Ella and I Gave Running Together Another Shot

Ella either has a not-so-good memory or is a glutton for punishment.  Me, I’m just the latter.  Maybe it’s neither.  Maybe we are both glass-is-half-full thinkers, fully believing that this time things will be different.

When Ella asked if she could go for a run with me yesterday, I cringed.  Not that I knew how, but I had fully expected... hoped... to make it out of the house without her noticing that a) I was leaving without her and b) I was leaving in my running clothes without her.

“I’ll run when you tell me to,” she started to plead her case, her beautiful blue eyes peering directly into mine.  I had to let her come with me.

“Okay, Ella, but you’re not going to run at all.  You’re going to sit in the stroller while I run,” I set expectations.  She was referring to the time that, after having run my three miles with her pleading and whining to run alongside me the whole time, I got her out of the stroller to finish the ½-mile run back to our house… and she proceeded to stand still… and I started running… and she cried… and I ran a whole block while she stood still… and I ran back that same block and got her, strapped her into the stroller and ran the rest of the way home with her crying even louder the whole way.  Flames were coming out of my temples and unfortunately not my feet –- it was the longest half mile I’ve run since the finish of my first marathon.  But this isn’t about that.

“Okay, can I have a bar?” she asked, accepting my terms, to which I responded that she could.  This is our bit –- while I run, she eats a nutrition bar.  Not that I was thrilled about this –- she was surely going to pick one with chocolate chips, which I knew might be a messy problem in the heat.  But it would keep the peace, at least during the first part of our run.

We each filled a water bottle and headed out to the garage where the stroller -- the BOB -- was waiting for us in its folded-up state.  I’m sure it was wondering when it might be used next, if ever again.  If I had a nickel for every time I uttered the phrase “this is the last time I’m taking you running with me” to Ella within earshot of the BOB… I pulled the stroller out, gave the tires a squeeze and decided they could use some air.  As I filled them up, Ella waited patiently.  This was a good sign.  I’ve found that the longer the window between deciding to do something and actually doing it, the more likely the child is going to get antsy, cranky or belligerent.  She was none of those despite the delay.

Once the stroller was ready to go, I strapped Ella in, unwrapped her bar for her, did a couple of useless stretches and started running.

I have a couple of 3-mile routes near my house that I do pretty regularly, and this one involved the nearby prairie path -– one mile to get to the path, a mile on it and then a mile to get home from there with Ella talking every bit of the way.  During the first mile, we crossed paths with a couple out for a walk.  I did my courtesy wave.  We saw them again on the path at the end of mile 2, and they acknowledged us with, “Wow, you’re fast!”  I told them I didn’t feel fast and then laughed.  Afterall, their comment was coming off of Ella asking me, “Are we walking?” as I ran, pushing her, uphill on the gravel path a few minutes before.

Cal used to do that, too.  Are we walking?  My kids have zero appreciation for how difficult it is to run much less run while pushing an additional 40-50 pounds of a chatty kid trying repeatedly to drum up some dialogue with me and we can’t discount the weight of the stroller, either.

Needless to say, we finished our run without event -– no whining, no “I want to run,” no tears.  Our time was maybe a minute longer than it is when I run alone.  Not bad.  And we were both genuinely content.

As soon as we finished, I leaned over to give Ella “knucks” and thank her for running with me.  I unstrapped her from the stroller and helped her out, offering her my sweaty hand to help and dripping sweat from my forehead and arm onto her as I did so.  Ella recognized this and asked me if I was sweaty.  She’s a perceptive one, she is.

I was hunched over with my hands on my knees and breathing heavy as she asked me this.  “I AM sweaty,” I told her.

She proceeded to bend over with her hands on her knees and breathe heavy herself.  She then looked up and saw our neighbors outside and decided to announce to them, “I’m sweaty.  I just went for a run, and I’m sweaty.”

In the end, it was a really pleasant, albeit physically tough, run with Ella.  I'll take that any day over the reverse, if that's even a possible combination.  I guess sometimes being gluttons for punishment (or glass-is-half-full thinkers despite experience telling us otherwise) occasionally sets the stage for some happy surprises.