Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Hello, Malcolm Glable. Here, we're back with another
Speaker 1: conversation from our Revisionist History Live series on Mastery. This
Speaker 1: took place at the ninety second Street Y in New York.
Speaker 1: As many of you know, I'm a pretty serious runner,
Speaker 1: and like most competitive runners, I was most running crazy
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. I started at thirteen, ran
Speaker 1: through high school and a little in college. It was
Speaker 1: the single most fun thing I did growing up. Sports
Speaker 1: were my refuge from the craziness of adolescence. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that has become clear in recent years
Speaker 1: is that youth sports are no longer the oasis they
Speaker 1: used to be. That something very troubling is happening. Higher pressure,
Speaker 1: abusive coaches, over involved parents, and it's worse for girls,
Speaker 1: eating disorders, distorted body images. So I asked two people
Speaker 1: to come and talk about all this with me and
Speaker 1: figure out some answers. Lauren Fleshman and Linda Flanagan, both athletes,
Speaker 1: coaches and parents who've thought a lot about this problem,
Speaker 1: and by the way, who happened to have the same initials.
Speaker 1: So just to be clear, this is Linda.
Speaker 2: That's strangely, when many parents don't step in, they raise
Speaker 2: hell when you know their child is put in right field.
Speaker 2: But if there's like just a lot of nastiness and
Speaker 2: a terrible team culture, they're quiet.
Speaker 1: Linda Flanagan, author of Take Back the Game, How money
Speaker 1: and mania are ruining kids sports and why it matters.
Speaker 1: And here is.
Speaker 3: Lauren truly like my sport experience always felt like it
Speaker 3: was mine.
Speaker 1: Lauren Fleshman, world class runner, author of Good for a Girl,
Speaker 1: A Woman Running in a man's world. Linda and Lauren
Speaker 1: gave me exactly what I wanted. I won't say we
Speaker 1: fixed kid sports, but I do see a future worth
Speaker 1: believing in. Take a listen. For those of you who
Speaker 1: don't know, Laura was one of the great distance runners
Speaker 1: of her generation. She is an entrepreneur and now she's
Speaker 1: a writer. Now she's written this wonderful book. Linda, also
Speaker 1: accomplished runner. Has done a number of things, interesting things
Speaker 1: over the course of your career, but of relevance to
Speaker 1: this evening, you coach for many years at the high
Speaker 1: school level, and it's really out of those experiences that
Speaker 1: you came to write your book, Take Back the Game.
Speaker 1: And I am interested in the two of you for
Speaker 1: a number of reasons. But I'm also a runner, not
Speaker 1: nearly as accomplished as either of you. In fact, I
Speaker 1: thought that we could all go run this afternoon, and
Speaker 1: I asked, So I asked first. So I said, let's
Speaker 1: go for run, say, and so Linda says, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not running with Lauren. She's world class. So you flaked.
Speaker 1: And then I said, all right, I'll go running with Lauren.
Speaker 1: And then Lauren says, no, I'm not going right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go for a runner earlier in the day. And
Speaker 1: I think, what happened to Krug and found wrong? Lauren,
Speaker 1: you looked at my strata. You said, he's so slow.
Speaker 1: Why would I waste a good running day? So I
Speaker 1: ran alone.
Speaker 4: So I said I should have gone in the morning
Speaker 4: with me.
Speaker 1: So I'll get over that though. I so both of
Speaker 1: you have written books about the crisis in youth sports.
Speaker 1: We said girls sports, and I think probably we should.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk probably more about girls than boys
Speaker 1: in this because I think both of you would agree
Speaker 1: that problems are more acute with girls. And just to
Speaker 1: set things up, I wanted to I'm going to just
Speaker 1: describe the manner in which this conversation is going to
Speaker 1: take place because we want to play a little game,
Speaker 1: the Martian game, and the Martian game is that. Imagine
Speaker 1: there's a Martian who doesn't know anything about America, American culture,
Speaker 1: sports in America, nothing, just a Martian in one of
Speaker 1: those balloons, and all he's been given is your two books.
Speaker 1: So he reads your two books and he reaches a
Speaker 1: series of He has no context, he has no inhibitions,
Speaker 1: he's not worried about asking. So I am the Martian,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to ask a series of questions unconstrained
Speaker 1: by any kind of you know, other ideological positions of mine,
Speaker 1: previous experiences. I'm just drawing what might seem like extreme
Speaker 1: conclusions from both of your books, and I want you
Speaker 1: to respond to these conclusions. Okay, okay, all right. The
Speaker 1: martians first statement is the Martians says, huh, should we
Speaker 1: ban men from ever coaching women? Again?
