Run Daughter, Run Father

By Mark P Ryall

This book delves into the running and racing adventures of the author Mark Ryall and his daughter Stephanie. When she was just seven years old, Stephanie shows a keen interest in running. Realizing she cannot be held back, Mark gets off the couch and joins in her workouts. Over the next seventeen years, they both progress as distance runners and pursue shared dreams in competitive age-group racing. They encounter many ups and downs along the way as Stephanie matures into a serious university cross country and ultra trail runner, and Mark transitions into triathlons, representing Canada in three ITU World Championships. As both father and coach, Mark always looks to safeguard Stephanie's health and long-term athletic development, which causes her to push back at times. Using personal stories, humorous situations, training advice, and significant scientific research, the author lends the reader a unique look inside the world of younger and older runners. A great resource for runners of all ages, as well as their coaches and parents!

 

"Dr. Ryall writes with candor and passion, striking the perfect balance between sharing running history, research, and personal anecdotes that had me laughing out loud. Run Daughter, Run Father is a relatable, informative, and inspiring read!" ~ Heidi Ohrling, Medical Student and Cross Country Runner, Western University

 

"Mark's book is more than about just running. It's about a father/daughter relationship through the child/teen years and how a shared love of an activity can bring people together as well as create friction at times, ultimately bringing them closer to understanding each other and appreciating the journey along the way. This book is a cool read that can be enjoyed by both generations." ~ Mat Reid, Owner, Fighting Koalas and Hamilton Hammerheads Triathlon Team

 

"Having coached my own daughter, I couldn't help but laugh as the father/daughter, coach/athlete relationship was described as butting heads at times, though it was always overshadowed by admiration and pride." ~ Tom Spironello, former Athletic Director, St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School

 

"A thoughtful, entertaining, and relatable read. I enjoyed Mark's insightful anecdotes with background research to cover the challenging, humorous, and heartwarming running journey of a father and a daughter." ~ Dr. Scott Howitt, Chiropractor/Clinical Director Pure Fitness MoveLab, Toronto

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Ryall
• Release date: Sep 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215959671

Mark P Ryall

Mark Ryall recently retired from teaching economics and mathematics at Hillfield Strathallan College in Hamilton, Ontario. He represented Canada in the ITU World Triathlon Championships in 2017 Rotterdam and 2019 Lausanne, and also qualified for 2023 Spain. In March 2021, he published his first novel, the science fiction Age-Decoded. Mark wrote it to educate himself and others about the imminent impact of genetic engineering on humanity. In September 2022, he published the book Run Father, Run Daughter, an autobiographical account of the competitive running journey of him and his daughter Stephanie. Mark is also an avid snooker player and golfer. His education includes BSc, MBA, and Ph.D. (University of Toronto).

Book preview

Foreward

From Stephanie:

Hello readers, I am the title daughter of the book Run Daughter, Run Father. My dad asked me to write the foreword, and he prefaced his request with a casual, just a page or two would be great. I thought this was funny since he basically asked me to introduce the book, characterize our coach-athlete/father-daughter relationship and summarize our shared running journey in a succinct page or two. No Biggie, right? Well, being the nice daughter that I am, I’m going to give it a crack!

I have been competing in long-distance running since elementary school, and my dad coached me until the end of high school. During this time, he often doubled as my training partner. When I first started running his easy runs were my hard workouts, but over the course of the next fifteen years those roles have been reversed. Since moving to running at the university level, we joke that he has now moved into a consultant position. But looking back on our relationship in high school, I’ve realized that I must have been an incredibly difficult athlete for him to coach. I am a naturally stubborn and very opinionated person - two qualities that don’t quite transfer to being the model athlete who follows direction with no questions asked! As you would expect, it was not uncommon for us to argue about my training plan, and the pace for intervals was a topic where we would frequently butt heads. I would often want to go faster while he would try to keep the intensity of the workouts under control. Occasionally, these disputes would remain unresolved as the workout began which led to some mid-rep arguing.

