Why Now? (Part Two)

(For Part One, see May 19.)

I think the first time I ever heard of the Couch to 5K program was when I read about it on Crunchy Domestic Goddess's blog a while back (she wrote about it on October 23, 2009). Although I didn't consciously consider running at the time, the use of the word "Couch," and the fact that she described herself as someone who is most assuredly not a runner, did plant a little seed of possibility in my sub-conscious!

Then this spring, as I toyed with the idea of taking up running, I started hearing from a number of friends that they too had come to a point in their lives when they were attracted to the idea of running, much to their great surprise. Interestingly, a couple of these friends were women who felt that their attraction to running had something to do with being mothers. Not that they wanted to take up running in order to lose pregnancy weight, but that motherhood brought them into a psychological and physical state of being that opened them up to running.

My weekend running buddy has a son who's only a few months older than my daughter (who will be 2.5 on June 13!). My running buddy started running when her son was about 18 months. She explained that for her, there's something very slow and rooted about mothering a small child. Granted, there's a very active side to mothering (dashing around the playground, bending down a zillion times a day to pick up toys, feeling tired) but there's also quite a bit of stillness: chunks of time spent in the nursing chair or sitting on the floor playing with blocks. Some days we might feel tied to our homes, because it's not as simple as it once was to just get up and go out. There are naps to consider, snacks to pack, snowsuits to zip onto squirmy little bodies. We might travel less, as moms to small children, than we once did. These things are not bad. Stillness and rootedness and quiet times are all so very valuable, and I think that they are among the most important lessons that our little ones can teach us. But maybe, as my running buddy speculates, they also sometimes make us want to RUN (literally, and sometimes metaphorically).

So I'm thinking that maybe another answer to "Why now?" has to do with being a mother. For me it might relate to the stillness of mothering, but also to the sedentary nature of sitting-at-my-desk-doing-schoolwork. Sometimes, you just wanna MOVE.