Speaker 2: It might not be a bad idea. Tell me why, Well,
Speaker 2: there are too many men coaching women. For one thing,
Speaker 2: women need women and girls need female role models in
Speaker 2: leadership positions. Everyone thinks of sports as that's where you
Speaker 2: learn how to be a leader. And yet you know,
Speaker 2: very few girls are actually coached by women, and even
Speaker 2: at the collegiate level it's about forty two. High school
Speaker 2: level it's in the twenties, and in youth sports is
Speaker 2: twenty five percent. So let's get more women in there
Speaker 2: so that young girls and teenagers can see that women
Speaker 2: can be leaders too.
Speaker 1: Lauren, do you have thoughts on the Martians band?
Speaker 4: Well, I like these points.
Speaker 3: I agree, and running only seventeen percent of the coaches
Speaker 3: and runninger women, which I was really surprised, even lower
Speaker 3: than the average. I would say, let's not ban them
Speaker 3: until we've given them a chance to fill the giant
Speaker 3: gap of knowledge that we all are living with when
Speaker 3: it comes to female bodies and how they develop and
Speaker 3: how they operate.
Speaker 4: Let's let them. Let's give them a chance to learn.
Speaker 3: Let's see how many of them want to and the
Speaker 3: ones that want to and are willing to, and we'll
Speaker 3: do the work. Let's let them stay and then let's
Speaker 3: do all the stuff that Flinda's talking about.
Speaker 2: You're enlightened.
Speaker 1: I was struck in reading your book, Laurin, by a
Speaker 1: big chunk of your book is It is a very
Speaker 1: powerful and insightful explanation of the difference in the physiological
Speaker 1: trajectories of young women and young men, and you make
Speaker 1: this you would talk about your time with Sam. The
Speaker 1: young man are a man or a boar, whatever they
Speaker 1: are between of college age is at their physical peak.
Speaker 1: They get better almost automatically every year. They're full of
Speaker 1: all the every positive hormone non demand, and whereas the
Speaker 1: women are going through a much more complicated process. And
Speaker 1: the reason the Martian asks that question is that Martian says,
Speaker 1: how can a man ever fully understand what a young
Speaker 1: woman is going through if he's never gone through it himself.
Speaker 3: Well, I would say to the Martian, we can't apply
Speaker 3: that logic to the problems of the world, or else
Speaker 3: the problems would only be able to be solved by
Speaker 3: people who've had an identical experience. And the problems are
Speaker 3: big enough that we need everyone involved. And I don't
Speaker 3: think there's anything that mysterious about the female body that
Speaker 3: anybody could learn if they wanted to.
Speaker 1: It's just what we've but we've been added for years
Speaker 1: and years and years now. And you know, just reading
Speaker 1: that your book and that little section it's not in,
Speaker 1: you know, there's we have an overwhelming we have a
Speaker 1: largely male group of coaches, and yet we still have.
Speaker 1: We have a persistence of these kinds of problems, and
Speaker 1: I'm wondering whether as the first step in solving the
Speaker 1: problem is to is to replace them with people who
Speaker 1: maybe have a better chance of understanding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, with women coaches, you have a higher likelihood
Speaker 3: that they've gone through something similar. But you also have
Speaker 3: plenty of female coaches perpetuating the same harm that their
Speaker 3: male coaches you know, passed down to them and repeat
Speaker 3: the culture, and so there's there's the knowledge is needed
Speaker 3: by female coaches too. I get a lot of messages
Speaker 3: of people who've read the book, women and men who
Speaker 3: are like, Wow, I didn't know any of this stuff.
Speaker 3: I feel really bad now. I've been coaching for ten years,
Speaker 3: fifteen years. I wish I could go back and have
Speaker 3: some different conversations with my athletes than I had.
Speaker 4: There was no understanding.
Speaker 3: Of why the women were making the decisions they were making,
Speaker 3: why they were breaking their bodies were breaking down at
Speaker 3: higher rates than our male peers. And I mean, we
Speaker 3: don't study female bodies enough. We don't have enough research
Speaker 3: on femal bodies. So I can't really like blame coaches
Speaker 3: for not knowing these things. Plus we sexualize most of
Speaker 3: the things that are specifically female, you know, or we
Speaker 3: make them dirty, like the menstrual cycle has this reputation
Speaker 3: for being something you can't talk about without using euphemisms.
Speaker 4: Breasts are sexualized as soon as you're twelve.
Speaker 3: And a half and get them, so it makes it
Speaker 3: hard to talk about our bodies and hard to talk
Speaker 3: about our bodies with ground ups, especially.