It's quite difficult to slow down an athlete who is purposely and stubbornly running faster than the prescribed pace for an interval, but my dad would sure try his best. If I was ahead of pace as I rounded the final bend of the track into the last 100m, I would see my dad in the distance yelling at me to slow down. Of course, that was the last thing I wanted to do!  I didn’t want all my hard work to go to waste by slowing in the final few meters. I wanted to know how fast I actually had been running for the rep! So as any teenager does with their parent, I would try desperately to ignore him. But it’s hard to ignore SLOW DOWN! SLOW DOWN! accompanied by a definitive stop hand signal. A few times I even remember him getting into lane 1 to impede my path. I’m surprised we never literally butted heads! In the end, his tactics usually worked and I would begrudgingly ease up, but in my head I would always subtract one or two seconds from my time to estimate my true effort. In retrospect, these mid-interval shenanigans are hilarious to me, but at the time it was incredibly infuriating - I’m sure my dad thinks the same!

As you can see, having a parent as your coach can create some friction. But at the same time, I would not have wanted it any other way during my formative running years. I really appreciate my dad’s coaching approach of being conservative with my mileage and training intensity. I never felt like I was forced into doing workouts and I was consistently excited to run farther and faster. I think this approach is one of the key reasons why I continue to enjoy running competitively to this day.

Having my dad as my coach also gave me the opportunity to be more involved in discussions concerning my training schedule, which in turn empowered me to become a student of the sport. I have learned a lot through our conversations about running physiology and training methodology, something that many of my peers never had a chance to do. Additionally, because I had the luxury of an individualized training plan, I also learned how to listen to my body and identify aches/pains or fatigue so we could adjust training accordingly - a skill that I believe has been essential to the fact that I’ve had relatively few injuries throughout my running career. I am incredibly thankful for how my dad has shaped running in my life.

Whether you are reading this book because you are an older runner, a younger runner, or a parent coaching their kids, I hope you enjoy the mix of personal anecdotes and scientific discussion.

I know you will learn as much from my dad as I have.

From Stephanie’s Father:

Almost a century and a half ago the great trainer of many fine runners Harry Andrews stated:

The man who made the mile record is W.G. George, when he beat W. Cummings at Lillie Bridge on 23rd August 1886. His time was 4 minutes 12 ¾ seconds, and the probability is that this record will never be broken.[1]

How could he have been so wrong?

Time moves on. Events transpire which are impossible to predict or imagine. Knowledge and reality advance far beyond any single human being.

Much of what I have written in this book may seem ridiculous to others a century from now. That’s the chance I take in putting my thoughts out there. Still, I hope to provide inspiration and insights based on the running adventures of my daughter and I that will ring true for other runners, coaches, and parents. My goal is to shine a light on serious running for younger and older (age-group) athletes. Though I borrow from research and findings of others, the fulcrum for this book is the experience of my daughter Stephanie (track, cross country, and ultras) and myself (age-group road racing and more recently triathlons).

Unlike the main subjects of many running books, Stephanie and I cannot claim to have competed as Olympians, World Champions, or professionals. I did accomplish a 2:37 marathon in 1981 when I was twenty-two years old. But I experienced knee injury issues and soon quit, not running again until my daughter, through her own enthusiasm, drew me back into the sport when I was forty-five. I became a competitive age-group racer in the year 2005 and won the Canadian Masters M50 5000m track championship in 2010. I also coached cross country running at two high schools for twelve years. I very recently transitioned to triathlons and proudly represented Canada in the 2017 and 2019 ITU World Triathlon Championships. Most salient to this book, I coached and trained with my daughter Stephanie, whose competitive running as a youth, and more recently as a young adult, are generously shared herein. Stephanie has experienced significant running success, earning a silver medal in the OFSAA (Ontario Provincial High School Championships) Midget Girls 3000m, breaking a record in the OFSAA Junior Girls 3000m, twice winning the University of Waterloo President’s Outstanding Scholar Athlete Award, and, more recently, winning two trail races, including The Bad Thing ultra 50km.

As serious athletes, my daughter and I share certain understandings, regardless of our age difference. It's a deep, direct connection derived from a common love for running. Though we derive great personal gratification from this pursuit, we also revel in the idea of sharing our experiences with others through this book. In collaborating with you, the reader, we truly admire your choice to be the best runner you can be.  

Ch.1 This Old Fart Gets Younger

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

~ Lao-tzu, Chinese philosopher.

