Tales from Another Mother Runner: Triumphs, Trials, Tips, and Tricks from the Road

By John Holmes McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea

The authors of Run Like a Mother share a collection of inspiring and insightful stories from women who discovered their own power through running.

Every mother runner has a tale to tell. A story about how she discovered the fierce and confident athlete inside her. Maybe it’s about setting a seemingly impossible goal—and then exceeding it. Maybe it’s about finding friends who are also allies, cheerleaders, and reality checks. Or maybe it's just a simple story of starting the day off with an endorphin rush.

In Mother Runners, elite runners Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea share not only their own stories of personal triumph on the pavement but also inspiring stories from the mother runner community. Through the common theme of running, these women explore issues from losing weight and gaining confidence to finding yourself, connecting with friends, setting goals, dealing with disappointment, and building a better you.

Whether you've run more marathons than you can remember, or you're just getting started, you'll find the inspiration you need to get out there, keep pushing, and run like a mother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781449453046

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I, Dimity, am in mile 21 of the Nike Women’s Marathon with my sister Sarah by my side. By all accounts, we’re probably looking pretty capable for just having run for more than three hours. I’m a spritely thirty-four, Sarah is five years younger, and we’re charging as fast as mid-pack marathon runners do toward the finish line. (Read: Walk breaks, previously reserved for aid stations, now happen randomly and often.) I might even look cute. My long legs are sleek from miles of marathon training, I got an expensive haircut less than a week ago, and I’m wearing a black running dress, which is as Project Runway as running gear gets. Okay, wavy, white sweat lines decorate the dress pits, and a Team in Training coach—not my coach, mind you—on the sidelines just told me to shake out my arms, so I’m clearly not the picture of Perfect Running Form, but all things considered? Capable and cute.

On the inside though, I’ve fallen apart. I don’t think I’ll ever see the finish line, and quite frankly, I have no interest in getting there. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks, is on repeat in my head, not quite the you-can-do-it mantra I need. I’m not listening to music, so I can’t power up Gwen Stefani and her B-A-N-A-N-A-S to get me through. I’m D-O-N-E. The finisher’s silver Tiffany necklace waiting for me at the end is about as enticing as a plastic spider ring given out on Halloween in lieu of candy. Don’t. Want. It.

All I want? To not have to run another step. Ever again. Sarah is no help. In her own world of hurt, she gets mad at me when I set a modest goal (run thirty feet to that cone, then we can walk) and bail on it twenty feet into the challenge. You can’t do that, Ditty! she complains. Not fair. Her words sting as much as my left hip, which has flared up like a firecracker.

Although mile 21 of any marathon isn’t a particularly pleasant place to be, our situation is worse because we went out too fast. Much too fast. Our first miles were in the low eights, a very ambitious pace for most, and ridiculously so for me; my longest training run was 16 miles because of a mid-training stress fracture in my left heel. Despite knowing better as we cruised through the first miles, I kept thinking, This is awesome! We’re flying and banking time. You can’t bank time in a running race any more than you can open a savings account that pays 25 percent interest. But rational thought has no place at a marathon party when I’m wearing a cute dress and a sassy haircut; when my sister, who makes me laugh like nobody else, is by my side; and when the crisp, fresh air of hip San Francisco makes me believe anything, including twenty-six consecutive eightish-minute splits, is possible.

Until I hit mile 21, and all I can think is, WTF? Why am I doing this?

As I hobble along, I can’t recall the reasons I’m out here. All I can concentrate on is how much my leg hurts and how stupidly far 26.2 miles is to go. Rewind, though, and I was running 26.2 because I needed to get as far away as I could from postpartum depression, which hung over me after my second kid was born like the fog that almost always clouds San Francisco Bay. I was running 26.2 because if I didn’t have a goal, a reason to throw back my covers in the morning and get my endorphins flowing, I wasn’t confident I’d find my way back to some happier version of myself, the self that wanted to engage with my husband, my friends, the world. I was running 26.2 because it meant a weekend with my sister, and my friends Sarah and Katherine, during which I’d laugh, achieve, celebrate, shop, and, I hoped, feel joy—and kind of human again.

I wanted and needed it all so badly that after the podiatrist diagnosed the fracture and I stopped at Wendy’s for a feel-better Frosty (not surprisingly, it didn’t make me feel better), I immediately got on the phone with my coach to come up with a plan B. The fracture was bad enough that it should’ve ended my marathon goal, but that simply wasn’t an option. I didn’t want to watch others race. I needed to go the distance myself.