Speaker 1: Linda, what did your athlete you coach for many, many years?
Speaker 1: What did your athletes get from you as a woman
Speaker 1: that they couldn't have gotten from a man? Or is
Speaker 1: that or do you think that there.
Speaker 2: Was no I don't think that they got something from
Speaker 2: me that they couldn't get from a man. In fact,
Speaker 2: there's a man out here in the audience who I
Speaker 2: coached with, who is a fabulous coach and role model
Speaker 2: for me, who was very sensitive to the girls, you know,
Speaker 2: feelings and wishes and dreams. So I don't. The more
Speaker 2: I think about it, I have to I have to
Speaker 2: go back and tell the Martian that we should not
Speaker 2: We don't need to ban male coaches, but we should
Speaker 2: be educating them along with women coaches, who, as Lauren
Speaker 2: points out, are also guilty of a lot of the
Speaker 2: nonsense that we're reading about. I mean, you look at
Speaker 2: the Harvard ice hockey coach. I mean, every week there's
Speaker 2: another story about some egregious behavior on the part of
Speaker 2: a you know, professional coach, and there are oftentimes women too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, what about this though? The second thing that
Speaker 1: I took from reading both of your books, was particularly
Speaker 1: from Lawrence, was this notion, this idea that I talked
Speaker 1: about Braveries before, about that you spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time on the book that the trajectory of young men
Speaker 1: and women is different, and that many women have this
Speaker 1: kind of in their late teens early twenties, have a
Speaker 1: kind of performance plateau, and so they observe the men
Speaker 1: getting better and better efforts every year, many of them
Speaker 1: hit a period of a couple of years where their
Speaker 1: times are not getting better, in some cases are going backwards,
Speaker 1: and that triggers all kinds of what is that does?
Speaker 1: How do you deal with that issue? I mean, is
Speaker 1: it is it? Is there a case to be made
Speaker 1: for somehow separating out the cultures of male and female
Speaker 1: running it out with that age, So there isn't this
Speaker 1: kind of of the women looking at the men and
Speaker 1: thinking they should be doing the same.
Speaker 3: I think that it's fine to have different experiences, you
Speaker 3: just need the different experiences normalized from day one. Like
Speaker 3: when the coaches are having their conversations with parents and students,
Speaker 3: that's the time to lay out, hey, we have a
Speaker 3: cross country team or track team or basketball team, and
Speaker 3: we are working with thirteen to eighteen year olds, for example,
Speaker 3: and female bodies are going to be going through something
Speaker 3: that looks more like this, which is like, if you
Speaker 3: just look at all the data on performance, really doesn't
Speaker 3: matter what the sport is. By age sixteen seventeen, female
Speaker 3: gains performance gains on average or like one to one
Speaker 3: and a half percent, whereas their male counterparts are.
Speaker 4: They go like this, do do?
Speaker 3: And the female athletes go like EWW like this. But
Speaker 3: we haven't been telling them during that stage of life
Speaker 3: that hey, this is temporary. This is like a blip
Speaker 3: in your long term progression, and your prime is in
Speaker 3: your mid to late twenties and beyond.
Speaker 4: So really we just need.
Speaker 3: To Every coach of an adolescent female person should should
Speaker 3: be telling them, hey, this is going to be part
Speaker 3: of your normal progression. More than likely you're going to
Speaker 3: have a plateau or even a short term dip. I
Speaker 3: will be coaching you through that experience as teammates. You're
Speaker 3: going to be navigating this with your teammates. Some of
Speaker 3: you will be on this part of the curve, will
Speaker 3: you'll be on this, will be on this. So part
Speaker 3: of team culture needs to be supporting each other through
Speaker 3: that rocky road from day one and not looking at
Speaker 3: it as a bad thing.
Speaker 4: It's just a different path.
Speaker 3: Like is there going to be feelings of disappointment, Sure,
Speaker 3: you know, and we can make space for that without
Speaker 3: pathologizing it. And that's what we've been doing, is because
Speaker 3: we don't recognize that females have this performance wave instead
Speaker 3: of this performance line when they hit the plateau. I
Speaker 3: mean there's parents who have been like I sent my
Speaker 3: kid to a sports psychologist because I thought they just
Speaker 3: didn't care enough anymore. Or I sent them to a
Speaker 3: dietician because I thought that they were their nutrition was sloppy.
Speaker 4: I'm like, that's just puberty. You just pathologized puberty. None,
Speaker 4: but see the trouble.
