She nonchalantly slapped a high-five and strutted off after she finished the race. You wouldn’t believe this little girl only minutes prior worried whether she could finish, and months prior believed she couldn’t run at all. She believed she was “not like those kids”. She had begun to believe the great lie: don’t bother trying; gods and stars and fairies and genetics and the Fates generate your life for you.
It all started with my son. With him, when he was as young as two, he and I might set out on a ten-hour adventure any given Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. And sometimes on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday a smaller adventure might sneak in as well. He’d hike until he couldn’t. Then he’d ride my shoulders until he could. Repeat. For years. He played soccer. He ran. A lot. With my daughter, it’s not that she never did that. But the dynamic was different. My son enjoyed pushing her in the stroller. She logged fewer miles. The pandemic struck when she was four, turning five. She didn’t play soccer. She didn’t run. Not much. Roughly three years ago, my wife began to notice our daughter get out of breath much more easily than our son. It wasn’t necessarily cause for concern over a pulmonary issue and/or asthmatic condition. One kid was more trained than the other. One hit the pandemic at four. The other hit the pandemic at eight. To me, even the most “innate” athlete we still discover enjoyed lots of playful activities which trained up his or her ability “on accident.” When this doesn’t happen, people errantly believe a kid “just doesn’t have ‘IT’.” There is no “IT.” Mozart’s father was a violin teacher. Steve Wozniak’s father was an engineer for Lockheed Corporation. Savants have access to tools we don’t tend to notice. The Michael Jordans of the world are “inherently gifted”, except that they practiced tens of thousands of hours before even being proficient, let alone prodigious. We see wunderkinder perform some adult-like skills, and our brains trick us into thinking they didn’t somehow practice the skill in a way we don’t classically recognize long before that “talent” became overt. Conversely, when a kid doesn’t excel, we errantly think they just don’t have “IT.” There is no “IT.” There is simply training and landscape. And when school and athletics are deleted from society for two of your child’s most formative years, it’s a factor in the training, obviously. Clearly, there are real physical boundaries. Rudy could not become 6’5”, 290lbs; and therefore it’s unlikely he’d be an all-time NFL D-line. But he did get on the field at Notre Dame; so who are we to tell him not to even try to go as far as his unknown physical limits will take him? We don’t know the limits of potential or the future. WE DON’T KNOW. Check your hubris. Most sad of all was to see a lie enter my daughter’s mind and words. She began to use disempowering phrases and fatalistic language. Beyond sad, fatalism is the greatest sin of all. To commit your mind to a redemption-less and unchangeable world is devilry, literally. We see it in disagreements and politics where any other person with any other view gets a Nazi label, unable to ever regain his or her humanity in the eyes of the person wielding the name-calling. And when this least-charitable assessment of others comes home to roost, seeing in ourselves impossible victimhood, we let the demons win. And I don’t think that’s a metaphor. Thus, when my daughter was excited last year to get into Girls on The Run, a nationwide program aimed specifically at empowering young girls, needless to say I was hopeful. Compounded on to that was an earnest request from my daughter to “train” with me (her words) in order to become faster. And we did. And she did. Ultimately, we saw her hit peak speeds of 10mph when she was eight-years-old (small for her age, as well, mind you - smallest in her classes). This year she actually got into GoTR (having been waiting-listed last year). She and we were pumped. At the end of April/beginning of May, it’s customary in GoTR to do a practice 5k. At that point they will have been training (gently) at least twice weekly for over six weeks. My daughter asked if I would join her for the practice, and help her. I assured her that I would pace her run, which she at first took to mean run at MY speed. “No, no… I will help you run what you will first think is too slow in order to guarantee you finish.” As a parent, I don’t believe in making hard promises without caveats, since life soon teaches you that other variables crop up over which you have zero influence or control. But I felt this prudent. The boost of confidence helped, but I could still see some doubt as the day of practice approached. When I showed up that fateful Thursday at 2:45, I figured we would hit the trail right away. But these girls had just been through a full school day and needed to recharge/decompress first. It was snack time. It was crafting time. Bathroom breaks abounded. Finally, we went outside; and then began the warm-ups, stretching and words of affirmation. Afterward, the group chose a seven-letter word whose each letter would be penned on the girls’ arms one-at-a-time for every lap completed (it’s precisely seven long rectangles around the school to finish a 5k). Then came the sunglasses getting handed out. I began to notice I was likely the only parent intending to run the entirety with my daughter, and certainly the only man there. Finally, we lined