––––––––

In the year 2004, when my daughter Stephanie was just seven years old, she excitedly announced at the dinner table that she was training at school with the cross country team. What? This amused me. Or, should I say, bemused me.

I thought kids played soccer, chased friends around the schoolyard at recess, played tag on the block, or rushed from house to house on Halloween. They didn’t run just for the sake of running. Stephanie doing school cross country at her age seemed too serious and weird. Not long ago she was learning to walk. I didn't even know they had cross country running in Grade 2. Or allowed it. Wasn’t serious running bad for kids?

Even a few weeks before this day, Stephanie had asked my wife Lynne to time her running around the block. Lynne didn't like the idea because she thought seven-year-olds shouldn't be running that far away from the house on their own. Evidently on several occasions, when I wasn't around, Stephanie convinced her to let her do it, to try to improve her time.

When do you train with the school? I asked.

At lunch, right after we eat.

Ugghh, I whispered to myself. My kinesiology background was clicking in. It all sounded wrong. Wrong methods. Wrong age.

A week later Stephanie came home beaming, I came second out of all the girls!

Well done, Steph. Is that your last competition?

No! she cried, then explained that it was only her first of three possible races. The top thirty today would run next week in the second race, facing grade 2 girls from about a quarter of the Toronto District School Board. The top thirty from that race would then qualify for the all-Toronto finals. My curiosity got the better of me. This was a real, organized competition, and Stephanie was genuinely excited. Her goal was to make it to the finals. Curious to see how she did, I took time off work to cheer her on in the second race at Centennial Park in Etobicoke. Dozens of schools were represented. I positioned myself near the finish line, which allowed me to see the girls pour in along the grassy plain for the final half kilometer. We parents waited nervously, naturally hoping for the best for our sons and daughters. When the lead runner finally appeared, she looked strong, and for a split second, I thought it was Stephanie because she was short and had a round face and reddish hair. But it was Erin Locke, an excellent athlete who Stephanie knew from nearby Runnymede Public School. Stephanie sprinted in soon after that, finishing seventh, earning her a coveted spot in the Toronto finals. I was extremely proud of her.

Long ago, I remember rejecting the opportunity to run cross country at Brebeuf College high school in Toronto, even though my grade 9 physical education teacher, Mr. Kennedy, urged me to join the team. He could see I had talent: in the mandatory school-wide run, I finished ahead of all runners in my grade, including those on the cross country team. But he couldn't convince me to run for the school no matter how much he badgered me. It must have frustrated Mr. Kennedy. From what I remember, the reason I rebuffed him was that I was brooding over being cut from the Brebeuf soccer team earlier that fall and was boycotting all other school sports.

I just wasn't ready to run cross country. Unfortunately, I didn't know what I was missing.

Why'd you join the team? I asked Stephanie after her second race.

''Because I wanted to!'' she exclaimed with a big smile.

It struck me how unique people are. I didn’t want to run in early high school, and here was my daughter so eager to run at a much earlier age.

You must run for yourself. That’s the heart of the matter. Run if you desire from within, when the time is genuinely right for you. Don’t run because someone else pushes you, for you'll begrudge it and never acquire deep satisfaction or meaning from it. The pain, effort, time commitment, and inevitable injury you will face can only be justified and underpinned by a natural internal drive. That drive must come from you. You should run because it fulfills you, uplifts you, makes you better, stronger, calmer, happier, or lends you something else that only you can know or feel.

All I know is that Stephanie was drawn to cross country running. To run for someone else is to be enslaved. To run for yourself—because you really want to—is to be free.

Writer/runner Haruki Murakami, in his bestseller book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, explains his basic desire:

I didn't start running because somebody asked me to become a runner ... one day, out of the blue, I started to run – simply because I wanted to.[2]

For Murakami, running was life-altering. His hour-long runs became integral to his day. His meaningful descriptions of those runs are now famous. He simply cannot imagine life without running.

But where does this all come from, the will to run? To improve? To compete against others?