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you, And yet I think that
Speaker 2: implies that you coaches have room for have the time,
Speaker 2: and that athletes are patient and that their parents are
Speaker 2: patient and at least in my experience with high school parents,
Speaker 2: of course many were wonderful and I love them.
Speaker 4: I always have to say that you said it, good job.
Speaker 2: But there's this this drive to achieve and to get
Speaker 2: results right away, you know, there's not and if they're
Speaker 2: plateauing or getting worse than again, like what's the problem here?
Speaker 2: And so it is about coaching education.
Speaker 3: It is, and it's also there's some things we can't change.
Speaker 3: I mean, sport as we know it was built around
Speaker 3: the male body. So high school sports. We invest a
Speaker 3: ton of money in high school sports, in college sports,
Speaker 3: and that's ages thirteen to twenty two. That's a great
Speaker 3: time to be a male in sport, right, And that's
Speaker 3: why they're I'm guessing, so integrated into our education systems.
Speaker 4: It's like a.
Speaker 3: And why scholarships are given out based on who's the
Speaker 3: best seventeen or eighteen year old.
Speaker 4: That's a better predictor for a.
Speaker 3: Male body person than a female body person of what
Speaker 3: your future potential is. But the scholarships and that whole
Speaker 3: system was created long before female athletes were like up
Speaker 3: in there asking for their share of the scholarship pie
Speaker 3: but now there's no getting around the fact that seventeen
Speaker 3: and eighteen year olds are the ones getting offered the
Speaker 3: scholarships or not. And so that adds this enormous pressure
Speaker 3: right during development, right during your puberty experiences of change,
Speaker 3: where you're like, Okay, you're telling me to accept this
Speaker 3: temporary state of plateau, but there's a lot on the line,
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of dollars of scholarship and opportunity. And
Speaker 3: if I just restrict my diet, if I fight puberty,
Speaker 3: if I try to aim for this body that I've
Speaker 3: been told is the ideal performance body, now, then I
Speaker 3: can give myself a chance to have those opportunities.
Speaker 4: But then you pay the price later.
Speaker 1: Well, this brings us to the Martian's second point, which
Speaker 1: is one that Linda raises explicitly in her book, which
Speaker 1: when I came to that part of Europe, I was like, Amen,
Speaker 1: I'm with you on this as both as Malcolm and
Speaker 1: as the Martian. That is it time to pull the
Speaker 1: plug on athletic scholarships and preferences. You know, if you're Lord,
Speaker 1: you're describing this kind of the level of pressure that
Speaker 1: is brought to bear on the seventeen year old girl
Speaker 1: at a time in her development when you can't make,
Speaker 1: you know, a kind of reasonable prediction about where. So
Speaker 1: this whole we have this whole system in place that's
Speaker 1: being driven by the enormous cost of college education, by
Speaker 1: the expectations that come with scholarships. What if you just
Speaker 1: ended them.
Speaker 2: I'm all for it, And of course, you know, many
Speaker 2: of the kids going through it now would be like,
Speaker 2: but wait, that's not fair. I'm you know, that's just
Speaker 2: what we've been counting on. But you know it would
Speaker 2: just if there were no admissions advantage and no athletic
Speaker 2: scholarship of any kind available to college kids, then it
Speaker 2: would it would completely change the way we provide sports
Speaker 2: to kids now because there wouldn't be this race, pardon
Speaker 2: the pun, to achieve by thirteen, because you might all disappear.
Speaker 2: And also, you know, I love sports and I'm a runner,
Speaker 2: and I think they're wonderful. But it's not clear to
Speaker 2: me why a high school athlete should get get an
Speaker 2: advantage over someone who plays the obo or who's an acchoir, Like,
Speaker 2: why aren't there special dispensations for them? They don't aren't
Speaker 2: entitled to special scholarships or admissions advantages, or streamline admissions process.
Speaker 2: So I think it's it would be more fair. I
Speaker 2: think it would also be impossible to claud back, or
Speaker 2: at least very difficult.
Speaker 3: I love that part of your book though, because I've
Speaker 3: often thought, Man, if we could just get rid of
Speaker 3: the scholarships, it would release so much pressure on athletes,
Speaker 3: especially girls.
Speaker 4: I think that the pressures would just go way down.
Speaker 3: We'd be way more likely to allow development and change
Speaker 3: to happen on its timeline. But reading your book, I
Speaker 3: was like, Oh, my gosh, there's this whole other side
Speaker 3: of it, the whole big business of youth sports that's
Speaker 3: also driven entirely towards that same aim. And as someone
Speaker 3: who has a nine year old and a five year
Speaker 3: old and I'd like them to participate in sports, I
Speaker 3: don't want to be a part of that mania. I
Speaker 3: don't want to be having to travel for hours every
Speaker 3: weekend to give my kid this the top top performance opportunity.
