Can You Be a Good Dad and a Good Runner?

Recently Mayla, our 18-month-old daughter, has rediscovered a book she enjoys, which means that she insists that we read it to her, multiple times a day. It’s called Dream Big and it’s about powerful women throughout history: There’s Katherine Johnson writing complex math equations on a chalkboard, Jane Goodall playing with chimpanzees, Zaha Hadid designing a sleek building.

Mayla enjoys the illustrations—caricatures of each person surrounded by scenes of their professional interests—and short sentences, but she gets the most animated on the page featuring Florence Griffith Joyner, the decorated Olympian sprinter with multiple world records. As soon as she sees the illustrated Flo-Jo running on a track and hears me read “Dream fast,” she points to the page and exclaims, “Dada!”

My daughter knows her dad is a runner.

It is, of course, hilarious and adorable that Mayla compares me to one of the most famous track athletes in history. To her growing and forever connecting mind, a runner is a runner, regardless of talent or accomplishments. To her, Flo-Jo and I are kindred spirits. 

But what struck me the most was that she recognized that I am a runner, that she knew to make the connection. We run together sometimes, and she has watched me run around the neighborhood or park or famous streets of Massachusetts, so I guess it shouldn’t be surprising. But it still made me smile that she associated running with me.

Raising a child has of course altered my life in countless ways, but one of the few things that has remained constant, one of the few similarities between pre-Mayla life and post-Mayla life, is running: a five to seven to 10-mile run, six days a week, on the trails or around the park or through the greenways.

I’ve been a runner for more than 10 years, and it, like fatherhood, has changed my life for the better. Its physical benefits are clear, it’s brought me several of my closest friends, and it indeed does often make your mind clearer and attitude better. I have reached the point where I need running: I need its rhythm and clarity and consistency, its daily exploration of yourself and the world. I am not the same person when I do not run. 

This necessity has only been exacerbated by the challenges and questions of fatherhood. Running has helped me navigate being a father, has helped me contextualize those challenges and answer some of those questions (you have a lot of alone time on runs), and I think it’s fair to say it’s even made me a better husband and dad.

But these last 18 months of fatherhood have also been the only time that, on certain days, I feel bad about running, something I’ve felt good about for most of my life. On those days there lingers a question that, I think, most parents who spend hours away running or biking or any other endurance sport have wrestled with: Is it OK to be doing this?

Time, of course, is the most valuable currency to a toddler. They don’t know or care whether you are away at work or on a run or at the store buying groceries; you are simply not there and that is all that matters to them. Their view on time, then, is binary: You are there with them, or you are not. 

When I was training for Boston, I was not there a lot. Marathon training necessitates hours that turn into days that turn into weeks that turn into months spent performing, as the author John L. Parker Jr. puts it, “that most unprofound and sometimes heart-rending process of removing, molecule by molecule, the very tough rubber that comprised the bottoms of [your] training shoes.” Running is a sport that demands sacrifices, and as a dad I’ve realized the most significant one is your time: It does not care if you are a father or a husband or an employee; it does not care how you spend your time outside of its relatively simple, often cruel mandates. It, like a toddler, possesses a black-and-white view of time.

The dilemma, then, is plain: Your child wants—needs—you to be there with them, guiding them through their new world, but running commands that every day you spend an hour, sometimes more, devoting your time and energy to something else. So, as a parent to a baby or toddler, you begin to justify your absences, why you aren’t there as often as you or they want you to be: Running is a metaphor for life: What you put in is directly proportional to what you get out. It teaches perseverance and instills physical and mental strength. Chasing something big and exploring the edges of your being are important.  

But to a toddler, these justifications ring hollow. They don’t care about or even recognize any of these grand lessons about life; they just want you to read a book or build a tower with them. You just spent most of their waking hours away from them at work, and after that you spend more running. There are, you remember walking through the door on those late afternoons, only 24 hours in a day.

Your spouse, too, notices and perhaps sometimes resents the time you aren’t there to help them raise your child. They deserve a present, supportive husband, and often you’re off chasing some dream they might not fully understand but ultimately support because they know it’s part of you. You are reminded, time and again, that one of their truest expressions of their love is recognizing and allowing that.      

So what do you do? You could, theoretically, just stop running, choose another, less time-intensive sport, leave it behind for good. You could find something else to replace it. You could attempt to quiet the voices, assuage the guilt, telling you that you aren’t around enough. Or you could attempt to find some type of balance that makes it all work.

Perhaps the biggest irony is that to think about these questions and their solutions all you want to do is go for a run.

There are, of course, countless other parents navigating the challenge of raising a child and pursuing an endurance sport, and countless who do it well, with clarity and grace. There are also professional runners and cyclists and swimmers who devote their entire lives to the sport and still make time for their kids. Being a runner and being a good parent aren’t and shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

I’ve only been a dad for 18 months, and I probably haven’t mastered the balance yet. But perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve pulled from this relatively short time as a father is the power of our time: it is forever limited, and how we spend it defines who we are and what we value.

So when I get home after work and running, I leave my phone upstairs so I’m not distracted. I refuse to work on the weekends and run only once, early on Sunday morning before Mayla wakes up or during her nap in the afternoon. I’ve become as efficient as possible at work and on runs so I don’t waste any precious time that could be spent with Mayla. All of this has led me to have a different, clearer view on running: I realize now it’s a privilege, something I get to do, that it’s not and never has been guaranteed. I appreciate the sport more now than I ever have. 

Perhaps the clearest manifestation of that realization is running before work to maximize my time with Mayla in the afternoons. On those days I’ll wake up early, drive to work under the stars, and begin clipping off miles in the morning dark, thinking of my daughter as she dreams.

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