will always beat a human body.

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?

Feeling the Gratitude

Tell me it’s not just my kids’ school that sends home every.single.piece.of.paper they touch at school–then assure me I’m not the only mom who makes a beeline to the recycling bin with the vast majority of the sketches, math workbook pages, and spelling tests. As I was going through the end-of-year avalanche of papers, though, I found gold: illustrated cards from many of the children in Daphne’s 1st-grade class, thanking me for volunteering every Tuesday when they ran (and walked) around the school. (I’ve written about them a few times during the year.) Here are some that made me veer sharply away from the recycling.

Underlined word in 2nd sentence is supposed to be “able.”

All clouds have smiley faces, right?

Sensing a theme? I was an avid (some might say goofy) cheerleader, especially for Charlotte who has enviable endurance and speed.

Peace, flowers, and running. What else do you need?

My favorite one, needless to say.

 

Run across A-mom-ica

Talk about an epic run: Dimity and Sarah talk to Laura Mount, who took part in a 3,458-mile, 21-day journey across the United States on foot. During the three weeks, Laura ran anywhere from 9 to 22 miles, day in, day out. Sarah and Laura bond over being mother runners of boy-girl twins, while Dimity asks all about the nitty-gritty details of no showers and lots of sweat. (Warning: Laura has a voice as deep as Sarah and Dimity: Good luck trying to discern who’s talking!)

[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.pagatim.fm/shows/amr_061412_101682471.mp3]

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.

**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!

***Or visit our great friends at Stitcher and subscribe to our podcasts there. Stitcher has been nominated as one of the best Apps ever.

Madlibs for Mother Runners: On a Long Run

This bad boy came up on my Google Image search for “noun verb.” Yep, I’ll never understand SEO.

[Another remnant from Train Like a Mother we found while cleaning up our offices the other day. Enjoy.]

My _____________________________ (a person) and I started running  ____________ (a number) minutes ago. The ________________________ (noun) is shining ____________________________ (adverb) so we are already quite ____________________________ (adjective). But we’re not worried because we brought ____________________________ (food) and ____________________________ (beverage) with us in our ____________________________ (plural noun) that we are wearing around our _________________________ (body part), so we’ll have plenty of fuel.

We are supposed to ______________________________ (a verb) for _________ (a number) of miles—it’s the _______________________ (adjective ending in –est) we’ve ever run, but I’m pretty sure we can do it. My friend is telling me a story about her ______________________ (noun) who ___________________________ (verb ending in –ed) her last week. I am __________________________ (verb ending in –ing) so hard, I ___________________________ (bodily function). Suddenly, a ___________________________ (adjective) ___________________________ (animal) darts in front of us, and we almost ______________________________ (verb) it. It makes our ______________________ (internal organ) ___________________________ (verb) even faster. And we laugh some more.

Then the run becomes a little _________________________ (adjective ending in –er). After running ________ (a number) more __________________________ (plural unit of measure), my ____________________________ (body part) starts to hurt. It feels like I have a _____________________________ (adjective) __________________________ (noun) in my ____________________________ (same body part). I tell my friend to go ahead, and I start _________________________________ (verb ending in –ing), hoping it will make my ____________________________ (same body part) will feel _________________________ (adverb).

I put on my music, and listen to _____________________(musical group) to keep my legs moving.  At least the __________________________ (geographic feature) is _____________________ (adjective) to look at. Or at least I pretend it is, otherwise I will get too ________________________(adjective) about my ______________________(same body part) and my _______________________ (adjective) friend, who finished her run ___________ (number) minutes ahead of me. When I finally arrive at my driveway, there she is, already enjoying a ___________________________ (noun) and a ___________________________ (beverage).

Because we know you have hours to stand around playing Madlibs, we want to know: What was the best line you came up with? (If you’re on Twitter, tweet it using hashtag #AMRMadLibs)

Go to Top