Speaker 3: I want the kind of sports that you describe in
Speaker 3: your book as an ideal, and so I am for
Speaker 3: getting rid of athletic scholarships. But what had prevented me
Speaker 3: in the past was what would we replace it with?
Speaker 3: And in your book you also provide some really great
Speaker 3: ideas like that there are other models, and I think
Speaker 3: sometimes we lack imaginations helpful to see other ways people
Speaker 3: are doing it.
Speaker 4: And I can't remember the one that you described. You
Speaker 4: could talk about it, I.
Speaker 2: Mean what that would be. No, Well, certainly in Europe
Speaker 2: they don't do youth sports like we do it at all,
Speaker 2: so you know, there's no school based sports.
Speaker 4: It's the after school.
Speaker 2: It's community based sports. So that also sets up the
Speaker 2: whole the college level. And when when I was running
Speaker 2: in England, you know, there was there were no teams.
Speaker 2: It was there were teams, but it was completely alien
Speaker 2: to the way we do it here, and there was
Speaker 2: no coach. It was like student led right, totally student led.
Speaker 2: It was probably comparable to intramurals here, and it was
Speaker 2: very serious and organic and I don't see why that's
Speaker 2: not you know, replicable here. And I think at the
Speaker 2: college level. You know, another possible suggestion I had, which
Speaker 2: will never happen, is well, how about if we just
Speaker 2: abolished college sports as if? But I say that, but
Speaker 2: why not club and intramural? I mean, it's not saying
Speaker 2: kids can't.
Speaker 1: When not about it, you're talking about intercollegiate.
Speaker 3: Sports, like yeah, yeah, Well, what's ironic about this is
Speaker 3: in research for my book, what women had in sports
Speaker 3: was club and intermural before Title nine, but there was
Speaker 3: a huge discrepancy. Obviously there was no scholarships for us,
Speaker 3: but there were for men in the n C Double A.
Speaker 3: There was more media, all these things that come with
Speaker 3: that infrastructure from men's sports. We wanted it too, when
Speaker 3: maybe all along we wanted equality, but maybe they should
Speaker 3: have followed our lead.
Speaker 4: Maybe we were onto something.
Speaker 3: Well, when Title nine happened, there was a discussion for
Speaker 3: the first couple of years about will we fold into
Speaker 3: the existing men's programs or will we run our own
Speaker 3: show here, Like we've guaranteed we have that the schools
Speaker 3: need to provide the opportunities. You don't necessarily have to
Speaker 3: run it exactly like the NC Double A. And it
Speaker 3: took a little bit before the decision was made to
Speaker 3: join the NC Double A, and like essentially one of
Speaker 3: the arguments in my book is that we should be
Speaker 3: recreating sports with female bodies at the center so that
Speaker 3: they can have an equal chance to thrive in the
Speaker 3: sports system and that we kind of need to take
Speaker 3: it back and be able to do that, because giving
Speaker 3: people the same thing the exact same way isn't going
Speaker 3: to get you the same results.
Speaker 1: Right, So how can we level the proverbial playing field
Speaker 1: and youth sports that's after the break? I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the things that's along these lines that I've often
Speaker 1: wondered about it is whether there's an inherent contradiction between
Speaker 1: designing sports programs for the for the fiftieth percentile and
Speaker 1: designing them for the ninety fifth percentile, and that maybe
Speaker 1: those two things are in some sense incompatible. So if
Speaker 1: we do away with high pressure intercollegiate sports and scholarships
Speaker 1: and things, maybe we produce fewer Maybe we don't, but
Speaker 1: maybe this chance we produce fewer world class runners, as
Speaker 1: she's running as an example, but maybe we also produce
Speaker 1: way more people who are happy and contented and run
Speaker 1: their whole lives, and maybe we get fewer you know,
Speaker 1: two twenty five marathoners and more two fifty marathoners. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would be happy with that, but you know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot there are some people in the kind
Speaker 1: of elite sports community who consider that a tragedy.
Speaker 2: Well, so few kids, not enough kids participating in sports now,
Speaker 2: and I think if we can move the model to
Speaker 2: try to get more participation. I mean, there was just
Speaker 2: an article on the paper yesterday about the income gap
Speaker 2: between the wealthy, wealthy families, you know, earning over one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars, seventy percent of those kids play sports,
Speaker 2: and in families earning twenty five thousand dollars in less
Speaker 2: thirty one percent play sports. So I think this is
Speaker 2: part of the same conversation that the way we have
Speaker 2: developed the youth sports system, with its high cost and
Speaker 2: just relentlessness, has pushed more kids out so that there
Speaker 2: are fewer kids, you know, gaining any advantages.