After trailing Dimity’s easy-to-spot, 6’ 4, dress-wearing figure since mile 9, I, Sarah (her friend, not her sister), am less than a quarter-mile behind her, and I am having my own marathon-inspired pity party. Thanks to sun and heat more often associated with L.A. than San Francisco, my white tech tee is heavy with sweat. I’m trendy, too, with my running skirt, but my thighs are having a shouting match, arguing over which one is in more pain from chub-rub. A hydration pack around my waist has chafed a raw spot on my lower back that probably is only the size of a quarter but feels like a pancake of pain. My marathon coach, Paula, a few feet ahead of me, is as perky and wiry as a Chihuahua; every few steps, she yips an upbeat, Stay strong, Sarah; you’ve got this. You’re doing great, girlfriend!"

Which is a whopper of a lie, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

I’d stepped onto my Portland-to-San Francisco flight with my head and heart bulging with intentions to break the four-hour mark in the marathon. Paula had trained me for this, my fourth marathon, with the bold goal of having a finish time that started with a three. It was a goal I’d lusted for since I ran my first 26.2 as a divorced woman with no kids who was newly in love with Jack, a former college classmate. I’m not sure where I even got the idea of a sub-four-hour marathon; I didn’t become athletic until college. Back in the 1990s, I considered myself a rower who sometimes ran, not a runner. I didn’t even have many friends who had run a 26.2-mile race: My work-pal Dimity had run the 2007 New York City Marathon, and I had no clue what her finish time was. (I, Dimity, do. It was 4:23. Or 4:32. One of those.)

To the outside world, I had a sports swagger worthy of a first-round draft pick, often working into conversation boasts of top-five finishes at the highly competitive Head of the Charles rowing regatta. Yet 99 percent of it was bravado. Under a tough veneer of egotism was a marshmallow-soft center of self-doubt. To this day, every workout I do, every mile I run, fills chips in the veneer that threaten to reveal my true identity: a reader, not a rower or runner. I come from a long line of people of the word, as my gentle Southern father likes to remind us. Since I feel exercise isn’t wired into my DNA, I have to supplement it—and sometimes overdose on it—to compensate for a lack of genetic predisposition.

A sub-four marathon would validate my swagger, authenticate my bravado, and quiet my concerns about being a poser. It would make me a well-read runner, not a reader who runs. A swift marathon would show even though I’d crossed the line into my forties, I could be stronger, speedier, and maybe even a smidge sassier than I’d been pre-kids. It would prove even though I drove a minivan and carried a diaper bag, I still had a little somethin’ somethin’.

For this marathon, I’d put my lofty time goal out into the blogosphere for all to see; Dimity and I wrote about our training on the Runner’s World website as the Marathon Moms. (I married Jack and had three kids: one daughter, then five years old, and boy/girl twins, age two.) As I slog through each sunny mile, I can feel the goal slip from my sweaty grasp. The hills in the first half are my undoing, slowing me down and draining my energy. In Golden Gate Park, when my friend Christy bikes alongside me toward the halfway point, where my GPS reads 2:02, I admit out loud to her—and, really, to myself—the race isn’t going as I’d hoped. My shoulders slump; my gut roils. I’d known this truth since (hilly) mile 5 or 6, but uttering the words feels dispiriting and disheartening.

As we circle Lake Merced, which somehow seems uphill all 5 miles around, I come to grips with the truth that’s been staring me in the face since the park: I’m not going to finish anywhere close to four hours. Disappointment and dejection make each step feel even heavier than they already do. I’m angry at myself, at Paula, at Dimity for suggesting we run the race. Heck, I’m pissed at anyone who passes me because she has more juice left in her limbs than I do.

Near mile 22, Melissa Etheridge starts belting I Run for Life on my iPod. The breast-cancer survival anthem immediately reminds me of my brother’s wife, who passed from the disease two years prior. I nearly stumble as I stifle a choking garble that wants to escape my throat. My tears mingle with sweat on my flushed cheeks, and I keep running.

Black dress on the outside and a sub-four goal: superficial stories that belie the real situations. Two variations on the make-it-stop theme on the inside: more honesty, more resonance. But the backstories? The most interesting—and most important—stories. The ones that make finish-line victories taste more delicious, invoke streams of tears, elicit smiles sweet as a peach.

A 1:59:58 half-marathon is damned impressive, especially when you hear the runner had massive GI issues starting at mile 4. But when you know the woman, despite losing her father three months earlier, was up at 4:30 a.m. for fourteen weeks through the Polar Vortex because she had to be showered and present for her special-needs child by 6:30 a.m.? Suddenly, you think she should’ve won the race.

