RELENTLESS FORWARD COMMOTION
RELENTLESS FORWARD COMMOTION

toddlers and tiaras-the runner’s version

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Last Updated on June 20, 2014 by Heather Hart, ACSM EP, CSCS

You’d be hard pressed to find a toddler or preschooler who doesn’t love to run. It is instinctual. Little kids run for fun, hardly ever out of necessity, and almost always with a giant grin on their face. If you are a parent, you are likely guilty of hollering “don’t run in the _____” (street, store, down the stairs, in the restaurant, etc.) If you aren’t a parent, chances are you remember hearing your own parents yell any of the above warnings in your direction when you were a wee one.

Yes, it is a known fact that kids love to run. However, I’ve come to realize that not all kids love to race.
Exhibit A. My beautiful first born. Rowen is three and a half years old, and in his three and a half years has been subjected to a total of 5 organized races (tot trots, if you will). And all 5 have been met with utter resistance.Race #1, a family fun run at 18 months old. He wanted to be everywhere but at the race, and frankly I couldn’t blame him. It was really crowded and even I was a bit overwhelmed.

Race #2. Rowen was about 6 months older (just shy of his 2nd birthday) so I thought now would be a great time to give the tot trot another go. There were many factors contributing to the failure of this race, namely missing nap time and a delayed race start (7:30 pm, seriously too late for a tot trot race directors!) As you can see in the picture below, Rowen is having a melt down and I, in my 8 month pregnant glory, am dragging him to the finish line in beauty pageant mom/little league dad fashion. He did NOT want to race, but darn it I wanted him to. Lesson learned that day. There isn’t a more elegant way to put other than to simply say :I felt like an ass for doing that to him.

But it wasn’t the running Rowen hated. Because the next day, Rowen chased after and ran a good quarter mile loop at the very same park with Aunt Holly.

7 months later. We decided to give tot trot #3 an attempt at a local St Patricks day race event. Rowen, seen below, was itching to run. When the lead runners ran by for the 21 mile race, he took off after them. It was adorable.

But when it was time for his official tot trot, he wanted nothing to do with it. Eventually, his Grandma coerced him to the finish line (long after the rest of the tots had trotted away), and in typical Rowen fashion, he refused his medal.
4 more months later, we were in Lake Placid NY for Ironman USA. Of course, I thought it would be fantastic to let little Rowen earn his very first M-Dot medal. We entered him in the 0.75 mile race (and oddly enough, HAD to buy a 3 year old a USAT membership. Yes, for a tot trot. He now gets his quarterly USAT magazine in the mail , and has a membership card. haha!) and waited for the start. The start came, the kids went….and we stayed behind. Eventually he warmed up to the idea of “going for a walk with mommy”, and after some running, some walking, and some being carried by mom, we almost made it to the finish line. But I swear he was giving me the toddler stink eye the entire race. Had he been a teenager, possibly would have mumbled something along the lines of “this is so stupid, i can’t believe you are making me do this” under his breath. (and probably a few “uggh shut up with the ‘go Rowen go!’s, you are SO embarrassing!)
As soon as the finish line was in sight, the announcer called for people to cheer him in. He was NOT having it, and it was all I could do to get him to cross that line. And as soon as he did…you guessed it. He refused his medal, haha.
Yet, just a week later, Rowen ran laps with me at the track, nothing but smiles and giggles.


As you can see, it appears I have a purist runner of sorts on my hands. One who runs for the love of running, and hates to ruin it with any pressure or competition. CLEARLY he did not inherit this from his mother. Competing is half the reason I LOVE to run. Competing against myself, the clock, and others. I love the rush of it all.

So Saturday, at the 2010 Myrtle Beach Family Fitness Festival, when Rowen told me “Mommy, I do NOT want to race” when his name was called up to the tot trot, I wasn’t surprised. Though I knew it was coming, I won’t lie, I did bribe him with some fruit snacks if he would run, since I had JUST forked over some cash to enter him in the race. Again, he told me in his stern toddler voice, “NO mommy, I do NOT want to race”. So I respected his wishes. And he got the fruit snacks anyway.Do I sound like an obsessed pushy pageant race mom yet? I swear I’m not, nor am I out to create a future Olympian. As parents, we all want whats best for our children. And when we have a passion for something, naturally we want to share that with our children. Especially if that passion is something that has played an integral part in our own lives, such as running has in mine. Granted, Rowen is not even 4 years old yet. He is just learning his boundaries, his likes and dislikes, and his independence. 3.5 years old is a little young to write him off as a runner. He may one day surprise me and eagerly cross the finish line of a race, or even grow up to earn his second M-Dot medal. Or, he may despise running and beg to stay home or fake being sick on the day they are scheduled to run the mile in middle school gym class. Who knows. All I know is that until that one day comes when he flat out tells me “Mom, give it up already”, I will keep presenting him with these opportunities.

Meanwhile, I’d like to present to you the second place winner of the under 2 age group at his first ever race: Baby Kain! (18 months old)


I could not contain this kid !!! As soon as I lined him up, he knew just what to do, and was pulling at me run. He ran two heats, his initial race and the championship race (did I mention this was a NON competitive race? HA!) and I had to hold him back like a horse at the start of the Kentucky Derby.