Speaker 3: Cross country is one of the ones that I think
Speaker 3: has the least access problems, considering that they generally don't
Speaker 3: have cuts, and you don't have to have been in
Speaker 3: the youth sports high performance pipeline to join a team,
Speaker 3: and often you benefit if you haven't. I mean, I
Speaker 3: certainly like when I started as a ninth grader running,
Speaker 3: there had been plenty of people in my town had
Speaker 3: been running a long time.
Speaker 2: And you were not at a disadvantage.
Speaker 4: I was not at all at a disadvantage. Of anything.
Speaker 3: I felt like I was at an advantage. That's how
Speaker 3: it was framed to me, because you were fresh, yeah,
Speaker 3: and you have plenty of years ahead. It's just like
Speaker 3: making you know, like recognizing this timeline. But with my
Speaker 3: kid interested in soccer, I think I spent five hundred
Speaker 3: dollars for a spring soccer.
Speaker 4: Experience for the kid. He's not even leaving.
Speaker 3: Town, you know, so I don't really understand. He's had
Speaker 3: one practice. He's nine, Like, I don't understand how anyone
Speaker 3: how people are affording this and continuing to do this.
Speaker 2: Well, if I can just point out that in my town,
Speaker 2: we have a Junior pre Academy for U fours, which
Speaker 2: is three year olds. Wit what, Well, it's a junior
Speaker 2: pre academy because then there's also the pre Academy, which is.
Speaker 4: For you fives, it like pre k.
Speaker 2: Yes, But so by the time, you know, there's the
Speaker 2: Junior Peer Academy, pre Academy, then there's Academy and futures,
Speaker 2: and then there's travel by the like they've been playing
Speaker 2: for six years and they're nine years old, you know,
Speaker 2: and at each one it's you know, five hundred dollars
Speaker 2: or more, which isn't you know what the problem we
Speaker 2: were talking about with the money and I don't know
Speaker 2: how you do that?
Speaker 1: No, the way, So the biggest obstacle, and you mentioned this, Linda,
Speaker 1: and I would like you to be more blunt about
Speaker 1: this because you mean two, The biggest obstacle to the
Speaker 1: kind of de escalation of youth sports is the parents.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so, and I'm reminded, you know anyone who
Speaker 1: has to deal with parent My brother was a elementary
Speaker 1: school principal. He's now retired, so I can now say
Speaker 1: this about him. And he loved his job and loved
Speaker 1: the kids. It's just the parents that were and he,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty percent I think of his anxiety and
Speaker 1: came from parents, not from the kids. He was prepared
Speaker 1: for the kids. He wasn't prepared. And he also had
Speaker 1: this is very tangential, had this hilarious riff about how
Speaker 1: the parent the teachers that the parents think the best
Speaker 1: teachers are always the worst teachers. So he was like,
Speaker 1: not only are they paying the ass, they don't know
Speaker 1: who the good teachers are. It's like there's something so
Speaker 1: but I want to so Martian says, why don't we
Speaker 1: ban parents fromcat well, you could we give them one.
Speaker 1: They can go to one media one of the that's it.
Speaker 1: They got to pick one and then they're done.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, here's a good model. Is actually the way
Speaker 2: boarding schools do is because they parents don't go to
Speaker 2: those because and those sports programs, from what I understand,
Speaker 2: do pretty well and the kids. It's pretty healthy between
Speaker 2: with the coaches and the players because the parents aren't,
Speaker 2: you know, standing at the chain link fence observing, but
Speaker 2: you know, in the absence of that, I think definitely
Speaker 2: restricting the parents is a good idea. And again I
Speaker 2: would like to say I had a lot of wonderful parents,
Speaker 2: but they're handful or not great.
Speaker 3: Well, the stuff that you were talking about in your
Speaker 3: book about how as parents we get sucked into our
Speaker 3: achievement as parents is shown in our kids' accomplishments and
Speaker 3: that that's a relatively new phenomenon generationally.
Speaker 4: And my parents.
