butt kicking and being kicked

I did a neighborhood 5k this weekend with my kids. We made them all do it, though 3 walked rather slowly. It was a bit of a competition between different parts of the neighborhood, but our part for whatever reason has all the best runners in it. I wonder sometimes if that is the reason that I bought the house I bought or if, looking at it from the other direction, I became more obsessed with exercise because I bought this house and there were so many runners around me. Sadly, many of the best runners in our part had decided to run with their kids, since it was a low key race. I don't know what they were thinking. This was a competition and we needed all our best people to cross the finish line ahead of anyone else. I talked one of my friends into running "with" me, when I told her I planned to run about 23:00.

The race started and we ran, oh, maybe 4 minutes together. During which time, she checked her watch about five times, no doubt because I was slowing her down. Then she took off and beat me by a couple of minutes. And she wasn't really in her best form because she'd just done some intervals a couple of days before. After the race, she came up to me and explained that there were some guys she felt "needed" to be schooled and so she chicked them. Hey, I was all for it. I chicked a few guys, back where I was, too. And we ended up with the "golden Adidas" shoe to show off next year.

My friend is a runner. She went to Boston this year with her husband and met Kara Goucher. She runs every day. She runs multiple times a day. She doesn't work out. She runs. When she gets injured and can't run, guess what she does? She runs anyway. Because she is a runner and that is what runners do. At one point we ran together, years ago when she was slower and I was about the same as I am now. We had lots of interesting conversations. She told me about a news story in which a woman was described as a "jogger" who had been kidnapped while out one morning. She turned to her husband and told him that if she was ever kidnapped while out one morning, would he please refer to her for news events as a "runner" and not a "jogger."

So this morning, we went swimming together. She wants to learn to swim better. Why? Because she thinks it will improve her running. And maybe also just because she is cool and is still willing to try new things, even ones that are scary and that she doesn't do very well. Obviously, this is a project that I would like to encourage everyone to take up. So I was at the pool with her, gave her what tips I could, and am still thinking how to help her. She swims as you might imagine a runner swimming, attacking the water to "push" past it. It's hard when you're used to running to realize that swimming is about glide and technique and sometimes harder is not better. Also, the whole problem of breathing doesn't exist while running. Yeah, you can feel out of breath. But you don't worry you are going to drown. Air is everywhere running. You don't have to make a special motion for it.

In a way, I suppose it was nice to have a chance to beat her at something, since she so regularly beats me at any running matchup. I'm not an Olympic swimmer, despite what some fisherman suggested to my kids at the reservoir last night. But I am comfortable in the water and I am pretty good at all three disciplines of triathlon. Sort of an all around. And of course, it depends on who you are comparing me to. There is something to be said for finding races that you can win, and then finding a few more races where you know you will lose. You need a little of both.