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Running For Autism 2014: A Thousand Thank Yous

October 25, 2014 By

Today’s post is going to look a bit like a speech from the Oscars, only there’s no red carpet, I’m not wearing a ballgown accessorized with diamond jewellery, and I didn’t get a funny little trophy thing. Instead, there is the finish line of a race, a sweaty old running outfit accessorized with a space blanket, and a finisher’s medal. Just setting the scene so you can picture me as I start my speech.

<clears throat and waits for the audience hubbub to die down>

My 2014 autism run is now almost a week in the past. I have one day left of sitting on the couch doing nothing post-race recovery. The stiffness in my legs is gone, my knees have recovered, and the chafing from my sports bra is fading. Even the Ankle of Doom is feeling pretty good. I am almost ready to lace up my shoes for an easy run, and I have started thinking about my race calendar for next year.

I want to thank my mother, because people always start by thanking their mothers. And because my mom is awesome. She lives on the other side of the world, but I felt that she was part of the finish crowd cheering me on last Sunday. Thanks also to my brother, who is a loyal supporter and a great friend.

I want to thank my Dad, who was an elite runner in his youth and the first to fuel my love of running many years ago, in a previous life. Dad was a superb runner, and he always believed in me. He is no longer with us, but I still feel his presence when I run, and he was definitely with me on race day.

I want to thank the organizers of the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, Half-Marathon and 5K for putting on a fantastic event. Everything was great, from race kit pickup right through to the post-race food. I enjoyed almost every minute of the race, and I even made it through my troublesome 18K patch better than I ever have before. I had enough energy in reserve at the end to really belt it out in the last kilometre, and the look on my face in my race picture tells you how I was feeling as I sprinted to the finish line.

Best finish line shot ever!

Best finish line shot ever!

Thank you to the Geneva Centre for Autism, not only for being a constant source of support for my family since George was diagnosed with autism in 2007, but also for getting me off the couch and into my running shoes a little more than five years ago. It is a true honour to be affiliated with this organization that has given countless autism families the most precious of commodities: hope.

Thank you to all of the people who sponsored me. Your generous donations are going to make a real difference for so many kids. Thanks to you, children and youth with autism will be able to learn how to play musical instruments, participate in sports teams, attend social skills training, go to summer camps, communicate via iPads and much more. Opportunities are being created for my son and other kids like him, thanks to you. My appreciation for your support has no bounds.

Thank you to the runners in my life, who have always been there with words of advice and encouragement when I’ve needed it. You have celebrated with me after the good training runs this season, and you have commiserated with me when the going has been tough. You know what it’s like – the long runs on rainy days resulting in squelchy shoes, the uncomfortable chafey bits where you didn’t apply enough Body Glide, the runs that are just bad for no reason – and you always encourage me to keep going.

Thank you to all of my non-running friends, who tolerate my running-related social media postings: the race-time status updates, the moans and groans about sore muscles, the Instagram pictures of my training watch. You are kind enough to like and comment on my posts, you tag me in running-related things that you think I will like (and I do – I love all of them). Your messages of support and love last Sunday were overwhelming, and they meant the world to me.

Thank you to my husband, who holds the unenviable position of being the partner of a runner. Over the course of the season, he made sure I could get out for my long runs and races, and he tended to my aching muscles with the right combination of concern and humour. The night before the race, he sacrificed sleep so that I could rest undisturbed by children, and he got up early to make sure I got to the start line on time.

Thank you to my younger son James, my tireless supporter and cheerleader. He cheerfully saw me off for my long training runs throughout the season, and he always welcomed me back with a hug, even though I was stinky and sweaty. He is a fantastic champion for his brother’s cause: it was his idea for me to run in a cape last Sunday, to “get into the spirit for autism”. His energy is contagious, and I took a bit of it with me on my race.

The final thank you is reserved for George, my older son, my brave and amazing autism boy. George is my inspiration. He is the reason I get up early in the morning to run in the dark, the reason I do ten-mile training runs in the midsummer heat, the reason I am willing to get rain in my running shoes on wet days. George teaches me about life every single day. And when I am struggling through a run, feeling like it will never end, thoughts of George get me through. I tell myself that this kid lives with autism every hour of every day. That doesn’t stop him from being one of the most determined people I have ever encountered. If he’s not going to give up, then neither am I.

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This is an original post by Kirsten Doyle. Finish line photo credited to Marathon-Photos. Picture of runner’s wall message credited to Kirsten Doyle.