Speaker 3: My high school coach just retired after thirty years, and
Speaker 3: at his retirement party, he again he told me this
Speaker 3: all the time. He's like, your parents were my favorite
Speaker 3: parents of all the parents in the thirty years, because
Speaker 3: they showed up to the first meeting. They came to
Speaker 3: like three to five events perfect. They never once screamed,
Speaker 3: you know, and they never told him how to do
Speaker 3: his job. They showed up enough, like you say in
Speaker 3: your book, to get to know the person who's spending
Speaker 3: crazy amounts of time with your kid. That's important. Get
Speaker 3: to know them a little bit and then get out
Speaker 3: of way. And truly, like my sport experience always felt
Speaker 3: like it was mine and that agency, that autonomy kind
Speaker 3: of cleaved me to the sport in a way that
Speaker 3: I think got me through the ups and downs a
Speaker 3: lot better. And like they, I don't know, I just
Speaker 3: I'm like, I was so grateful for my parental experience
Speaker 3: and then wanting to your book was very affirming and like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: they were actually doing a good job.
Speaker 4: So well, I mean, I try to do it.
Speaker 2: Like how you turned out as a runner. I mean,
Speaker 2: you're the fantastic runner, and obviously you know they were
Speaker 2: doing something right by just stepping back.
Speaker 1: My dad came to in my entire running curtain high
Speaker 1: school one event, and he immediately volunteered to help with
Speaker 1: the long jump. So he was raking the pit and
Speaker 1: as I was, I will say a modesty that I
Speaker 1: won this was the Terror Championships. I won that day
Speaker 1: and as I'm rounding the final bend on my way
Speaker 1: to victory, I look into the infield and I see
Speaker 1: my dad. He's raking and then he raises the rake
Speaker 1: and he goes go. Malcolm rakes a dad. That was
Speaker 1: the extent of his involvement and I love that. But
Speaker 1: to your point, the thing about them not being involved
Speaker 1: is that it allows you to also frame your successes
Speaker 1: and failures the way you want to frame them, because
Speaker 1: the parental frame is very different. They're much more they're
Speaker 1: they're far more sensitive, I think in some ways to
Speaker 1: set backs to they don't understand the context in which
Speaker 1: you're operating, the social network that that you're you're competing in.
Speaker 2: You know what has really struck me and both as
Speaker 2: a coach and since when I've talked to a lot
Speaker 2: of parents, is just how anxious they are. It's all
Speaker 2: this anxiety about how their kids are going to turn out,
Speaker 2: which I get, you know, that's what happens when you're
Speaker 2: a parent.
Speaker 1: But.
Speaker 2: Somehow it's it's played out in sports. It's also played
Speaker 2: out in school. But because sports are so visible, I
Speaker 2: think you know your your value as a parent is
Speaker 2: so easily measured by how well your child does. And
Speaker 2: you know, I just I've been overwhelmingly impressed by how
Speaker 2: anxious parents are about it. And that's why they're freaking
Speaker 2: out and you know, complaining and shrieking and you know,
Speaker 2: trying to get you fired because you know you're not
Speaker 2: doing enough for your child to get that child to
Speaker 2: the next level.
Speaker 1: Did that? Did dealing with parents? How much of an
Speaker 1: obstacle is that for people? For coaches continuing to coach,
Speaker 1: deciding to enter coaching, is that constraining our supply?
Speaker 2: Well, I have an important stat here to share as
Speaker 2: we were discussing this is accurate too. Fifty eight percent
Speaker 2: of coaches the per surveyed about five years ago, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's gotten worse, said they've thought about quitting
Speaker 2: because of parents. Two thirds of coaches set in a
Speaker 2: more recent survey said parents are always criticizing their child,
Speaker 2: they're criticizing their officials. I mean, coaches are really down
Speaker 2: on parents right now. And well, it's interestingly enough in
Speaker 2: this Aspen Institute survey that the parents are like, we
Speaker 2: love our coaches, So there's kind of this weird disconnect there.
Speaker 2: But coaches are really down on parents.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 2: This is unfair, and I think I so many parents
Speaker 2: are trying to do the right thing and don't want
Speaker 2: to be that parent. I've heard that so many times.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be that parent. But can you
Speaker 2: do more? Mile repeats, you know, But I would like
Speaker 2: to say, though, that there is a time when they
Speaker 2: should interject, when they should be you know, not complaining,
Speaker 2: but raising talking to the coach or talking to the
Speaker 2: athletic director. And that's when there's some funny business going on.
Speaker 2: And you know, more the kids, the higher the level
Speaker 2: of athlete the child is, the more elite, the more
Speaker 2: likely they are to be emotionally abused and physically abused.
Speaker 2: And I think that's strangely when many parents don't step in.
Speaker 2: They raise hell when you know their child is put
Speaker 2: in right field. But if there's like just a lot
Speaker 2: of nastiness and a terrible team culture, they're quiet as
Speaker 2: long as the team is doing well.
