ChAoS in MOtiOn
I.Am.A.Runner.
It is amazing how the right
words, at the right time can change a perspective. At the Bill Jansen Road Race this past June, a group of us
were standing talking pre-race.
Mostly we were discussing how unfair some brackets were, like the 30-39
women’s bracket. A 30 year
old woman with no children who still gets to take naps and sleeps through the
night, who has never had one or 3 c-sections, and can party until 2 and show up
at 7 to run is not the same as a 39 year old Mom with 3 children, who has gone
through pregnancy and then surgery 3 times, has slept in the “H” position with
her husband and toddler 6 of the last 7 nights and hasn’t had a nap since
Monika and Bill were current news are not the same thing.
As we were chatting, I had
mentioned I had already done 3 miles prior to the 10k we were waiting for,
because my training schedule called for 9 miles that day. A woman asks me, “So you’re a runner?” I uhmed, and ahhhed…. and hesitated,
and “well” and “uh…” and finally a fellow Mom runner called me out on my
behavior exclaiming, “Diane! If you are training for a marathon I THINK you are
a runner!!” Thank you Kalyn for the call out. After so many years of running
and racing, I still have struggled with labeling myself “A runner.”
Labeling individuals is
something I consciously try shy away from. Johnny Cash felt a good song was a good song regardless of
the genre. I try to view people
the same way. People are people.
In avoiding slapping a label on their forehead, I am making a conscious
effort to get to know the true individual, not the individual others have
presented to me.
Labeling myself has also been
a task I have purposely avoided. I
am ever changing. Obviously there
are some labels I would wear as tattoos: Wife, Mother, Daughter, and
sister. They are certain and
unchanging. But life itself is
ever changing, as is the book we are all writing with our lives, everyday. I resemble the 20 year old version of
myself, but in a way that sisters resemble each other. One can tell they are related, but they
are different. Because I am still
learning about myself, I hesitate to label myself; I more than one thing, I am
many, but not a runner! No way!
Runners
are sinewy. They are long and lean and have abs that I could wash jeans
upon. They eat bark and grains I
can’t pronounce. They measure
weekly miles by numbers I measure highway speeds. They run, think about running, talk about running, eat so
they can run, don’t drink so they run, and sleep so they can get up to run some
more. They are disciplined and
type A. They love the checkable tasks a training schedule brings.
Me? I’m a mom who runs. I run
because I like to cook with butter, and like beer with my chicken wings. I run
to keep at bay the alien who lives in my face that explodes out on that school
morning when for the fourth day in a row we can only find 3 shoes, none of
which match and the cat has puked 3 times since last night on the white carpet,
and the toddler and his feet are why I even know there is cat puke in the
house. I run because so far the
children can’t catch me.
That
night I laid in my bed and looked at the race “bling” I have hanging on the
wall. It is a colorful and ever growing lot. Every one of those medals was a symbol of someone’s desire
to train for and finish a race, someone who put in the miles and had set a goal
to finish, and someone who was a runner.
I accepted I am that someone. I am a runner.