Run Like a Child

Several years ago in what was the infancy of my life as a “runner” I attended a clinic at my local running store.  At the clinic a running coach dissected our running form and then gave us pointers.  After a half hour of telling me what I was doing wrong, what I needed to change what I needed to pay attention to and making me run back and forth until he could “no longer hear my footfalls” he summed it up with, “You know, run like a child.”  I’m sure at the moment my utter disdain for him was visible on my face.  If I had uttered the words that raced through my mind I would have said something along the lines of… Are you kidding?  You spent all this time tell me what to do and what not to do and now you tell me to run like a child?  Have you seen a child run lately?  Have you seen their form?  They run with reckless abandon, limbs flying everywhere.  You can’t be serious. That’s the exact opposite of what you have been telling me!

That said, the longer I have run and the more I have thought about it, the more sense it has begun to make to me.  In a world where we (okay I) take my running so seriously, where I never go out with my Garmin, where I run to the training program, where I document every stat and data point religiously ... in a world where most of my runs are fueled by at least a small amount of anger, stress or frustration I think I now understand how a child runs.  A child runs for the love of running.  A child runs for the feeling of the wind in their hair and grass between their toes.  A child runs just because they can and because it’s fun … or because they want to catch their sibling so they can give them a good whack.   A child runs with their spirit and soul, not with their head and reason. 

Here is one of my favorite pictures of my beautiful little nieces Ava and Naomi running this summer.  Do they look like they care about their form.  You better bet you can hear their footfalls and breathing .... and giggling :-)

So what brought on the desire to focus on running like a child?  Well today I did something that always makes me happy … I bought a plane ticket.  Primarily it is a ticket to attend the wedding of a good friend of mine (a fellow runner).  The bonus of the trip is that the wedding location is not too far from where 3 of the most important people in the world to me live.  I really can’t wait to go and play tag and run with Ava (4), Naomi (2) and even the littlest one Simeon (1) will be joining us this time.  I so can’t wait to run like a child!