Friend Sarah, bolstered by memories of her sister-in-law, passes my sister and me around mile 20. And I, Dimity, tough out those 5 miles. Because, well, what else was I really going to do? Stop and park myself on the curb? If it were Denver, my hometown, I might have, but it would’ve taken me at least five hours to find our hotel solo, so I keep marching toward the finish line. And I’m beyond thankful I did. Even with friend Sarah’s 4:11 finish (a rockin’ time, if you ask me), our account of running the Nike Women’s Marathon solidified a mother-runner community that, during the next five years, becomes a staple for tens of thousands of women.

As we told tales of our miles and milestones in Run Like a Mother (2010) and dished out training and racing advice in Train Like a Mother (2012), we shared our backstories and carried a consistent tone that blended honesty, humor, inspiration, and support. The perspective in the chatty books spilled on to Facebook and our website, prompting a good friend to dub us the Dear Abby for Mother Runners. And the chatter became our voices, as we started Another Mother Runner weekly podcasts. We coined a name for ourselves (Badass Mother Runners), complete with an acronym (BAMR) that isn’t worthy of Merriam-Webster yet, but makes the hashtag rounds on Twitter, along with #motherrunner. What’s more, the self-identifying shirts and tanks make appearances at races nationwide and are available at motherrunnerstore.com. (Maybe our next stop is QVC?)

Multitudes of other women around the country were doing exactly what we were doing: putting in miles (even if their most unpleasant memories from childhood involved gym class and running)—or trying to run. They were running to forge and solidify an identity, as Sarah does. They were running because, if they didn’t, they’d rarely have social interaction with anybody older than five. They were running to find peace with their new normal of diapers or divorce. They were running so they didn’t lose themselves somewhere in a pile of laundry or a pot of mac and cheese. They were running to make their days feel a little less challenging and heavy, as Dimity does. That sounds more depressing than it should, but let’s be honest: Motherhood, no matter how old your kids are, is not the easiest thing ever. (That’s a direct quote from Dimity’s mom, so it must be true, right?)

As we collectively searched for some fresh equilibrium via pavement pounding, mother runners quickly jumped in for advice and validation. At first the questions were mostly about running: What’s a negative split, and how do I get one? Then they became a little more casual: I only like to wear pink tops and black capris: Is that strange? And more personal: I can’t stand one woman in our running group who talks constantly about how great her kids are. Please advise. Finally, it got to the point where a troubling question about an unsupportive spouse or a valid concern about finishing last in a race were the norm, not the exception.

Of course, more practical questions about the best half-marathon for a girlfriends’ getaway and how to treat plantar fasciitis often outnumber the more personal posts, but that’s neither here nor there. Because, as we’ve learned during the past five years, it’s the asker’s point of view that really matters, and it unites us in powerful, surprisingly intimate ways. Somebody’s main question may be about when to step up from a 10K to a half-marathon, but her PS may mention her son is having trouble making the adjustment to middle school or her mom has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or her husband recently lost his job. Even if we’ve never been in that situation, we all know exactly where she’s coming from. Despite the speed bumps life is throwing at her, she realizes the transformative power of a mile, the importance of pushing toward new challenges, the value in taking care of herself, one step at a time. You may never meet her in person, but you know her better than you may know your cousin or cube-mate.

Tales from Another Mother Runner celebrates that connection and this community. Instead of us writing every chapter, we reached out to a variety of mother-runner writers and asked them to share tales of their miles, victories, trials, and histories. Not surprisingly, they delivered as only BAMRs can: With wit and perspective, honesty and depth. While [my family] supports me, writes Bethany Meyer in a piece about hiring a coach, Training with Coach was like having my own little cheerleader who is not rooting for me and, in the next breath, asking for a ham sandwich. And there is something to be said for encouragement that comes sans a request for deli meat.

Whether you’re restarting your commitment to running (again), as Nicole Knepper talks about; or ready to become an ultra-BAMR, as Katie Arnold details; or looking for joy at the track, where Kristin Armstrong unexpectedly found it; or marveling that you, a non-runner for as long as you can remember, can now tackle double digits, as Adrienne Martini does, these essays will transport you into their shoes—and fire you up to lace up your own.

The essayists are far from the only stars in these pages, though. Once again, hundreds of you took your (valuable) time filling out obnoxiously long surveys about your running and your lives, and we’re so grateful you did. We’ve included your thoughtful responses in various forms, including Take It from a Mother columns, My Running Path narratives, What a Mother Runner Looks Like, and In Her Shoes. With your expert, honest help, we’ve hit on everything from how it feels to run a naked 5K to how hard you’ve ever pushed yourself in a race.

