Thursday, July 17, 2008

MY MOM IS FASTER THAN YOUR MOM

My mom was born to be an athlete. Competition was a mainstay throughout her childhood, her teen and adult years, and now, even at the age of fifty. She has always been pretty impressive to watch. Sports are very important to her. She plays them, watches them, and even coached for a while. She lives and breaths being active. She even ran during all four of her pregnancies, big belly and all!

In high school she played as many sports as she could juggle and excelled at all of them. A few years ago she was inducted into her high school hall of fame - the only woman in her class of inductees, I might add. I was fortunate as a young woman to have a mom that could take on any man and I definitely loved to brag about it.

As my three brothers and I grew older, my mom could step away from her stay-at-home mom position and focus on being an outstanding athlete again. Not that she strayed from that athlete role too much; she still ran road races almost every weekend and brought home lots of trophies. But, last year, my mom decided to lose weight (about 30 pounds) and start training hard. All that training paid off last summer when my mom broke six records and took home six gold medals at the Tennessee Senior Olympics (she's fifty, remember?).

This weekend, my mom will head to Nashville again to see if she can break her previous state records and qualify for Nationals in California next summer. I have no doubt she'll be flying to Cali, because at the Senior Olympics, my mom is a superstar.

Having an athletic mom meant that I had to rely on my friends to teach me how to wear makeup, fix my hair, and dress like a girl, but in the scheme of things, I'm thankful that I was never "girly." I had a mom that showed me that just because I was a woman, that should never hold me back. If she could hang with the guys, and even outrun most of them, why couldn't I? It was nothing short of empowering having a mom of that athletic caliber. Even though I never had that same athletic drive and never became a star on the field, court, or track, the lessons I learned about life were far greater than any trophy.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Here's an update about how your mom did last week in Nashville at the Tennessee Senior Olympics. This year she ran seven races and took home seven gold medals. That gives her thirteen gold medals in two years in thirteen races-- a perfect score! She also set three state senior games records for her age group and came very close to breaking her last year records in the other four races. Congratulations, Karunrun!!!