Running for Redemption
by marathonmama | Nov 06, 2009 | 420 views
“Mentally and physically my seasoned older self would kick the shit out of my self as a girl.” Um, yeah. This is what my friend Mary wrote in her blog post yesterday. That was before we went to a place called Redemption Tattoo in my old Cambridge ‘hood to inquire about some ink. But I’ll get back to that in a bit.
I used to study girls. In fact, from the age of 12 on, I was kind of fixated on them. First I was one, then I read about them a lot, then I worked with them, and then I wrote about them. I just assumed I’d have a daughter one day, given my concern for them. Imagine my shock when the ultrasound tech commended me on my fetal son’s genitalia. A boy? I got a boy. Who is the total center of my universe, I might add, and the obvious match for me as a parent. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
But before Henry, I thought about girls a lot. I thought, in particular, about things like voice and knowledge and how so many WASPy girls tend to lose them [source]. How puberty takes them from conviction to doubt, from self-possession to compromise [source]. How they sacrifice relationship for the sake of relationship [source]. How they get so damn nice at the expense of themselves and their desire [source]. How they wind up caring so much more about how their bodies look than what they can do [source].
And now, I think about how that is so, so not me anymore.
Which is why my adult self could very much kick the shit out of my teenage self. I’m not being wistful. I’m just saying that with training, women seem to get better with age–physically, mentally. As runners, we don’t lose our athletic viability; we improve upon it. Women over 30–over 35–are tearing up the running world, getting faster with age. On an elite level and an amateur level. The women who hold the Olympic gold medal in the marathon (Tomescu-Dita), the 2009 NY marathon win (Tulu), and the world record in the marathon (Radcliffe) are all mamas ranging in age from 34 to 38. The fastest age among amateurs is not 20-29; it’s women over 30, over 40.
Women are training themselves out of the nice, easygoing girls they once were. Talking about the under-30s, Mary Wittenburg puts it this way: “They are too inhibited to put their full passion out there” [source]. Over 30, we don’t give a shit. We want passion, baby.
I remember the day I consciously decided, at 11, that I would only ever be nice and easygoing. What an idiot. I want to force that girl to run a fast 10 x 600 meters instead of settling for the simple life of focusing on how her jeans fit and how many M&Ms she’s allowed to eat.
I want to train her.
Jesus, if only I knew then that running would give me ripped legs and a total disregard for my scale. And, concurrently, that peanut M&Ms can rock my world. And that niceness is highly overrated and being a good girl would some day be of no interest to me. And supposedly, that fast girls have more fun.
I would like to show my girl self who I am at 32, but not so she can make changes. I want to show her how tough she will be. The voice she will have, that people will blow time reading her narcissistic drivel. I want to tell her she’ll get knowledge from running around in circles. That the sedate girl will give way to a far more interesting, far stronger, person by going with her gut.
When I run, especially when I run hard and fast, it feels like redemption. Not redemption for bad behavior. Redemption for good behavior. For being quiet. For being shy. For being too nice. Maybe that’s why I want a tattoo. And why I train. To redeem the girl who was awfully lame, and by ‘lame,’ I don’t mean pathetic. I mean the girl who didn’t run, the one who was kind of feeble.
Because I can’t actually kick the shit out of her, I will redeem her goodness.
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November 6th, 2009 on 10:56 am
Best yet Kristina, and exactly what I needed on my birthday. How thoughtful!
November 6th, 2009 on 11:08 am
I agree. Best yet. I really love and appreciate this post. And you too, of course.
November 6th, 2009 on 11:13 am
You don’t know how much I needed to read this. I’m running the Maine Coast Half this weekend, and if I see you, I’m going to shout out at you and then I’m give you a high five or a kiss. Blessings!
November 6th, 2009 on 11:33 am
Very cool, thank you for that. I too, want to kick the crap out of my 12-16 year old self. So glad it only gets better with time! Good luck this weekend!
November 6th, 2009 on 11:34 am
Wait, what about that tattoo?
November 6th, 2009 on 11:38 am
I absolutely loved your post!!!! It is gives me more incentive since I just started running at the ripe age of 30
. I can’t wait to see how much I will grow as a runner in 4 more years!
