Hi Everyone!
Back to Polar Vortexes here. Just slow your paces, wear lots of clothing, careful of footing, shorten your outings, but try to keep getting out. I don’t say this just for training, but also to help gird us through a tough couple of months. Remember: you don’t have to be in a great mood to start a run, but most likely your mood will be better after it.
Lately I’ve been thinking about life transitions, and how our running has to continually recalibrate as we move through them.
My daughter is in grade 10 and is just starting to take running seriously. She schedules her weeks around her workouts and races, and is figuring out how to fit a run into most days. I see other high-schoolers in the same phase doing similar things. They are learning how to prioritize and compromise and juggle demands in order to make running part of their lives. By the end of high school, some will find it is too much with all the other demands and will let running take a back seat. I like to think their running experience will always leave them something to come back to though. There is no right or wrong way to do this – transitions are just that. Things change and a running lifestyle may or may not weather the change.
I coach runners in university. This is a big transition for kids as it’s their first time living on their own and figuring out their lives and schedules completely independently. There is a range of how big a space running takes in their lives, but for all of them the multiple demands and the need for prioritization they experienced in high school is magnified. More choices, more work, more pressure. The kids who are able to show up and keep making running work in this phase are becoming by default, “serious runners”.
Not to sound old, but it seems like the blink of an eye before those 4 years of university pass. I also coach many athletes just on the other side or a few years into having jobs in “the real world”. This transition really tests your mettle in how much you want to keep running in your life. At this stage, you find out that you are really just doing this for you. There is no school team which supports you, and your employer doesn’t really want you to make any compromises for your running. You probably still have social circles through running, but the running circles of the past start to dwindle as schedules, geography and lifestyles take people in different directions. This group tends to have a lot of flux as people figure out how to prioritize and keep running in their lives. I’ve seen people disappear for a year or two and then drift back, or just keep showing up every now and then when they can. Again – this is all OK! Everyone figures out what works for them.
Just after this stage I see people starting families. I just received the notice that two fairly serious runners from the post-university group I coach with, had a baby. This will be a big transition to navigate. In fact, from this point on, every developmental stage of your kids and family represents a new transition to your running and where it fits in your life. Many in our current group met and bonded during this particular phase. We still prioritize running, but it’s fluctuates for many of us as anywhere from a 3 to a 6 on the priority list. There are just so many demands. But we accept this and keep doing the best we can – given everything else.
The next transition is the physical limitations transition. We will all enter this one at some point and have to figure out how to navigate it with grace. I’m turning 50 this year and coming face to face with it. As with all the phases beforehand I look ahead to the runners who have navigated this or are currently doing it, and I find inspiration and confidence and I see that it doesn’t all have to end here. We will all figure out how to keep going if that’s what we choose to do. It doesn’t have to look like anything that came before it, and it doesn’t have any expectations.
One guarantee about life is that it keeps changing. We grow, we learn, we fail, we succeed, we love, we grieve. If we treat it right and don’t ask too much of it, running can be there with us through it all.
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