up for the photo start. I could sense my daughter’s nerves heighten. I just looked at her and smiled. She smiled back. In a blur, the “race” began and every single other girl took off in an all-out sprint, disappearing around the first corner. Like a scene from a cartoon, as the dust cleared, there we were just running along deliberately and relaxed. Only the two of us. A new doubt rose in my daughter: “dad, why are we going so slow?” Without hesitation, I said, “one - so that you can finish and be energized at the end, rather than tired and defeated; two - so that you finish ahead of most of the girls.” You could see the 10-year-old mind wrestle. She didn’t say anything back. But I realize it is a hard concept even for adults to see how they will beat others who have a massive lead. There is a great quote about how people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a year. Small persistence defeats motivated spurts. As we soon rounded the first corner, already two girls, entirely winded, were sitting on the curb. So, we just ran on past them. Next up, we came across a group of six girls walking doggedly. So, we just ran on past them. We then turned the second corner and came upon another group of four girls slogging a very slow walk. So, we just ran on past them. In less than half of a lap we’d overtaken twelve kids. The first full long side instantly became trickier. As we came upon the next group of four girls walking, we got a front row ticket to the ego show. As we began to overtake them, pride drove them back to a run to get all of ten feet ahead of us. They were out of breath and stopping again, DIRECTLY (and rudely, I might add) in front of us. Our pace didn’t slacken. So, we just went wide to run around them; but then they burst ahead again, making a concerted effort to wall off the path in front of us as they dropped to a walk yet again. Keeping pace, we overtook them twice more like this before the third corner. I laughed. My daughter asked what was so funny. “They’ll be lucky if they can even finish now; they’re toast.” And this is how every successive lap proceeded. Never did one girl overtake my daughter, despite several being avid runners and third year participants. She, on the other hand, lapped many. But none of that even mattered. In fact, beating others doesn’t matter at all. The critical event was that she confronted the lies and limiting beliefs. And she experienced what it is to be “The One Who Can.” Steady. Paced. And, at the end, she could sprint like so many others could only do at the beginning. She wasn’t tired. She wasn’t beat. She was energized and joked about doing a 10k right then and there. Two-and-a-half weeks later, up came the final event at the fairgrounds with some three to four-thousand girls and an untold thousands of running buddies and spectators. My wife ran at my daughter’s side. My son did as well, and he did an exquisite job executing a perfect pace support for her, all the while carrying her water bottle for her. I instructed my son to start too slow, never push her, and allow her to open up the pace after the first mile IF she appeared relaxed, rested, easy-breathing, and, of course, if she naturally sped up a hair. This, by the way, is how all youths should be coached, particularly if they aren’t “innately” athletically inclined. It’s an exercise physiological fact that some 99% of children do not yet make the enzymes involved in anaerobic efforts. Yet even some of the “best” youth sports programs don’t seem to know this. What this means is kids should not be pushed to get to out-of-breath status. Yet most youth programming does exactly this REPEATEDLY, which DEtrains athleticism. It destines a lot of otherwise athletic kids to negative experiences which keep them disempowered for a lifetime in some cases. It was a great energy. There was no doubt in the air. Positivity abounded. I have to give credit to GoTR. Anyone in charge and anyone with a mic was telling the girls all the right things. Only empowering things. And when the run started, there was my family pacing it out. I waited just after the one mile mark to see they were slightly ahead of what I expected. Not too fast. My daughter was relaxed. But it was about two minutes before I thought they’d cross the one mile mark. It was roughly half the speed my son could do in cross country last year. So he was fine. And my wife, despite showing up largely unprepared, was getting by. I cheered them on and then made my way to catch them at the two mile mark. The same experience occurred again. I had figured they ran a little hot at the opening, and would slow in the second mile. But it was the opposite. The pace had come up. But, she was still relaxed. Near the finish, I didn’t know what to expect. It turned out she had largely held the line and not slowed a hair even at the end. I told her if she felt pretty good that she could finally punch it. And she took off, sprinting across the finish line. If she’d walked 80%, it would’ve still been a win. GoTR is doing an amazing service for these girls. The grand win was going from the lies to the truth. The cult of disempowerment and fatalism is alive and well; but it failed to claim this child. It failed. The lies failed. None are “the ones who cannot”, except when we bend a knee to the crushing weight of the lies. She bent no knee. She stood tall. She ran. And she runs. And now she says, “I am the one who can.”
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