Mother Runners: The Ultimate Planners

We runners begin planning for “next season” a little earlier than most, I’d say. We’ve got to be brave – banking on the extent of our training prowess long in advance of any actual foot-to-pavement action. And we’ve got to act quickly because races fill up fast these days and if we don’t “ink” those race days on the family calendar long before everyone else’s schedules overlap, we might just succumb to erasing our names off those coveted little white squares. In short: we start with our Finish Lines and then work our way backward – choosing our training plans and then plotting our daily miles.

As runners, we will all likely experience the blood, sweat, and tears of testing our own limits – we’ll show up at the track with a list of sprints that makes us want to vomit before we even step a foot out of the car; we’ll kick up the pace in the middle of a luxurious run because it’s tempo day and “feeling the burn” in our lungs today will teach us just how far we can push ourselves on race day; we’ll even begin to measure our progress by just how many hill repeats we can get through before we have to bend over, gasping for air, or our legs wobble too much to even walk home. We are Mother Runners, we choose to do hard things – for fun!

We show up at start lines and run to finish lines we can’t see, not knowing whether we’ll have a fast day or a slow day, not knowing for certain whether we’ll run in the rain and want that jacket or if we’ll be able to bear the cold, unencumbered. But we show up anyway, because we are runners. Because we are women – badass mother runners.

One thing is for certain: if you don’t show up, you won’t cross the finish. My hope for you as you run on and into a New Year, is that you’ll come to know your strength and trust yourself along the way – that you’ll do the work, run the races, and let your legs prove it to you: you are enough. Now, go! I’ll see ya out there!