What Made Today's Race So Exciting?

I have a race this morning, and I can’t wait. I know, you’re scratching your head while reading this, thinking, “Wait, doesn’t she have a race on any day that ends in a ‘y’? Who cares?"

You’re right. I run races almost hourly. This one is 4 miles in Central Park on a CHILLY Sunday. We all know I’ll try hard, my knee will hurt, I’ll make some comment about some random racer in the pack with me (have I ever told you about the guy who ties bells to himself, so he can “jingle all the way?” Have I ever mentioned that he and I have the EXACT same pace and I spend most of my races – including the half marathons which take over 2 hours – listening to those damned bells and thinking of all kinds of creative scenarios that result in my shoving those bells in various body cavities of his?). You’re right. Who cares?

Before I answer that, I want to back up a bit. OK, let’s back up a lot. Let me set the scene of me as a kid. It’s the late 1970s. Collars were large, phones never left our house, Nissans were called “Datsuns”. Most mornings I’d wake up and my mom would already be in the dining room, reading the paper, drinking coffee and eating an Entemann’s chocolate donut. So, I’d make a cup of coffee (thus answering your burning question as to why as an adult I’ve never reached 5 feet), grab a donut, and pull out the sports section for myself (since in the late 1970s the Yankees were God’s gift to baseball, and I just felt bad for any kid in the rest of the country whose home town team simply just sucked).

Let’s jump ahead to the 1980s. Now clothes were neon colored, ties got skinny, and although phones never left the house they were no longer rotary. My mom had a new job working for Nabisco, so we still had coffee but instead of those “competitor brand” chocolate donuts, we’d shifted to 4 or 5 Oreos or Chips Ahoys for breakfast (or remember those “Mystic Mints”? The Oreos covered in a minty chocolate, best eaten frozen? Wow, I miss those…). The only big difference was that I did the crossword puzzle instead of reading the sports section of the paper, having now become one of those kids whose hometown team simply just sucked.

Now, I have to say that I think my mom did a great job. She raised two kids while working a full time job. Instead of going out at night she’d get us engaged in backgammon tournaments where I crushed everyone, and Monopoly marathons where my brother would put Mom and me in the poor house (and now I’m a data analyst and my brother is a big shot in real estate, go figure). But my brother and I grew up knowing little about nutrition and exercise. You may have heard that it’s good to “eat a rainbow everyday” by enjoying different veggies and fruits. My brother and I ate rainbows every day: orange Doritos, red cans of Coke, yellow potato chips, M & Ms in various colors. And like I said, we did a lot of stuff together, but it never involved a ball, a bike, a walk to the park. And growing up, all I thought was that I wanted to be just like my mom.

And as an adult, I in many ways became my mom. I was overweight, sedentary, and knew little about nutrition and fitness. When Peter K came to speak at my company in 2008, my daughter, Olivia, was 3 and my son, Benjamin, was about 4 months. I listened to Peter talk about being a good role model. At first I got a little defensive, thinking that my mom had done the best job she could. Then I thought about Olivia and Ben. I thought about Olivia as an adult dreading to go clothes shopping because she didn’t want to see how many sizes she’d gone up since the season before. I pictured Ben watching people run and bike in Central Park and think “I wish I could do that.” So, I decided to take meeting Peter K as an opportunity to change the kind of role model I was going to become.

Ok, now let me fast forward to this morning. Yes, I still had coffee (what you were expecting? I’ve been drinking the stuff for over 35 years now), but now my breakfast was my usual pre-race whole wheat toast with a teaspoon of whole wheat jam. This race is different, though (and this is where I get to the exciting part). A few days ago, Olivia asked me if kids were allowed to race. I told her that they had separate kid races after the adult ones. She said, “Do the kids run 4 miles, too?” I replied, “No. The kids’ races are much shorter.” She thought for a second (data analyst in the making :-) and said, “OK, then can I come with you and run in the kids’ race?”

After breakfast Olivia and I headed out for our trip into the City to run our respective races. In the end, I did OK in mine but not great, and I discovered that all of Olivia’s college scholarships will be academic in nature. And I couldn’t have been more proud of both of us.