Running, Being a Mom, and Group Support

By Guest Blogger Meghan McCarthy

My name is Meghan, and I am 29 years young. Although I do not get to run with TRP as often as I'd like, I really would like to share my story.

I started liking running in middle school, but never fully got into it, I was just "good at it". After high school, I was in a car accident where emergency responders were called, and decided I wanted to check out the world of firefighting/emergency medicine, so I found a fire department to volunteer with, took a course to become EMT-B certified, and went into fire academy. In fire academy, I was one of the only women, and we were doubted daily. I became "addicted" to proving others' ideas about me wrong, and keeping up with the guys or doing better than them in a lot of things. We ran quite often in fire academy, and this is one of the areas where I excelled. My lieutenant signed up for a half marathon in Seattle, and asked me to sign up also. I did, and felt very over my head, but ran it and finished. I loved the idea of challenging myself, and knew I needed something that kept me going, and running was one of those things.

Over the years after fire academy, I never fully lost running. However when I was pregnant with my son, it was very few and far between, and when he was about 6 months old I really started it up again. I found that if I don't run I became lazy, complacent, and depressed. Depression and anxiety have probably always been a part of me, but I have learned that this is one tool to use that curbs both of them. When I'm feeling anxious and like I could make a spur of the moment not well thought out decision, I go run. It helps to get out the anxiety I am feeling in tiring out my body and focusing it, and thinking while I am doing so. I don't make nearly the "I'm feeling like this right now so I'm going to act on it" decisions, bettering my life in so many ways. When I am depressed, I don't want to do anything but think bad thoughts, and I have no motivation. Running gets me up, keeps me motivated, and relieves me from thinking that just getting off of my couch was too much to do, because I know physically and mentally I can and should go run 10 miles. It is fighting those clouding thoughts and telling them no, I will not let them overtake and I will make my mind space how I want it, so I go run, and I go motivate myself.

             

After having my son, it has been very hard to find time to myself and time to run. I take it as a challenge to have a certain block of time when he is still at daycare after I am done with work to get a certain length run in. I will have exactly enough time to run 8 miles if I start at time A and run under a 10 minute pace, so there is no room for slacking, I do it or I do not pick him up in time before they are closing. It makes for a long day, a full day of work, running, picking up my son and making him dinner/getting his needs met, and then studying depending on if I'm taking classes at the moment. I am (by choice mostly) the only parent to my 4 year old, and he is better off for it, but it makes life challenging sometimes.

My son and I moved to Arizona almost exactly two years ago, leaving all friends and family, and his father, back in Washington, with the exception of my dad who is in Tucson, who we see about once a month. It can be lonely but the focus on bettering our lives was the motivation to start a clean slate, and it has worked wonders so far, however without running, it would be easy to get depressed without a lot of support here.

Within a few months of moving to Tucson, I attended a night group run with my son in his jogging stroller, and everyone was so supportive, friendly, and welcoming. It was amazing to meet so many wonderful people at once and be so nice when they have no idea who you are, what your background is, only intention was to help you better yourself and have fun, just like they were themselves.

Today, my son will absolutely not tolerate the jogging stroller, he is much too independent, bossy, and hands-on for that. He wants to run himself and doesn't like to be the bystander sitting there when the action is happening around him. He participated in his first kids mile race a few weeks ago, because I had seen other children from the TRP family of his age running these same races. I thought he was too young, but I was proven wrong by the other young kids.

Since running with the group (although it is not often now, regrettably) just even the social media support and seeing familiar faces at races is so wonderful, so positive, and so motivating. These people who may not even know you well want the best for you, and you to be the best that you can, and want to encourage you. It is such a great feeling. In a year in a half I went from over a 2:10 half marathon to 1:55. I never would have thought that I would be capable of that, but now I feel I can do even better.

Thank you TRP for being such a great group of capable, challenging, intelligent, positive, and such a diverse group of great people who all come together to be awesome. I doubt many others could understand some parts of my craziness/intensity that runners can have.

Thanks for reading!