Filed Under: Giving Thanks, Race, Race Report, Running for Autism, Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Races Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Embracing The Pain

May 5, 2014 By

pain

Yesterday I ran a half-marathon. A race report will follow later this week, but for now I will say that it was an excruciating race. I wasn’t on top form going in, and I had some serious issues with dehydration in the latter stages. But still, I dug deep and found what I needed to finish.

Getting home seemed to take forever. I had to take public transit from the finish line back to the start, where my car was parked, and then I had a thirty minute drive home. By the time I hobbled through my front door, serious muscle pain had set in. After my shower, I put on compression socks (compression socks are my saviour), poured some much-needed coffee and settled myself on the couch for a good long layabout session.

My husband walked into the room and looked at me with some amusement. Nothing new there, and to be fair I probably do look a little funny in the throes of post-race agony.

“Do you think I’ve earned the right to complain?” I asked him, looking at him beseechingly.

“No,” he said immediately, “And I’ll tell you why.”

I settled back, prepared for a long discourse. My husband’s explanations will not be remembered for their brevity.

He explained that basically, I had brought this pain on myself. I had voluntarily participated in this race, knowing full well that I would be hurting afterwards. He reminded that I had even made reference to the pain the previous day, before the race had even happened. Pain was a foregone conclusion, and I knew that when I signed up.

OK. It sounds a little unsympathetic, but I have to admit that he is right. I never sign up for these races expecting to feel like I’ve been lying in the sun doing nothing.

“That’s true,” I said to my husband, a little grudgingly.

“Number Two,” he said, holding up two fingers.

Oh boy. There was a Number Two?

Number Two, the pain was a result of a great accomplishment. I had trained hard, I had dug deep, and I had achieved something that I should be proud of. The pain was my body’s way of telling me how I could be better and stronger. Therefore I should bask in the glow of what the pain represents, and I should embrace it. Even though it might hurt, it was building me up.

Well, that made me feel good. It certainly helped put things into perspective. It’s not like I was in pain after, say, falling on the ice or being in a car accident. I was in pain after finishing a half-marathon. And even though I didn’t have a great race, that is something to be proud of.

There was a Number Three. If I participate in a half-marathon and then complain about it afterwards, what message am I giving to my boys? We want them to be able to stretch themselves beyond their comfort zones, and we want them to think of that as a positive experience. Acknowledging pain is fine, but the focus should always be on the accomplishment and the experience.

Well. Just goes to show that if you ask your husband a flippant question, you might get an in-depth response that is filled with insights. I’ll still complain at least a little bit, but this whole conversation has made me look at post-race pain in a whole new way.

Thank you, husband.

This is an original post by Kirsten Doyle. Photo credit to the author.

Filed Under: Pain, Race, running Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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Can You Keep A Secret?

August 31, 2012 By

Recently, I had the opportunity to read a delightful chick-lit book called The Booby Trap, by Anne Browning Walker. The protagonist is a woman who works in a bar similar to Hooters. Everyone just assumes that she is a bimbo, because she is blond and pretty, and earns a living in a place where men ogle her. What they don’t know is that she is a PhD candidate, and that her job provides her with material for her dissertation on women’s studies.

The woman meets a rich man during one of her shifts, and he has the same assumptions about her that everyone else does. She agrees to go out with him, but carefully guards her secret. She’s not ready for him to know that she is smart and ambitious – not at the beginning, anyway.

Although I would classify this story as very enjoyable light reading, it does raise an interesting question. How much do we really know our partners? Especially right after we’ve met them? Sometimes we go into relationships without really knowing a person, and I’m not talking about their deep dark history or the skeletons in their closet. Everyone has baggage that they don’t want to reveal right away.

No, I’m talking about the basic stuff. The information that most people can reasonably expect to know about someone before they start dating them. Here’s an example: I once dated a guy for five months without knowing that he was married. That’s a pretty fundamental thing to not know about your boyfriend. In fairness to me, the guy hid it really well. He kept a separate apartment in the city, he didn’t wear a ring, and nothing in his behaviour indicated that he had a wife stashed away.

Right after I found out about the wife, I broke up with him. It was nasty – the kind of breakup that involves yelling and insults slung all over the place. About ten days later, I was sitting on a park bench licking my wounds and vowing never to trust another man, when a stranger sat down beside me and told me I had beautiful eyes.

It was love at first sight. We went on our first date that night and we’ve been together since. We moved in together very soon after meeting, and neither of us kept anything secret from the other. We pretty much laid all our cards on the table right away.

There was one thing that was a little odd, though, and I’ve never been able to figure out the rationale behind it. When I met this stranger in the park, we exchanged basic biographical information. I told him that my name was Kirsten, I was originally from South Africa, and I was 31 years old. He told me that his name was Gerard, he was a first-generation Canadian of Irish descent, and he was 38 years old.

