Lacking in Killer Instinct

On Saturday morning I got up at the crack of doom to take Laura to her running club's 5k race. This was her second race, I blogged about the first last fall. I love that she's involved in this and I want to encourage it every step of the way. Thus, the crack of doom. Cheerful. Bone tired but coffee-brewing. My stalwart mom came with us. (The rest of the family has been working so hard around here, and I'm really feeling very good, so I gave them the morning off.)

The race course was laid out to start and end at a big outdoor mall. It was a fundraiser for ALS, so there were a ton of people running, not just the little girls. She found a friend to run with. There was loud music, the snacks were free, and they got their hair fixed and spray painted at the Goody hair products tent. You know, important prep stuff. Then they lined up, and at 8:00 sharp the race began and about a thousand people pounded by us.

Laura had finished her first race, last November, in 36 minutes, and I figured that she'd gotten stronger and faster in six months. We found a spot near the finish line, and I told Mom that I was going to start looking for her at about thirty minutes.

The winner came in at just under 17 minutes. Wow, fast miles. Then the first little girl came in at 25 minutes. Go honey! Then a bunch more little girls, running hard. Also some dudes who had just been beaten by little girls.

Thirty minutes rolled around. I started to look up at the crest of the hill, waiting for Laura to appear. I thought I'd recognize her by her light blue shorts. We waited.

At 35 minutes, I said, "She needs to hurry if she's going to beat her old time." But no Laura. Between 36 and 40 minutes I thought, "Well, you know, maybe she's having an off day. It's not like I'm a runner, what do I know?" Still no Laura.

At this point, the people who were crossing the finish line were not the most athletic. They were definitely the ones who'd lined up in the "run/walk" part of the pack. When 45 minutes had gone by, Mom and I started to really wonder where she was. I knew I could have walked that course in that time, and Laura had left jogging. We worried that maybe she had gotten sick somewhere out of sight of us?

Then, at 46 minutes, there she was, loping over the hill, still with her friend. We waved in relief, and called out to her and cheered her, albeit slightly less wildly than we might have at 30 minutes.

But still, I'm a supportive, process-oriented, non results-stressing parent, right? So I was all, "Heeeeyyyy, great run! How was it? Yay!" She seemed happy and nonchalant, and went around to collect her T-shirt and goody bag. Okay, I figured, who knows, maybe she didn't feel great and walked a lot.

On the way back to the car, Mom pointed to the opposite side of the shopping center and asked, "So Laura, did you guys run behind the movie theater or in front of it?"

Laura said, "Well, we ran in front of it, but there was a big screen in the window showing a movie about How to Train Your Dragon, so we sat down and watched it for a few minutes."

Yes. They stopped in the middle of the race. Sat down on the sidewalk. Watched a movie.

Um, what? I said, "You stopped in the middle of the race? For how long?"

She said, "About ten minutes maybe. And Mom, it's not really a race, it's a run."

Oh.

Do you see how she reframed the entire event there? Like I was harshing her mellow with my competitive pressure. I had no response to this. Or in the moment I thought it was funny. And then later I thought about how the next time I get up at the butt ass crack of dawn to take her to a 5k, I want her to do her absolute best. Or she can sit down on the sidewalk outside our house, and I can sleep until a decent hour.

This is a conversation that needs to happen when I figure out how to broach the subject again. But it is funny to me too. Like, I never thought of needing to tell her not to stop in the middle. And it is so Laura, somehow.