Both times he got to the finish line and raised his hands in the air baby-shouting “yaaay I did it!!!” (through the pacifier that is…we are working on making that thing disappear…), and hamming it up for all of the spectators. Little man won his very first trophy, which he held onto and proceeded to stuff pretzels and fruit snacks into. I was a proud mama.

We had a wonderful day at the family fitness festival . I only wish there had been a larger turnout. I may be biased, clearly, but I think this festival had an incredibly important message behind it: that fitness is FUN, and should be something the whole family participates in together. I think so many children grow up seeing mom and dad dreading exercise, and associating it as something bad that only needs to be done when the scale tells us something we don’t want to hear, or our pants start to get snug. No wonder our society as a whole has such a negative outlook on working out, that it is something hard and miserable.

This particular park hosts all kinds of festivals and events just about every weekend, and there are always a ton of people out and about. I guess the fact that it was the first year of the event, and the weather was kind of brutal (over 80 degrees and HUMID!) contributed to the dwindling crowd. And thus, due to the lack of people, the boys and I took first place in the 1 mile stroller strut. Because no one else ran, haha.
A 2nd place trophy in the stroller obstacle course rounded off our day, and we headed home to recover from the heat . Baby Kain spent the afternoon playing with his new “toys”

And Rowen spent the afternoon running freely around the backyard, all competition and pressure aside 🙂
Happy running (racing or not!) my friends !

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Heather Hart is an ACSM certified Exercise Physiologist, NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), UESCA certified Ultrarunning Coach, RRCA certified Running Coach, co-founder of Hart Strength and Endurance Coaching, and creator of this site, Relentless Forward Commotion.   She is a mom of two teen boys, and has been running and racing distances of 5K to 100+ miles for over a decade.  Heather has been writing and encouraging others to find a love for fitness and movement since 2009.

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Comments

  2. Great post! I too feel like a pageant mom when I try to get Jonas to run the fun runs. There is one on Friday and I’m not sure if I should “make” him do it, since most of our fun run experiences have been just like yours and Rowen’s. I keep hoping that we’ll get there and he’ll *want* to do it. I’m in a little bit of denial.

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  3. wow I love this post! I think it really does have to do with the person whether or not they’ll want to race. Rowen may never want to race but that’s okay. You can be proud of the fact that he loves to run and is “above racing” lol. Maybe he’s just evolutionarily ahead of us? I don’t know, I need competition too, even if it’s just with myself :D.

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  4. Hilarious!! I keep trying to get my older son to run with me and he tells me he hates running. I asked him what he thought he was doing on the soccer field during games. His response “playing soccer, mom” complete with a look that said I was clearly and idiot LOL. Oh well, maybe my second will be my runner.

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  6. Congrats to Baby Kain! With regard to Rowen, my dad tried to enter me in a race when I was little and I stopped and started crying when people were passing me. He saved my race number and showed it to me the other day – I wrote on the back of it “The race I didn’t finish”. Now I’m 33 and running all over the place – so you never know!

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  8. Ha ha ha..this post is so hilarious! And, it totally reminds me of the tot races my boys “ran.” The first one, they were so excited, and then when everyone started running, my oldest started crying the entire race! I was holding his hand saying, “you’re doing great, we’re almost done,” and he just didn’t want anything to do with it. Poor thing! 🙂

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  9. You know, my son is the same way. I think it has something to do with being in large crowds, competition, etc. What I have been doing was tell him to just run for fun, he knows how to run, just run. It works, sometimes!

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  12. love it. Ro not liking to run is as weird as Sis not liking ice cream (i’m not entirely sure she’s mine!)

    we need to hammer out when we’re coming up there. 80+ degrees is not tempting me.

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  13. oh! GREAT post!!!!!
    your babies are so stinkin cute!!!
    you are doing a fantastic job of being a good role model for your boys,im sure one day they both will be awesome little runners,or baseball playes,or football stars….whatever they put thier minds to do!!
    keep up the good work!

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  17. so adorable!!Your boys are so cute!!!!Runners already,so funny!!!Great post!!Can’t wait to see what my twins do when they have to run in a race!I think I will have one of each too!!

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  18. We have yet to enter our 2 year old in a trot, but I can just see him refusing his medal! Too cute. Gotta love the independent streak. Makes life interesting, to say the least.

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  20. Funny!! My 6 year old loves to race but has yet to learn that he most likely isn’t going to ‘win’. Meltdowns at the finish line are my favorite attention getting issue. 🙁 So much fun!!

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  21. Wow… just found your blog tonight and got sucked in for the better part of the last hour! Ha! I just ran my first half marathon 3 weeks ago! I can relate to so many of the feelings you’ve put into your blog. You’re a great writer in addition to being a great athlete! Congrats on both!!!!!!!

    I did a post on my painting blog about my first half if you wanted to read it. It’s here:

    http://themagicbrushinc.blogspot.com/2010/04/131-reasons-why-i-ran-half-marthon-last.html

    Blessings, Jennifer

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  22. Blogger just ate my comment!

    I loved this post! It reminded me of when my kids were little. It was my daughter who ran with reckless abandon (not for competition) and my son who threw the tantrums. They both did better at swim team, I’m not sure why.

    It looks like Kain is enjoying his new “toys.” LOL.

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  23. What a fantastic post!! And how cute that the kids are so different!! I have a 4 year old that loves to run. Very similar though, in that he prefers just to run on his terms. Did his first 5km on Mother’s Day!! Next up we’ll have to see how his brother likes it… he’s only 16 months though…

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