Compared to other sports, running is not fun. You don't chase a ball, score goals, hit, pass, scrum, huddle, stick-handle, convert, catch, or pile on. Even the running action itself is repetitive, linear, and unexciting. It involves little or no skill. It’s a rather simple and plain motion. It's certainly not one of those cool sports. And competing in races is just plain tough: a combination of physiological and mental agony. You’re reduced to all-encompassing, primordial pain, as you dig deep with your body and mind. You inevitably threaten to stop. You ask yourself, Why am I doing this? How many other sports compel you to ask such a question? Your mind plays tricks to try to hang in there: make it to the next lamppost; keep contact with that stranger up there; count ten strides at a time. The personal self-sacrifice in the endurance race is quite unlike other sports. Yet, despite all of this, runners have a zealous desire to run and race.

Stephanie’s interest in running was evident early on, but certainly not from any example set by me or my wife. Lynne did complete a triathlon in Orillia, Ontario, in her thirties, but arthritis prevented her from continuing and I don't recall her discussing that event with our daughter. I eventually ran cross country in the latter stages of high school and went on to road racing and marathons in my college days. But that was a long time ago, and I hadn't talked much about it or dwelled upon it. Since Stephanie was born, I had run infrequently. I mainly played recreational hockey, golfed, or just took it easy. So, Stephanie didn’t acquire the running bug from the actions of her parents. Perhaps a genetic connection explained her desire? Was it all within her genome?

There's a threshold that one needs to cross over to enter the groove of any undertaking, and that crossing is a deeply individual occurrence. For whatever reason, it happened early for Stephanie. Now, decades later, it was about to happen to me once again, though I didn’t even know it and certainly wasn't the one who made it happen. Did I want to make a comeback? Not at all. But as a parent, I couldn't let Stephanie run on her own in the big city of Toronto. I'd be accused of child neglect if she bolted out the front door onto the streets without supervision. I suppose my wife and I could have denied our seven-year-old daughter's urge to get out there and run. But why do that? My return to running was not some midlife intent to transform. It was the duty of parenthood that took me across the running threshold and into the running groove for the second time in my life.

When my daughter and I stepped out onto the asphalt together for our very first run one Sunday afternoon in September 2004, everything seemed odd for me after such a long layoff. I wasn’t worried about keeping up with Stephanie, who was, after all, only seven years old. But it felt strange, donning a pair of unfashionable warm-ups and a tired-looking pair of shoes. The jogging itself – the deep breathing, the fatigue in the legs, the pounding of the feet − seemed awkward and foreign as I accompanied her.

Mine was in no way a magical comeback. Left foot, right foot, that's it. A bit like riding a bike, but with more effort the second time around. Learn to breathe again, I told myself. Inhale through the mouth, not the nose. Relax the arms, stay loose, and find your rhythm. Left foot, right foot. Doing OK and managing. Stephanie looks happy showing me how it's done. A marathon twenty-five years ago isn't worth anything to me now. This was truly my first kilometer. Our first.

Immediately I noticed the difference in our strides. Naturally, Stephanie’s was much shorter, as she turned her legs over about twice as fast as I did. But here she was, by my side, keeping right up with me. We didn't talk much. I mostly cautioned her to watch out for cars. Occasionally, she glanced up at me, flashing a cute daughterly smile. Maybe she thought my strides were for her, that I was the dutiful father chaperoning his dependent daughter. But in a way that both she and I did not know at the time, her strides were just as much for me.

It was Stephanie's one last training run before the cross country finals: a single kilometer four days before her race. We figured it would be counterproductive for her to do anything else closer to the race day.

The next day, my stiffness set in. Wow. I used to run ten miles and not feel a thing! One kilometer and I'm almost down on the tarmac? This comeback wasn't going to be easy, But, then again, I had to face up to my current state of unfitness. With running, the truth is revealed. There are no shortcuts or illusions. You might as well be honest with yourself from the very beginning. You are your own reality monitor and judge. You must be self-accountable.

I didn't even bother asking Stephanie if she was stiff—because I knew she wouldn't be. She was young, had been active already, and was in decent shape relative to that one kilometer. Her kilometer was like my ten miles had been twenty-five years ago!

The following Wednesday, the qualifying elementary school runners in the Toronto Public School Board excitedly assembled back at Centennial Park for the city-wide finals. My wife Lynne and I both took time off work to cheer Stephanie on. The course was laid out starting with a 100m grassy patch, then along a road, up a hill, across a soccer field, along a stretch of grass behind the track stadium, then finally into the stadium itself for three-quarters