Just as there’s always another mile to run, there’s always another story to tell; we hope you’ll continue to share them with us. You can track us down and spill whatever you want at anothermotherrunner.com (or motherrunnerstore.com, if you need a BAMR tank); Run Like a Mother: The Book on Facebook; the Another Mother Runner podcast on iTunes; @TheMotherRunner on Twitter and Instagram; and at [e-mail]. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Happy reading—and many more happy miles.

XO—Dimity + Sarah

OWNERSHIP:

You Are a Runner

I vividly recall my first mile I ever ran: age thirty-nine, I was unhealthy, unfit, tired, and too young to feel that was an acceptable way to enter another decade of my life. I arrived at a stop sign, my one-mile marker, feeling like I had just run 10 miles. But I also felt like I may actually be able to run for an entire 10 miles one day. Euphoria.

—MELISSA

TAKING THE TITLE AND RUNNING WITH IT

by Nicole Blades

The moment I knew I was a runner had nothing to do with miles or meters, pace or a race. It wasn’t about a clever catchphrase on a tech T-shirt, nor was it linked to a righteous cause or campaign. Actually, my transition from nonchalant foot-shuffler just getting fresh air to focused road hound came down to one single word—which is fitting, I suppose, for a writer.

I became a runner the day I took high offense to being called a jogger.

I mean, a jogger? How dare you, madam?

My doctor committed the grand misstep during my physical almost five years ago. We were going through the usual series of health questions: alcohol consumption, caffeine, diet, sleep, exercise. The first two were easy. Zip. I’ve always been a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, and coffee never was a friend of mine. Plus, I was a new mother then, still nursing my fresh-from-the-oven cinnamon bun, so the no-wine-or-cappuccinos life worked well for me. The diet was on point; breastfeeding will do that for you. On the topic of sleep, we may have just looked at each other and belly-laughed. (Show me a baby who considers your sleep needs, and I’ll show you right off the set of that movie.) When we got around to my doctor asking what I was doing for exercise, I started in with my usual, noncommittal bit: sometimes … head out … fresh air … short runs … nothing major … ran a couple of races before the baby … these days … fresh air.

The doctor jotted down a note in my file and looked up at me. So you’re an occasional jogger, she said, nodding. Do you jog on a treadmill usually, or do you go jogging outside, weather permitting?

What I heard was, So you’re a jogging jogger who jogs to jogger jogging. Gnashing my teeth was the only thing I could do to refrain from jumping off the cold examination table—flimsy paper gown and all—to stuff cotton balls in her mouth.

Okay. Maybe I was a tad overtired, too, but the whole jogger thing just rubbed me the wrong way. It sounded lukewarm and lethargic, and I knew what I was doing out there—pounding uneven pavement, confronting plantar fasciitis, pushing through long after my music stopped and my motivation fizzled—was not even a little bit related to laziness.

My visceral, at-that-moment reaction: I am a runner, thank you very much, Doc.

Granted, it’s just language, a noun, but there’s a sensibility and community attached to the term runner that elevates it beyond simply being a word, giving it more meaning and rendering it part of an identity. I knew that. Still, on the ride home, I doubted myself, even though I was so confident in the doctor’s office. I had always been athletic, playing sports in high school. Now as a full adult, unattached to any team, declaring I was a runner somehow made me self-conscious, unsure.

I knew I wasn’t a jogger, but was I a runner? It was almost as though I was nervous about being called out, brought to the front of the room to prove my claim. (Sidebar: How would one go about doing that? Jeopardy, the runners’ edition.… What is a fartlek, Alex?)

My running journey began simply enough: Living in Brooklyn, New York, I wanted to get some exercise that didn’t involve staring slack-jawed at the beige walls of the local, dingy gym. I also didn’t want to go to war with my wallet to pay for the latest fitness trend. Grabbing some running shoes and tights sounded like the right level of commitment for me at the time. So, jogging it was. (I know. The cruddy J word. But that’s kind of what I was doing back then.)

A coworker told me about some fun races—5Ks, mainly—I should consider joining. And they were fun, for the most part. Some were set to live bands playing ’80s hits along the route. Other races had things like hot cocoa or cupcakes as payoff for crossing the finish line. Soon, I moved up to longer distances (10Ks, half-marathons) where the prizes were far less sugary, but still sweet: I finished!

By the end of that year, I had an impressive short stack of race-day T-shirts and a collection of shiny medals strung with colorful ribbon. However, I still didn’t feel all the way comfortable calling myself a runner. I did fun runs. I went for runs. I even found a running buddy on Craigslist. But I wasn’t a runner. Not a real one, said the compact critic who rented space at the back of my brain. (Don’t worry: The eviction notice was served long ago.)

