Apparently having a blog is the thing to do these days, so
here we go. Welcome to the first entry in the PRKids blog! (Don’t worry, they
won’t all be this long!)
My vision is to let parents participate in races worry-free,
while kids are safe and have a blast in our camps. And race directors get more
participation because fewer runners are thwarted by lack of child care.
Everybody wins! Seems like a no-brainer, right?! Well, I thought it might be
interesting to begin by giving a bit of background as to how this business got
started.
In July 2014, I was at home with a 5-month old and a
2.5-year old, and our regular babysitter had graduated from the University of
Colorado and moved on to a full-time job. I was still homesick from having
moved to Boulder, Colorado in September 2012 from Washington, D.C., and was
suffering from some post-partum depression (I figured out later). Then, I lost
my job of 7.5 years. It wasn’t personal, nor was it a surprise, but when my
organization RE-organized and decided not to include my department in their new
business plan, it signified more than just a loss of income for me, though it
took me a while to realize it.
You see, I have always worked. I am a worker, and even when
I take “time off”, I still manage to find myself involved in projects,
activities, or initiatives of various stripes. Being busy – productively busy –
is what has always made me happiest and the most fulfilled. I never considered
myself the stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) type (not that there’s anything wrong with
that!), and always planned to return to work full time if I were ever blessed
with children. When I had my first child a little more than five years ago,
however, I found myself in a situation that is getting a lot of attention in
the blogosphere and other media these days, wherein I couldn’t bear to leave my
son in the hands of a stranger full time, nor did I want to exit the job market
and essentially toss my years of work experience out the window. As it happened, the stars aligned, and due to
overhead cutbacks at my organization, my manager was all too happy to let me
work from home. Score!
About a year after I began working remotely, other factors
led my husband and me to decide to move from Washington, D.C. (which I think I will
always consider my spiritual home) to his hometown of Boulder, Colorado. We packed up all of our stuff and our
one-year-old in September 2012 and moved to Colorado, and since I was already
working remotely, my manager had agreed to let me continue working even after
the move, so I got to ride that wave for another year and a half, which was a
pretty good run in my opinion. I did my best to settle into life in the West
and act like a Boulderite (check out Urban Dictionary’s definition of a
Boulderite, it’s pretty spot-on:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Boulderite),
filling my time in between work with toddler activities, hiking and
running. We had another baby in January
2014, and I took a couple of months off from work while learning how to juggle
my newborn and (what I remain convinced was) the most active toddler the world
has ever seen, and then I was back to it.
When June 30 - the end of the organization’s fiscal year -
arrived and I learned that my contract would not be renewed after over seven
years of employment with them, it seemed a bit unreal at first. I was convinced
– and, incidentally, remain so – that I would be able to find another contract
gig at this or another organization with similar goals, so I was not too
worried. Anyway, maybe it would be nice not to have to balance work and the
kids for a while, right? Well, yes. Sort of.
Fast forward a few weeks, and I found myself a SAHM in
Boulder, Colorado. Maybe I’m a bad mom for saying this, but I was a little
bored. Not “bored” in the sense that I was struggling to fill my time. If
anything, I was busier, physically, than I’ve ever been: Potty training one
child, breastfeeding another, running from gymnastics to preschool to play
dates. I was not lonely, either, in the sense that I was almost literally NEVER
alone. If only!
But, I was sad, homesick, and frankly just not myself. (This
was around the time that I realized that I just may have some PPD…) The only moments during this period where I
DID feel like myself were when I was running. I had been a runner for 20+ years
at this point, and running had always been my reflection and processing time.
Thank goodness for that! I ran as often as I could - which wasn’t too often and
usually involved a jogging stroller – and did my best to get back on track for
my own sake as well as that of my family. I was tossing around ideas for
businesses, based mostly on my years of experience in education and
international development, but couldn’t shake the feeling that there was
something else that I was supposed to do. I kept thinking about how great and
natural it felt to be running, and wished that I could do it more often, and
without a jogging stroller! I was training for a half marathon at the time,
tired and still not completely acclimated to the dryness and altitude, when it
occurred to me that it would be so nice if there were someone at the race who could
watch the kids while my husband and I ran together. Light bulb moment!! Once
that thought entered my mind, all other ideas faded into the background.
I spent the next year or so dealing with more bureaucratic
red tape and institutional opposition than I ever could have imagined, but finally
launched PRKids in September 2015 and have been at nearly 30 events as of
November 2016. I truly believe that race time child care is the next innovation
in race amenities (remember when we didn’t have bag drop, or chip timing, or
disposable chips, or race photos…?).
We hope you join us next season!
(For a bit more of the story, check out the video of my
October 2016 talk at Skirt Sports “Women Run The World”)
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