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Finding Your Inner Athlete: Guest Post by Brianna Grant
By Cindy | May 8, 2008
| Brianna Grant is the author of the new bilingual picture book We Are Girls Who Love to Run (Somos Chicas y A Nosotras Nos Encanta Correr) and blogs about running, mothering and trying to maintain life balance on her site Girl Who Loves to Run. |
Athlete –noun a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.*
I am a woman who loves to run, an athlete – but my passion for the sport is fairly new.
As a third grade student, I could identify the athletes in our class pretty quickly. They were on soccer and baseball or softball teams. For the Presidential Fitness tests they finished the mile run in a flash and could do dozens of push-ups in a minute. These kids were picked first for our “Steal the Bacon” and dodge ball games (remember those days?!). I’m sure they went on to play varsity sports in high school and maybe even had scholarships for college. These kids fit the definition of being “gifted in contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength.”
What I DIDN’T realize in those formative years is that I could have added my own name to the list of athletic third graders. The definition of athlete goes beyond natural giftedness in games. Sure, it applies to participants in TEAM sports, but it also applies to “participants in exercise and contests.” In that light, that term of athlete DID apply to ME, too - little ol’, redheaded, dancer girl ME. My physical gifts and training were just as strong in the world of dance as these “jocks” were in their chosen team sport worlds.
Show me a dancer and I’ll show you a person with incredible core strength, flexibility and agility to twirl through the air and balance on one foot, and stamina to withstand hours of weekly (and sometimes daily) rehearsal. My fellow dancers and I WERE athletes, but our culture wasn’t designed to recognize it. So, we didn’t associate ourselves as being worthy of the title – at least I didn’t. Anything I perceived to be team sports related intimidated me and I shied away from giving it a go. And when it came down to that Presidential Fitness test in running, I was down right terrified. I was fully prepared to stretch and turn and launch myself with control around a dance studio, but felt totally unprepared a few laps around a track. I did it, but it was torture.
As it turns out, the life of a dancer is fairly short-lived. It carried me through my high school years where I was a member of my school’s pom pon squad and served as a dance teacher for beginning ballerinas and tappers. But, by the time college rolled around, the only outlet I had for my dancing was in one semester’s worth of a ballroom dance class and dancing at parties. Neither of those really met my need for keeping my body in shape as I had pre-college. I was craving SOMETHING, but I didn’t know what.
And then, at the age of 23, I noticed the smile on my husband’s sweaty face as he returned home from a run. Yes, the man was drenched and he was SMILING. As a third grade teacher, graduate student and new wife, my life was hectic. Craving my former energy and strong, toned dancer’s body, I asked my husband how running, of all things, could leave him happy like that. With a bit of coaxing he convinced me to come out from behind my desk to join him for a run. I ran only one short block on my first run, but those steps started my transformation into a runner.
That run helped uncover my inner athlete, the one I had initially developed in my childhood dance studios. But this new redheaded WOMAN was determined to ignore the world’s messages of what an athlete is. Block by block, run by run, my body learned to LIKE running, even CRAVE it as much as I still crave chocolate chip cookies! Even more important than filling the fitness hole I had in my life, I noticed that my chaotic life calmed and I felt more confident about myself in both my professional and personal lives.
My efforts in my running shoes were validated by the positive energy of a handful of my students who were participants in Girls on the Run, an after school running program for girls. These young leaders inspired me to embrace running and see how it made me stronger and happier than I had been in years. They weren’t necessarily like the “jocks” I would have pointed out in my own elementary experience, but I could clearly see that they were athletes in their own right. In fact, we all were! The enthusiasm and encouragement of these girls, along with the supportive nature of the running community, drove me to cross the finish line of my first marathon in 2003.
Running transformed my life so profoundly that I wanted to pass the torch of inspiration to others. My book, We Are Girls Who Love to Run (Somos Chicas y A Nosotras Nos Encanta Correr) developed out of my desire to give back to the running community that so generously welcomed me. It is my way of reaching out to girls who are seeking their own life balance.
It allows me to cheer for girls as they discover their inner strength through running. It is my hope that the book will help introduce girls (and women!) to the welcoming nature of the sport and its acceptance of runners for who they are and how they’re taking care of themselves, not how fast they can go.
Now, as a mother of two young children, I know that staying in touch with my inner athlete is as important as ever. I don’t run as often as I’d like, but I do treasure each run I’m able to sneak into my week. I’m also sure to walk the kids up the hill a mile to the park to run around together, take them on hikes and they’ll soon be old enough for family bike rides. These things are all possible BECAUSE I’ve been an athlete my whole life. Thank goodness I discovered her!
What keeps YOU in touch with YOUR inner athlete?
*(athlete. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved April 30, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/athlete)
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Topics: Mom Stuff, Motivation |
May 8th, 2008 at 8:16 am
(love brianna.)
for me it is the daily THANK YOU!! I have to give to my no longer so young bod for serving me so well.
for allowing me to carry 32 pounds of FLAILING toddler up the stairs, stop and monkey foot up a stray sock, grab her sippy before it falls and never once lose my balance.
trite but true and especially heartening to me as I am NOT an athlete in the gymclasscoordination sense.
signed,
last picked
May 8th, 2008 at 10:52 am
MizFit was last picked? No WAY!
How many others of us are there out there who could now hold our own with the “jocks”, do you think? I’m thrilled to find others who discovered their inner powers later in life . . . especially when they’re excited to pass along their passion to others!
Oooooh . . . and I know ALL about the wonders of balance while holding children and picking up sippy cups. It is a right of passage as a mom, right?!
May 8th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
With each child (I have 4) I think I have grown more to appreciate my inner athlete. I want to be able to run with the kids and have the endurance to fit loads into my day.
Also I have a free e-book to download on my my site that you might be interested in called Planning With Kids Top 100 Tips.
May 17th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Thank you Brianna for an excellent reminder. We are all athletes! Finding the activity that we love and enjoy makes a world of different to developing that inner athlete.
To be an athlete doesn’t require competition if we don’t want to. It only requires a desire on our part to take on a new challenge. Hum, maybe I should try that karate class?!