November 6th, 2009 on 11:45 am
You know, this is so true for me, too, probably even more extreme than what you describe, given that I grew up in a communist country where the “girls need to be nice/hard working and boys are… smart” dichotomy was not at all subtle, but rather thrown on your face openly, from all directions. It took travelling accross continents and starting a life in a different country for me to be forced to find my voice. Great post!
November 6th, 2009 on 12:04 pm
Best yet? Meh, I don’t know. It didn’t really speak to me all that much.
November 6th, 2009 on 1:27 pm
That was awesome!
November 6th, 2009 on 3:25 pm
This post rocks, and I also feel that running has helped me rid myself of all that good-girl-garbage. And, I wanna be fast b/c you fast girls have so much fun :>
November 6th, 2009 on 6:45 pm
I LOVE this post!! I would love to go back and kick the $hit out of my teenage self. I just turned 42 and love myself so much more than I did back then; running has been the main reason for that, it has given me a confidence I never knew I had. Thanks for putting this down in words, love your blog
November 6th, 2009 on 7:34 pm
Uh, what about the ink?!
I was just thinking today how I didn’t give a shit what other people thought (of me or what I do or the choices I make) and wondered when did that happen? When did I get to the point that I felt confident enough not to care what others thought? That was an issue for me as a girl, even a teenager. Whenever it happened, I’m glad I’ve arrived.
I still endeavor to be “nice” or kind. In the city I live in kindness or just plain pleasantness is so elusive that I find it yields results. Ok, my motives are still purely selfish.
I read Mary’s post too. This was a nice addition along the same lines.
November 6th, 2009 on 7:59 pm
Yikes. This post made me realize that, even at the age of 28, part of me is still a 12 year old girl. I’ve been kicking ass, and running hard since then, but I still don’t feel like I have a voice. I wonder if it has to do with spending six years in a male-dominated field (physics). I know I wouldn’t have survived as long as I did without running, but physical grit didn’t translate so much into emotional toughness… I guess I have my 30’s to look forward to!!
November 7th, 2009 on 8:57 pm
I wish I could talk to my younger self, and tell her a thing or two. Like, who cares about what the boys think of you. Like, follow your passion, however unattainable it seems. Like, if you want something, you can get it, but it will take hard work and focus. It all seems so trite, but even when I heard it all, I never believed it – or maybe I didn’t think it was so important. Age does some tricky and marvelous things, and one of those is realizing how powerful and divine we all really are. At least I’m finding all this out now. I guess I still have some time. And, I WILL kick some ass before I’m done breathing. Because now I know I can. xoxo to you, dear friend.
November 9th, 2009 on 2:51 pm
Like the post! I am all for us ladies finding out the inner strength we are possess and not being afraid of who we are and what we want – or being afraid of asking others to help meet those needs. As a woman in her early 30’s, I too feel stronger and more self-possessed than I did a decade ago. I let go of worrying about being the good,nice girl and a great thing happened – without the pressure of feeling like I needed to live up to society’s expectations of me I found that being nice is something I actually enjoy for the sake of it! I think we all need to go through that “f* you world, I am who I am and I don’t care what I am supposed to be!” (For me this came around the 30 year mark, where I found myself happily unmarried and with no babies but also no plans/desires for either. I still feel a bit like a salmon but I know that to be true to myself, I have to follow my own path, not what others think a woman in her 30’s should be – namely a superwoman juggling babies, husbands, careers, mortgages, all the while staying svelte and wrinkle-free! Who the hell can measure up to that??)
Anyway, once I gave myself permission to be who I was, I found out that I am in reality happiest when I am being nice. Not because someone told me I should be, or I felt presure to be, but because I like it!
The time we live is so tricky to navigate – we have all the choices in the world and yet don’t always feel we have the freedom to make the decisions that are right for us as an individual. I am thankful that my momma rasied me to be true to myself. If I never make her a grandmother and am terrified of marriage, that is ok! I can do what I want, at my pace, and I like that my 30’s have taught me that.