I have always been an excellent spectator.From the day 5-year-old Jenny played her first softball game, I was that mom always there on the bleachers with my cushion and my backpack of toys and my bag of snacks.
In the early 1980s it was Jenny in gymnastics and Lindsay in softball, then both in swimming and track and volleyball and basketball. A decade later, it was Kelly and Hannah in dance, Hannah in club volleyball. Later still, it was Drew and Maddie in T-ball, then Drew in track and football, Maddie in volleyball.
As my grandchildren came along, I cheered for Grace and Sadie’s martial arts, Claire’s running club and robotics team, Max’s soccer. The latest crop of grands – Ava, James, Damian, Marley, Savannah and Logan -- are all under age 6, so it’s anyone’s guess what sports and activities they will choose.
But one thing is certain: Nana will be there, rooting them on.
I never thought I’d be on the other side of the equation, though. The idea of me doing anything remotely resembling a sport while my family cheered me on? Fuhgeddaboudit.
I’d chortle at the thought, then have another handful of Cheetos.
And then a thing happened.
Hannah married a dedicated runner in 2016, and over the past couple of years she has joined the ranks of those whose idea of a good time is measured in miles. Lindsay and Maddie have also fallen under the spell of the running bug, and are entering 5K races and “fun runs.”
Kelly, who is a hotel manager at Walt Disney World, let her sisters know about the company’s Princess Marathon Weekend – a series of races run over a weekend in February each year, with a different Disney princess as the “mascot” of each distance.
Next thing I know, it’s June of 2018 and the girls are all signing up for it and urging me to join them.
Well, I’m nobody’s dummy. I know that a 10K race is SIX MILES LONG.
I recognized immediately what a bad idea it would be to commit myself to that kind of an activity. I get winded just reading about people running. I understand my own limits, and it struck me as pretty much the height of stupidity to risk dying of a heart attack just to earn a silly Mulan medal.
So, of course, I signed up.
The next few months were a blur of training. I bought running shoes, unearthed my earbuds and downloaded a hefty playlist. The first day, a half-mile walk around the school track took 20 minutes and I was puffing like a blowfish, but I kept at it, my faithful training buddy husband beside me.
We gradually increased our distances and brought down our times, to the point where I was walking 3 miles on the treadmill at the Y in the time it took to watch one episode of “Chopped.”
As race day grew closer, my apprehension grew. This is a timed race, and there would be a group of walkers at the back, marked by balloons floating over their heads, keeping a steady 16-minute-per-mile pace, the course minimum.
Could I keep that pace? Or would I be “swept,” as they call being pulled off the course and ushered into a bus to be driven to the finish line with the other stragglers? Could I vindicate my family’s confidence in me?
And I wondered: Is this how my kids felt all those years, in the starting blocks? Did they feel this sinking sensation in the pit of their stomachs when family bragged, “Oh, she’s going to do great!”
On Feb. 23, I found myself in the start corral with 12,000 other racers, rarin’ to go. It was do-or-die time, and let me tell you, I thought more than once I was going to die. I would walk a while, run a bit, walk some more, and it got tougher and tougher as the miles went by.
But every time I wanted to quit, I thought about the way my family had been bragging about me, and I felt their love and pride. Kelly walked and ran beside me, and kept up a steady stream of encouragement that eventually spread to other runners around us.
I began to run out of gas around Mile 5, and those last thousand yards were hellish. I finished the 6.2 miles among the balloon ladies, moments from being swept.
But finish I did. Got the medal to prove it.
And now I know why people do it. It’s the satisfaction of working your body to its limits, training to meet a goal, striving to come up to the expectations of those you care about. The pain and exhaustion was wiped away in a heartbeat when I rounded the last curve and saw my family, beaming at me from beyond the finish line.
Now the deadline to register for next year’s race is looming, and I’m trying to decide – oh, who am I kidding? I’m SO going to do it again.
Back to training.
