The twelve of you who subscribe to this blog might have wondered where I’ve been. And I get it. I haven’t posted anything since September, when I lamented the fact that the Giants did not draft Josh Rosen. But, I’m back with life news! Jess gave birth to our amazing son last December. He was a shade over 7 pounds, had an APGAR score of 9 (whatever that means!), and has been screaming at me ever since.
Most new fathers (I think) have learned lessons from their kids. What surprised me were the lessons that our son taught me about running—and how quickly they became obvious. Here are a few of my favorites.
Runners Should Never Complain to Brand New Moms
I won’t get too deep into the details of Jess’ labor. However, I will say that I became more of a feminist each time I learned something new about giving birth. Did you know that…ok, I’m not opening that can of worms. But anyway, childbirth is horrifying and amazing, and Jess was a true champ through the whole thing.
This is also why I’ve had to learn not to complain about my downtime from running. Sure, it’s not always fun to open Strava and catch up on what your friends are up to. But then you look up and life looks something like this:
- You forgot to make your wife lunch, which she can’t do herself while feeding a screaming baby
- The recycling bin is so full, you’d assume a bunch of college freshmen live in the apartment
- Your wife is too nice to say this to your face, but you know it’s all your fault
The crazy thing is that Jess has been great about making sure I get out of the apartment. But it’s not her responsibility to find time for me to run. And if I were to complain about missing out on the spring marathon season, I think she’d have every right to schedule a five-hour spa day, hand me the baby for the afternoon, and tell me to go straight to hell.
Babies Don’t Care If You Hate Strength Training
I have at least five friends that feel I should lift more often. My response was always, “The gym smells like AXE body spray and farts, so hard pass.” I mostly got away with it for a while. I took extra rest days when my calves were screaming at me. I mummified myself in KT Tape even when I mostly felt fine. And on some days, if I had eaten a little too much pie, I even did some single-leg deadlifts.
When our son came along, I learned two difficult truths about strength training:
- Babies still want to be held at 3 in the morning when your arms are on fire
- Even if they understood you, babies wouldn’t care that your arms are on fire at 3 in the morning
So, thanks to my son, I have biceps again. But also thanks to my son, I get daily reminders that I didn’t have biceps before he was born.
Marathon Training Is Time Consuming
I mean duh, right? This is the reality that once made me say, “I’d consider it, but between napping and video games, I probably won’t be able to find the time.” As you might have guessed, I eventually learned to enjoy the grind of a marathon training plan. I especially grew to love complaining about it on this blog.
But now that we have a kid, even a 30 minute jog feels like a risk. I’m convinced that I’m going to get home tomorrow and our once 2-month old will be a teenager. Then he’s going to tell me that he hopes I had a good long run, but also that he’s been accepted to Stanford and would like to know how much money we’ve saved for college. So to avoid becoming the Dad That Misses Everything, I do most of my running in the neighborhood now.
Jogging around the same few blocks is very boring, but it beats getting a phone call from Jess in which she says, “Your son just said his first words and they were, ‘I can’t believe daddy is still running right now.'” It’s one thing to miss a milestone because the 7 train is stuck at Queensboro Plaza again. It’s another thing to miss a milestone because you decided to tack on a couple extra miles.
Will these be the last lessons I learn from my kid? Not unless I’m a total jerk, right? You can follow along as I learn them by subscribing to my mailing list.
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