Children as Motivational Tools

Spring is certainly upon us here in Cleveland. Temperatures got into the mid-70’s this week on more than one occasion. And while this is certainly excellent news, the weather getting good is bad in one way: it removes my primary excuse for not exercising, which is the 5 month Cleveland winter.

So about 3 weeks ago I laced up the shoes and started running again. Normally I’ll go 2 or 3 or 4 miles at a pop. Last year, I started getting my oldest daughter to come with me every now and again, and I’ve gotten her to come on about half of my 10 or so runs of this April.

I should back up a bit. I’ve never been a fan of exercising. I ran cross country for a year in high school but wasn’t particularly good (ok, I was terrible … I finished 56 out of 56 at the conference meet, which is really very hard to do). And starting in college, I smoked for years, and smokers generally aren’t exercise fans. When I quit smoking about 4 years ago (and naturally started eating more) I decided that I needed to try to do something, and since I’m much too cheap to join a gym, I started trying to go jogging.

This has never really worked out. What normally happens is that I’ll start running regularly, three or four times a week, but invariably, after two or three or four weeks, I’ll go running and I just won’t “have it” that day, and I’ll feel like I’ve got a truck trailer roped to me, and halfway through the run, I’ll quit and just walk home. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that when I was the slowest person in the entire Northern Ohio League conference, I was running at almost a 7 minute a mile clip, and now I’m normally running 10 minute miles or so, so it can be a tad disheartening to not be able to keep even that up.

With this base of self-loathing firmly in place, for the next week or two I’ll mysteriously find better things to do than go running. Like drinking. Or playing with the kids. Or reading. But normally drinking. And after a few weeks, if I try to run again, I’m completely out of shape, and I figure “screw it.” And running is over for a couple months. So the key for me has always been to find a way that I won’t quit in the middle of a run.

So fast forward to a week ago, with me and my daughter going out for a run. I had planned for us to jog the mile to a local lake/pond and turn around and jog back home for an easy two miles. But when we got to the lake and I started to turn around, my daughter said “Huh? We’re not running around the lake?” There was no disdain in her voice. There was no hidden agenda. It was an honest question. But I knew that having her father not want to jog the extra mile around the lake would have opened up all kinds of cans of worms.

I could write about how she might have recognized her father’s mortality, and begun to understand the nature of aging and death, and maybe those things are true. But another way to put all that is that I wasn’t going to let my 7 year old daughter think I was a giant wuss. So we went around the lake.

And she started to push me a bit; jogging ahead and making me push a bit to catch up. I mean, look, every father knows and even hopes that their kids will exceed them mentally and physically someday. I don’t have a problem with my 16 year old son or daughter being faster than me, but a freakin 7 year old is a little too much to take. It can happen eventually, but just not this day. And trying to comfort myself by saying “but she’s almost 8” is just pathetic. So let’s just say that there was no risk for walking as we went around the lake either. And since the lake we run around is a popular running spot, most of the runners that passed us thought that my daughter was simply adorable for threatening to kick my ass.

My mind did start to think of secret ways I could have a break. Unfortunately “Look, a goose” doesn’t really work on a 7 year old anymore (they still look, but they are able to look and keep running at the same time, unfortunately). I thought about telling her to go one way and then letting her run on ahead, then calling her back saying that she went the wrong way while I stood acting impatient. I considered trying to time it so we arrived at the one busy intersection with the lights against us so we’d have to stop. But all that just seemed too devious

And so I ran 3 miles - without risk of walking - at a healthy pace (for me).

Since then I’ve taken my daughter out several times with me, and each time I haven’t walked.

And as side effect, once or twice a week I have to sneak out and go running after she’s in bed: I need the extra training to make sure that I can keep up with her the next time.