He lied about his age. At the time we met, he was actually about to turn 42.

It was not a big deal – I honestly didn’t care how old he was, and now I look back on it with a degree of bemusement – but it was just so unexpected.

I mean, a dude? Lying about his age?

WHY???

I thought only women lied about their ages, and to be honest, I’m not really too sure about the reasoning behind that either.

When Gerard told me his true age, he did give an explanation about the little piece of misinformation. I cannot remember the explanation now, but it seemed very philosophical at the time. I was so enthralled with him that I would have believed anything. He could have convinced me that he was actually an alien from Mars.

And who knows? Maybe he is.

Have you ever found out any secrets about your partner? Has he or she ever found out any about you?

(Photo credit: Steven Depolo. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: relationships, Secrets, The Booby Trap Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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Taking Off The Parenting Hat To Go On A Date

May 22, 2012 By

I am participating in the 2012 Wordcount Blogathon, which means one post every day for the month of May.

The last time I saw a movie with my husband – a real movie, in a movie theatre, with a giant bucket of popcorn to share – my firstborn son was about a year old. Because we just had the one child back then, and because one-year-olds who aren’t yet fully mobile are easier to manage than hyperactive eight-year-olds, my ageing mother-in-law was able to babysit.

We have gone out on other occasions, of course. We are regular patrons of a nearby dinner theatre that’s run in a barn – if once or twice a year can be considered “regular”. We go to the annual Christmas gala organized by my employers, and on the odd occasion, we’ll go to a party or a wedding.

For the most part, though, our outings include the kids. We frequent parks with slides and swings, and we go to restaurants where the waitstaff bring paper cups filled with crayons along with menus that the kids are allowed to draw on.

I am always hearing and reading about the importance of a couple going out on their own to spend time just with each other. I fully subscribe to that idea, and from time to time my husband and I make a commitment to have a date night once a month. But the logistics are so difficult.

People often assume that living with my mother-in-law gives us a built-in babysitter whenever we need it, and while that may have been true to an extent at one time, it’s not anymore. My mother-in-law is almost eight years older now than she was when we went to the movie that time, and instead of having one one-year-old, we have a six-year-old and an almost nine-year-old.

Finding a trustworthy babysitter is hard enough for any parent. There’s something very frightening about entrusting the most valuable things in our lives to people who usually aren’t old enough to vote. And when one of those valuable things is a vulnerable special needs child, the angst about it increases ten-fold.

Most babysitters do not know how to handle a special needs child. We have to find people who have some understanding of autism, are quick on their feet, and have the physical strength and presence of mind to restrain a child for his own safety. If it’s someone who can take the time to actually get to know the child while I am home, so much the better.

Usually, it’s just easier for us to not go anywhere by ourselves at all. But then our relationship definitely starts to take strain, because we are not paying enough attention to nurturing our relationship. Eventually, because of our increasing levels of stress, it starts to take some kind of toll on our parenting, in spite of all our efforts to the contrary.

Last night, we had the opportunity to go out to a concert – meaning that my husband had free tickets – and we had to scramble for a babysitter. The free tickets had come about unexpectedly, so we hadn’t exactly planned for an evening out. I desperately said to my husband that I didn’t even know who to ask.

My husband came up with the perfect solution. He asked M, one of the guys who works for him, if he would be willing to watch the kids for the evening, and M willingly accepted. M has kind of become a friend of the family. We invite him to the kids’ birthday parties, he came over for Easter dinner, and we eat out with him from time to time.

We completely trust M with the kids. He is so used to George’s autism that he doesn’t bat an eyelid when autism-related things happen. George knows him and likes him. James downright hero-worships him, and when we told him that M was babysitting, he practically pushed us out the door so he could hang out with his idol.

Safe in the knowledge that our kids were safe and happy, and that they might or might not tie M to a totem pole by the end of the evening, my husband and I headed into the city to see a live performance by Paul Weller, former member of The Jam and Style Council.

The music was every bit as good as we had hoped it would be, and my husband and I felt that buzz of happiness that you get simply from being with someone you love. M didn’t get tied to a totem pole. The kids behaved like model children. They were like the kids on those reality TV shows after the Super Nanny has whipped the family into shape. M said he would babysit for us again anytime we needed him to.

Last night, my husband and I renewed our intention to have regular dates nights to connect with one another, enjoy each other’s company, and just be.

How important do you think it is for couples to spend time together away from the kids? Is it something you manage to do regularly?

(Photo credit: Kirsten Doyle)

Filed Under: 2012 Wordcount Blogathon, Children, Date Night, life, parenting, Reconnecting, relationships Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,