The Rebuild, Entry 05: A Marathon Dad on Youth Sports and Race Week Ahead

The Rebuild, Entry 05

Welcome back to my weekly blog series, The Rebuild, Entry 05! Let's talk about this past week. Also, if you want to check out the beginning, go here: Entry 01!

In this entry, we'll take a look at family life and how it's impacting me in sports, in my job, and as a human being, in Home Base.

The Number

This week's number is 3, as in this is my third attempt to run the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon, and the prior two times I DNS'ed. The first time, I got sick the week of the race and didn't want to travel. The second time, kidney stones showed up the day before my flight. This time, after nursing an injury three weeks out, I came down with the flu 13 days before race day, last week. I took off most of the week, and I'm still coughing up a lung, dealing with a sore throat and chest congestion that I'm hopeful will go away ahead of race day. At least I'm no longer contagious, and most of all, I'm hoping I can finally run this race and get it done on Saturday!

The Week

So this week was a lot of lessons in patience, life, and how to take care of myself. Getting sick was not on my bingo card, and missing training is not ideal. But getting something as contagious as the flu during Halloween week meant I needed to do my best to still support Kelly and take care of the kids, without getting anyone else sick. I wiped down a lot of surfaces, made meals when I could get out of bed, did a lot of laundry, and helped the kids with homework when they texted me photos of their math problems. I talked them through it and how to set up the problem. A tiny bit overkill, but I would have felt miserable if someone got sick enough to miss Halloween, especially a Saturday Halloween!

I got medicine in and got a couple runs in, and even had a lovely run with my daughter today while she rode her bike alongside me. She said she loves it because it's quality time together, and I couldn't agree more.

The Thread

So much of the battle in my head as a dad continues to be the one where I don't want to end up being seen as the absentee dad mine was. So sometimes old traumas come out, and situations make me feel like, because they go to their mom more, they see me as not around. I know it's not reality, but it's my demons I continue to fight through as a parent. But what's amazing about my family is how much better a person they make me.

Over the last month, we've had a lot of sporting events between games, makeup games, and practices for softball and soccer. Four nights a week, sports take up our post-school activities, and some days Kelly and I each take a kid in different directions solo. But what I love most about us is when all four of us can go to each kid's practices. We may chat with other parents too, and look at our phones sometimes, but we both try to stay locked in during their practices. I want both girls to see the value of participating on a team and playing sports, and I want them to see their parents 100% behind it and willing to ALWAYS be there.

Some evenings I choose to skip a run that day instead of trying to do it during Amelia's soccer practice, because I wanted her to see me watching her practice her skills. Post-practice sometimes involves fun things like Chick-fil-A or Rita's, as a way to again promote how much fun sports can be. Sports are important for all kids, but research shows it matters especially for young girls, who tend to quit organized sports much earlier than boys. The ones who stick with it end up in more leadership positions in their careers later on. I don't need my kids to be the best, or to not make mistakes. I just want them to participate, give it their all, and support the team together.

The one thing I juggle with the most, as a parent whose job is being a coach, is whether I want to coach any of my daughters' teams. Sometimes I think it would be fun to be a supportive coach to my kids and other younger girls, to show them how much sports matter, how to have fun, how to talk kindly to yourself in sports, do your best, and be proud of yourself. But then sometimes I think having an amazing female coach is so empowering for my daughters, and I can just be the cheerleader who gets to watch them play, cheer for them, and be in that moment for them.

I've also had so many issues with some pretty awful male coaches ruining the experience for my kids and other girls, at ages 7 and 9 so far. We had a dad get on the field and curse and yell at other dads mid-game because his daughter got “tagged too hard" in softball. He made a giant scene, and we had to talk to Chloe later about what was going on. I've watched male coaches stand on the soccer field for 8-year-olds, moving kids around and telling them what to do, while making rude comments to my daughter's teammates to “get in their head.” I even had a coach tell his team to “foul a lot today” and make the ref call it, all to help their chances of winning. This is 8-year-old rec sports, mind you. Although, in my opinion, it's never appropriate to say “foul kids on purpose” just to win a game of youth sports, but I digress.

Anyway, what I continue to find in this part of my life is how much joy being involved with their sports brings me. I love how, as a coach, I can use my experience working with other athletes, and my own journey, to relate to my kids. My hope is that as they continue to watch me chase my goals, they'll be motivated to do the same. While my family is not coming with me to Indy, I want to talk to them about the race and have them follow along and be part of it all too. I even may have gotten the family to do our First-Ever Family Turkey Trot this year!

Next Week

So that's the last month of family life and sports, and everything going on at Home Base. This week coming up is my race week for Indy, so next week's article will give you a race recap and some talk about my training block as a whole, and hopefully what this training block will springboard me into for the future of my running. So stay tuned for all of that, and I'll see ya next week!

Also, if you're looking for a 1:1 coach, I have openings this fall, so hit me up at this link and let's see if we're a good fit.

About the author: Nick Klastava is the CEO and head coach of Running Explained. He is a USATF and RRCA certified run coach and a masters runner with a 2:30 marathon PR and a Boston Marathon finish.