Race Walk: The Momma Journey

I didn’t know anything about race walk when my daughter decided to try it. I didn’t really even know anything about track in general. We started doing summer track on a whim and Coach Boudreau said to pick four events. My kids didn’t seem generally inclined for anything yet, so I read race walk and looked at the walk part and thought , that ought to be something she could do. I mean it’s WALKING, after all. I drove her to the meet and she did two laps of that and came off the track looking miserable.

Okayyyy. So that’s out then. We won’t do that again. But then, a few meets later she tried it, and she wasn’t great, but she wasn’t last.

Fast forward to middle school, and I found myself leaning over a fence watching her do the race and I thought to myself, holy shit, she’s actually kind fast at that. Like she is picking up speed. As the middle school season went on, she improved more and more and ended up breaking the middle school record her seventh grade year.

That is how we learned of Abby. We learned of coach Abby through Ashlyn and her family. Ashlyn is an amazing race walker that is getting set to go to college for race walk and cross country and my girl looks up to her a ton. She is like the Simone Biles of track for Gardiner. The first time Natalie met Abby, I wasn’t really sure what to think. I knew race walkers met on Tuesdays and Saturdays and that you could drop in and pay 5 dollars and I have paid 5 dollars for a bad cup of coffee so I really had nothing to lose. Natalie did the first practice and I think we had to leave early she was so exhausted. I learned although Natalie was fast and could do a quick 800, she really had a lot to improve upon with her form.

Race walk is an incredibly athletic, beast of a work out and people really don’t give it the credit it deserves. It is its own art form. I have learned over the past few years, how incredibly nuanced and specific it can be and I have so much appreciation for it now. Abby is a lot of energy in a tiny package. She exudes momentum and good vibes. The first thing I noticed about her was the baby strapped to her front. She was coaching and giving tips and she had a toddler walking alongside the track and a baby strapped to her. She was attending to her kids and to her athletes. Her husband stood off to the side, he attended to the kids and to her when needed. But she was the ring leader of this show. He didn’t seem intimidated by this. They had a shared interest in the athletics part, but neither one seemed to have more ego than the other. I’ll be honest, this impressed the absolute crap out of me.

I feel like it has become an unwritten rule that young mothers shy away from athletics after new babies. There are a ton of Netflix movies, with young mommas sitting on a bench at the park , sipping iced coffees and yelling from afar. Here was this new Mom, parenting actively and coaching actively. You could tell she loved both roles, the momming and the coaching. As someone who experienced post partum depression and didn’t run until a year after the birth of my kids, I was in awe. This really impressed me and intrigued me. I had a good feeling about her. We kept coming back each Tuesday. Bit by bit, her form improved. Bit by bit, she shaved time off.

The following year, Natalie was old enough to try the 1500 during summer track for a distance. This meant instead of going around the track 2 times, she was going to go around 3 and 3/4 laps. No big deal right? Except for, it actually is. In the beginning, she would get so fatigued, her legs would lock up like a baby lamb on the ice. It was hard to watch. As time went on and she worked with Abby on her form and on the endurance of it, she began to get the hang of the new distance. She began to excel more and more and drop time.

This past fall and Winter, Natalie continued to train with Abby, but since snow covered the ground, the race walk group meets at the Auburn mall and they do those laps right inside the mall, alongside Bath and Body Works. It’s really quite adorable actually. There is a group of women exchanging holiday gifts, sometimes support dogs are also training and then there are the race walkers, just counting their laps through the food court. I like to watch from the side, because honestly if you have enough dedication to wake up at 6:30 am and burn that amount of calories as a teenager in a mall and get nothing but a work out, I mean somebody hand out a medal for that.

Joe and I drove Natalie to her first indoor meet this winter. We went to Wellesley College and she tried her hand at a 300 distance. This was an experience to say the least. She lost track of her laps, Joe and I didn’t even count them for her (what a bunch of dubs we are) and we just chalked it up as a first time go around. Shortly after that, Natalie began complaining of hip pain during basketball practice. We went to see the athletic trainer at our high school. Her name is Kaylee and she is an absolute doll. Kaylee showed her some strengthening exercises to do with resistance bands and Natalie worked on strengthening her hip muscles and on flexibility. She took almost a full month and a half off from everything, which was hard on her and on my Momma heart.

In the spring, she began to train for spring track and continued her Saturday work outs with Abby. She had a really excellent season and went into the summer hungry for more. We began by doing a qualifying meet in Brewer and then progressed to New York, where she qualified for the junior Olympics. The Junior Olympics was one of the highlights of my summer. It was a memory she will never, ever forget. She placed fourth in the country. I had to go to my Dad and step Mom and borrow money to get there and truth be told I would have gone door-to-door ,to get her a ticket there. I would have sold lemonade and recycled bottles and walked dogs. Now that I have seen the look on her face, when she crosses the finish, and the pride she feels in HERSELF, I will probably be doing all the above fundraisers next summer so she can continue to improve and see how strong she is.

If you have a kid who is anxious, who likes team sports, but always beats themselves up when they make a mistake on the court or the field, do me a favor. Sign your kid up for track. The beauty of walking and running is that the time you put in, you can feel it on the other side. The resistance you feel when it gets hard, is the same resistance the world gives you when you are an unsure teenager trying all the hard things. When you overcome the obstacles, walking or running, this sends messages to your brain. No I can work through that. That was hard, but I have done hard before, I can motor through this. In fact, let me do you one better, overcoming these obstacles can help your child ASSIST other people in motoring through their hard thing. Track is a Life Saver, a God Send for kids. You get out of it, exactly what you put in. And before Oregon, she put in a hell of a lot.

Now that we are back home, she has continued training and we are about a week away from the state meet. There are a handful of girls who have a very similar time for race walk. Regardless of Natalie’s finish at states, she has already won so much in my opinion. In this sport, in this race, in her connection to other athletes and to Coach Jen and Coach Abby.

Other coaches take note, you are not just coaching the physical athlete anymore. That is a thing of the past. What I love about Abby is that after a race , she asks how did that feel? She asks what Natalie was thinking when she had a hard time passing an opponent. She asks her to reflect on why things went well or didn’t. She allows her to be her serious, hard on herself- self and she respects her as a growing adult with her responses. Sometimes I get emotional at their text exchanges, because so often athletes are benched for doing something wrong. The athlete will sit in silence, wondering did I do this wrong, did I do that wrong. Maybe if I had just? That is why I appreciate the mental health aspect of our journey with race walk. Teenage athletes are not robots. They will have bad days. Their brains are still forming. They are working through some things. I appreciate the mental side of the coaching just as much as the physical.

This journey of race walk has been eye opening to me. It has been inspiring and uplifting . It has also been work, and money and driving and sometimes tears, but worth every step of the way. Some days I am sure I am not saying or doing the right thing, but I try with all my might to be the best Momma support I can be. I just cant wait to see where the journey takes us next.