#AMRinSaucony: On Marathons, 5Ks, and No More Apologies

When asked what my favorite race distance is, I always stumble. Even though most of my “official” races have been marathons, that is mostly because it’s just worked out that way. Also, I alway feel like the more miles I run, the more value I get from a race entry fee. Hey, races aren’t cheap these days. More miles = value!

I seem to also be getting maximum value from my cold weather Saucony gear, since we had a frost advisory for June 1 this year. WTH.

When I lived in the suburbs of Detroit, there was always a race to be run. You could realistically make it your weekend hobby if you wanted. Now that I live in the remote frozen tundra of the Upper Peninsula, we don’t have races every weekend. We barely have them every month. When I do sign up for a race, it’s usually a special event and once a year, my husband and I run the Twin Cities Marathon. He’s a St. Paul native, so it’s his hometown race. I consider the Twin Cities my adopted hometown, so it’s mine, too.

Us before the Twin Cities Marathon, 2013.

He’s run it eight times, and this will be my eighth this fall. In the early years, it was the one weekend of the year that we got out of town, just the two of us, minus his three children from his first marriage. Alone time! We just had to run 26.2 stinking miles to get it.

Sure, that’s not crazy or anything.

I have always felt comfortable at the marathon. Even though I had first-time jitters when I joined the hordes of people at the Chicago Marathon in 2004, I somehow felt at ease among these other runners. They were, for the most part, people who looked just like me, though many of them were probably much more experienced. I went into the race a true newbie and came out, well, still pretty much a newbie. But after the finish line, I knew better now than to run with an iPod stuffed in the waistband of my shorts. I also learned that petroleum jelly, when gobbed on in between your thighs mid-race, tends to stain clothing. (Not coincidentally, this was the year I learned about Body Glide.)

It was that incredible feeling of holy sh*t I just ran 26.2 miles I CAN DO ANYTHING! that kept me signing up year after year, only taking a break when I gave birth to my first daughter in 2009. That year I moved down to the ten mile race, which was horrific, yet the whole time I couldn’t help but think of how I wished I was out there for the whole agonizing 26.2. Maybe the marathon is in my blood. Or maybe I’m just crazy. (Probably a little of both.)

I don’t have a lot of experience running shorter races. I’ve run a few half marathons and 10Ks over the years, with some trail races that were fewer miles but felt like they went on for days because of the terrain. But after doing this for a long time, I feel pretty comfortable lining up at the start. I’ve amassed enough running clothing (my husband would argue perhaps too much clothing) so that I don’t have to show up in a cotton t-shirt and basketball shorts like I did at my first race 12 years ago. I know how to drink from the water cup without dumping it all over myself (well, most of the time). Those little timing chips (and now timing bibs!) are not a mystery to me anymore. I feel comfortable, like I belong. And I should. I’m a runner. A badass mother runner. These are my people.

After finishing the Cellcom Green Bay Half last month.

Except when they’re not your people. When you sign up for a 5K and the field resembles more of a USATF club race than a casual fun run. Which is where I found myself when I signed up for a race over Memorial Day weekend.

It was a last minute decision I made as I was scanning the Minneapolis race calendar, looking for something close to my father in law’s house. I usually balk at paying $$ for a race that only lasts for well under an hour, but this one sounded like fun: The Brian Kraft Memorial 5K: a fast and flat 5K around Lake Nokomis, a benefit for the Arnold S. Leonard Cancer Research Fund. It was a cause I could get behind; I’d lost my mother-in-law to cancer shortly after the Twin Cities Marathon in 2010. And then I saw the race shirt on social media, which sealed the deal. How often is the race shirt actually cool? I was in.

Worth the price of admission.

In a few pockets of free time between 6-year-old birthday party preparations and teething six month olds, I did some internet research on the race, which revealed that this was a race full of fast people. You know, the kind of runners who wear singlets emblazoned with running clubs and split shorts that accentuate their perfectly chiseled muscle-y quads. The male and female winners would finish this race in 14:20 and 16:55, respectively. That is usually how long it takes me to get warmed up, mind you. And the perfectly acceptable yet modest goal I’d set for myself – sub-30:00 – now seemed ridiculous. Laughable. Why was I even going to show up?

What made it worse is that as I scanned the clothing I’d hastily jammed in the suitcase for running that weekend, suddenly everything I packed felt like it was designed to make me look even more like a sore thumb. The cheap $6 tech tee I’d grabbed because I couldn’t find anything else clean in the hurriedness of packing. The Saucony bullet capris, which I love, but were a far cry from the skimpy shorts that most of these runners would be waring. I knew they weren’t picking out capris because of the miraculous ability to compress extra pounds that they still hadn’t lost since giving birth.

For the first time in a long time, I felt completely out of my element. I felt like I didn’t belong. That maybe I should just pick up my (still cool) race t-shirt and go home.

It was, and is, an awful feeling, and I know i’m not the only person who’s ever felt that way at a race. At a group run. On the front steps of their house as they venture out for the first time as a runner.

I thought about where I was as a runner. Did a 5K field of fasties invalidate all the running achivements I’d had in the last twelve years? Did I really believe that since I wasn’t an elite runner that I didn’t belong in an open field fundraiser 5K? And what did that say about how I perceived other runners? Had I become, as my first marathon BRF had warned me about years and years ago, a “running snob?” Did I have a picture in my head of what a runner should be, or how fast she should go?

It was a wake up call, for sure.

Before the race, I spotted Melissa Gacek, a fixture in the Minneapolis running scene. Melissa is an elite runner, artist, entrepreneur, and yes, she is a badass mother runner of two. I’m not sure how I was able to overcome my introvert and say hello to her. But the familiar face, one at least from the Internet, made me feel at ease. So I introduced myself and we chatted for a few minutes before we went to our respective starting areas.

Melissa and me, pre-race

She asked me what my goals were and I told her, but feeling the need to qualify it with the explanation that I was six months post partum. The thing that stuck with me the most from our short conversation was when she told me, “Good for you, YOU’RE OUT HERE.”

I am out here.

We have extra pounds, emotional baggage, physical limitations, seemingly impossible schedules. Yet, we make it happen. We are all out here.

Ladies, can we agree, right here and now, that we are all runners, regardless of shape, size, or speed?

Can we promise to each other that we will stop apologizing for ourselves?

We are all runners. We belong here.

Me in my postpartum running glory. Not that it matters, but I did beat that guy in the end. :)

Without turning this into a race report, I will say that the race lived up to its name – flat and, well, as fast as I could manage. I did start out a little fast but eventually found a place I could live and settled on the mantra: Just Hang On, and I did my best.

As I rounded the last turn around the lake and approached the three mile mark, I could hear the applause and cheers from the spectators as runners crossed the finish line. Suddenly, I heard screams from the sidelines: “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” My husband and three kids were on the curb standing on the grass, my eldest jumping up and down and smiling from ear to ear. I ran to the side of the road and held out my hand to meet hers. Yup, I’m ‘Mommy,’ I thought, and I wanted everyone around me to know it.

Not only am I a mother, but I am out there. I am a runner. I belong here, and so do you.

Ok, Ladies, Call to Action: can we agree, right here and now, that we are all runners, regardless of shape, size, or speed?

Can we promise to each other that we will stop apologizing for ourselves?