Elaine Dizon is a life and mindset coach, writer, mother of 2, a recognized AT&T Business Cultural Champion, and a 2021 recipient of the AT&T Spark Award – the company’s highest honor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work bridging Tolerance to Understanding. She supports, empowers, and celebrates women who are looking to move beyond uncertainty and grief towards a life filled with intention, meaning, and joy.

Inviting your children into activities you enjoy can be a dicey situation. As excited as I may be to do a Parol making craft or read The Bad Seed Books by Jory John, the response to spend time together ranges from excitement to lukewarm, if not sometimes ice cold. Running has always been a fun, healing, and continuous learning journey for me. It offers a break from the sedentary work life that makes up most of my day while giving me a chance to practice self-care, reflect, and catch up on an audiobook or podcast or just enjoy the ambient sounds around me. I don’t consider myself a serious runner or competitive runner; I am committed to the practice of training and registering for races – a virtuous cycle of preparation while testing the preparation with an optimistic outcome on how I did while being very gentle when I fall short. During a peak season of thirty plus races in 2017 and 2018, my daughter Ronin (who was 6-7 years old at the time) noticed my absence during the work week while I trained and how I wasn’t home to cook brunch on the weekends. One day she asked me, “When are you going to be home more often so you can make breakfast when I wake up on the weekends?”

Her question stung. It was a fair question. How does a parent create more time to spend with their children amid work, rest, errands, self-care, and anything else that is time-bound or duty-bound? For a few weeks, I looked at her question as if it was a conflict – that I had to choose between running and cooking brunch more often during the weekend. During that timeframe, I felt massively guilty for doing an activity that I enjoyed while not being present to her during the school week and on the weekends. I also felt angry because I felt that I had to give up something that I worked so hard to improve – and it wasn’t just my run times. I learned that I could get to and from home to new places by myself without my husband or someone else driving me. I learned how to train, how to prepare my gear, and what I needed to feel successful in showing up to a race. I spent time during race day mornings to write in my gratitude journal, do a decent warm up session, and download specific playlists for the type of distance and terrain ahead of me. These were moving mediations on race day.

One day, during a training run in August 2018, I realized, “What if I invited Ronin to a race?” I did my research, and I found the Wonder Woman 5K in Oakland that we could run together in October 2018. When I told her about the race, she warmed up to the idea of running with other people under this theme of power, poise, and grace that Wonder Woman exemplified. I showed her the medal and kids gear she would receive, and she was delighted to see that she would get a red cape emblazoned with the Wonder Woman symbol and blue wristbands with secret pockets. With sixty days towards race day, I mentioned to her that we could walk, hike, and jog to prepare for the race. Her only request, that I stay with her throughout the 5K in October. My heart leapt and I replied, “Of course!”

On race day, the atmosphere was jubilant and celebratory. There was encouraging signage, high energy music, pre-race snacks, and a warm video welcome from the original Wonder Woman, Linda Carter. As we ran through the city, residents cheered us on, bands played from the sidewalks, DJs set up booths to provide background music, and the community of runners were smiling and fist pumping as we headed to the finish line. Ronin navigated the streets well. She looked around, she saw me next to her, and she kept running. When she was tired, she asked to walk or run a little slower. As she crossed the finish line, her smile said it all.

Fast forward to July 9, 2022, Ronin and I logged a new chapter in our running journey together. We completed a three-hour running relay as a two-person team. This time, she went solo on a trail run – twice, accruing 6.6 miles. For all the times we’ve trained and raced since October 2018, she remembered those experiences because she lined up at the start line on her own, listened to the announcements, and headed out without a synopsis from me about the course, what to watch out for, or where the aid station would be – and for the first time ever, she would be the one doing the report back out to me before I went out on my lap around the course.

After the three-hour horn blew and ended our event, we sat together for a couple of hours watching the six-hour and twelve-hour runners continue. During that time, we thanked each other for being so understanding and easy going while we dealt with the unforeseen circumstances of moving from a three-person team to a two-person team. This change meant that Ronin had to do a few more things without me – the bib pick and hoodie pick up – while I quickly set up our sun dome tent and resting station between laps. Since we weren’t focused on time or the number of laps, we cheered each other and other runners on during our event. And as we watched, she asked me if I was ever scared of not finishing a race because she had that moment during her second lap of the relay. Before I answered her, I asked her how she kept going. She just said, “I knew I had to.” I congratulated her in knowing that about herself and that is a moment many runners face…a moment many people face throughout their lives…and the choice to keep going is sometimes the harder choice and once we are on the other side of it, we can see the learning.

I asked her what she learned. She said, “That I could do it and then, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

Inviting my family into my running journey has been a gift. In the end, I didn’t lose anything – not time or the running itself. Instead, I receive an invitation to continue the conversation and be a part of their life as they share their thoughts and challenges – running related or not.

Always Cheering YOU On from afar!

Your Coach Mom,

Elaine

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