Stepping up to a title, grabbing it tight, and running with it may come easy for some. Others, like me, need time for the thing to set in, spread out, and grow into a natural second skin. For example, being a writer. This took time, years. In the third grade, my favorite teacher, Mr. Polka, encouraged my storytelling. He was big on creative writing, and I loved him for it. He also played Beatles records in class and didn’t believe in homework, so there’s that, too. I continued crafting tales in my thin, four-pack of Hilroy notebooks until I started writing for my university’s newspaper. I was double majoring in mass communications and psychology; I didn’t quite own the writer title yet. A story about black hair politics—my first real one—got a good response, and the writer career option started percolating in my head.

Ten years after I listened to Yesterday in Mr. Polka’s class, I got paid in money—not compliments—for a story I wrote and was truly able to fold writer into my self-description. Although the passion was always there, the payment, and a byline in an actual, on-the-stands magazine, helped to distill it into clear confidence; the kind that develops from doing something every day, failing often, but repositioning and doing it all over again, until you get to the point where you say, Of course I’m a writer. I’m writing.

A similar evolution happened when I became a mother, although it’s more thrilling and terrifying and less self-centered. One day, I was just me, my own person. The next day, I became someone else’s person, their guide and primary influence. Overwhelmed, I read everything, I judged myself too harshly and quickly, and I copied others who seemed to be doing it better. Something about this monumental transformation didn’t feel right or natural quite yet. I needed to settle into this new mode, move around in this fine, fresh suit until the seams laid flat along my shoulders and against my back, and things didn’t feel so stiff.

When my now five-year-old son was seven months, we began sleep training him. After reading a few passages in two sleep expert books and talking to our son’s pediatrician, my husband and I decided to go with the cry-it-out method. We were going cold turkey: Putting our son in his crib, kissing him goodnight, turning around, and leaving the room, ignoring any subsequent bawling or screeching until he self-soothed or cried himself to sleep.

It was rough. I vacillated between curling up in a ball in our bed with a blanket tossed over my head and threatening—then bargaining with—my husband about breaking the baby out of sleep jail. (Sleep. Jail. Words I actually used.) I tried to distract myself, listening to blaring music on my iPod and headphones, even taking a walk in the nippy Brooklyn streets at 1 a.m. But there was something not sitting right with me; something about my son’s crying that felt off. I convinced my husband to turn on the video monitor so I could take a quick look.

I think he’s stuck, I said, my tone calm and even.

Our little boy was basically bobbing in and out of sleep while standing up, leaned against the crib’s headboard. He was unable and unaware of how to bend his little knees to set himself back down. I watched on the black-and-white monitor as my husband went into the baby’s room, picked up the little puffalump and gently laid him down in the crib. The child was asleep again before his father cleared the room.

Even in my frazzled state, that night was like seeing my story on the newsstands. I realized my instincts were sharp, and I really did know what to do, even when I didn’t know exactly what to do. Of course I’m a mother.

And then there are times when it’s not my eyes or my gut telling me something is real, but rather it’s me actually saying it out loud, speaking it into being, that allows me to grab hold of it as truth. For me, that moment was during a freezing winter race in Central Park.

Post-birth, post-doctor’s appointment, I had agreed, reluctantly, to compete in the December event after my running partner—we’ll call him Ray—convinced me to enter. Ray was a road-running pro with countless races under his singlet. He was spindly and anxious and super fast. Ray could run a sub-7-minute mile, barely sweating. He was also constantly passing gas while sprinting, too. Gross, yes, but he was totally shameless about it. Ray was the runner I found through Craigslist; I wanted to up my running game after having a baby. I figured having someone experienced to motivate and hold me accountable would help this mama stay on track.

And it did. I mean, I entered a bloody 10K race in the middle of a brutal winter, dammit! Committing to this race also meant training—i.e., using magazine tips and Ray’s advice—and running in the snowy streets and frosted paths of my local park. I got out there when I could,

Reviews for Tales from Another Mother Runner

[seriousgrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Dimitry starts the introduction and right away you can tell what kind of person or runner she is. Even with a bad stress fracture she "needed to go the distance" not as a spectator but as a runner at the Nike Women's Marathon.I had to wait three months before getting this book from a library almost 200 miles away. It was worth the wait. Tales From Another Mother Runner isn't just for running mothers. This book is for anyone who has to juggle running with other parts of their lives (and not just kids, too). Husbands, jobs, injuries, fears, you name it. These tales cover every aspect of running from first steps to last miles and features every kind of female runner from the speedies to the barely jogging (but just don't call it jogging). Like the art of running there are highs and lows, funny stories mixed with sad ones. I enjoyed Tales from Another Mother Runner so much I'm going to look for McDowell and Shea's other books.