Speaker 3: And that's it's intimidating, I imagine, you know, because you're
Speaker 3: like dealing with an expert, you would we tend to
Speaker 3: assume that they they have a method that's vetted, or
Speaker 3: they wouldn't have gotten to where they are well.
Speaker 2: And if they're successful in particular, yes, But meanwhile, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of tolerance of just terrible things that we
Speaker 2: shouldn't be tolerating just because the coach has a great reputation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: No, you talk quite movingly and honestly about your own
Speaker 1: father and your book. Some of the best parts of
Speaker 1: the book. And in the beginning of the book, I thought,
Speaker 1: I thought your father, your father came across as a
Speaker 1: much less sympathetic figure than he does by the And
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering, how do you judge you're the elite
Speaker 1: runner here, how do you judge your own parents? Do
Speaker 1: you think your father's role in your life helped you
Speaker 1: as a runner, was neutral or hurts she as a runner?
Speaker 4: I think that overall he was a really positive force.
Speaker 3: He was an alcoholic, for people who haven't read the book,
Speaker 3: and he worked really long hours as a prop maker,
Speaker 3: and when he got home there was about a ninety
Speaker 3: minute window where I could catch him sober before he
Speaker 3: would have too many drinks, where I didn't know what
Speaker 3: kind of dat I was going to get. And so
Speaker 3: I developed this habit of trying to really get his
Speaker 3: attention through excellence during those ninety minutes because he really
Speaker 3: loved excellence, excellence in everything, music, sports, you know, culture,
Speaker 3: Like he just it lit him up to see people
Speaker 3: at their peak doing something incredible. So I wanted to
Speaker 3: have his light on me in that way. So from
Speaker 3: that respect, I can't even really blame him for that.
Speaker 3: That's just one of those childhood things where a dynamic emerges.
Speaker 3: The alcoholism was not ideal. Definitely would have preferred that
Speaker 3: not to be there, but then gosh, throughout my career
Speaker 3: he was, so he just had it was a constant
Speaker 3: positive Like I always knew I'd be loved no matter
Speaker 3: what the result was when I came home. So even
Speaker 3: though I like desperately wanted to please him and be
Speaker 3: excellent for him, he never was, Like, he never came
Speaker 3: down on me when I failed.
Speaker 4: So from that.
Speaker 3: Perspective, I just I would like to be that kind
Speaker 3: of parent for my kids.
Speaker 1: Wait, the Martian has another question. Yes, Martian, this is
Speaker 1: the mark. This is the martians most trivial, frivolous privilege suggestion,
Speaker 1: although maybe not. The Martian says, wonders, why given the
Speaker 1: all of the body issues that aflict girls in sports.
Speaker 1: Why female runners wear bun huggers and crop tops.
Speaker 3: Wells very easy question to answer for the Martian. It's
Speaker 3: because our culture feels that female bodies are there to
Speaker 3: be viewed, objectified, commented on, and in order to do that,
Speaker 3: they need to be wearing less fabric and tighter fitting fabric.
Speaker 4: And that is how.
Speaker 3: Female athletes got their start. Post title nine was a
Speaker 3: movement to make really this is true, to make up
Speaker 3: for the fact that people would need to be watching
Speaker 3: inferior performances, and so.
Speaker 4: They needed to be a visual spectacle.
Speaker 3: And that's where the uniform differences came from, and gender
Speaker 3: specific clothing in sport, which, of course women will say
Speaker 3: they wanted. They didn't want to be wearing like a
Speaker 3: men's extra large hoodie necessarily all the time. They wanted
Speaker 3: things that fit and performed, but it took this esthetic
Speaker 3: angle that was yeah.
Speaker 4: So that's why I.
Speaker 1: Mean, because I was looking I read your book, and
Speaker 1: then I was looking at pictures of h I think
Speaker 1: it was I think some cross country team. I forgotten
Speaker 1: which women's cross country team, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: I was aware of the fact that here are who
Speaker 1: were five young women, all of whom had six packs,
Speaker 1: all of whom had not a stitch of fat on them,
Speaker 1: all of whom looked shiny and healthy. And I was like, Jesus,
Speaker 1: that's a high bar for somebody who is not an
Speaker 1: elite Division one runner or someone if I was an
Speaker 1: eleven to twelve year old girl thinking about running in
Speaker 1: high school, and and I go on line and I
Speaker 1: see that picture, That's what I'm Can we at least
Speaker 1: just wear a T shirt and a bear of bagg
Speaker 1: of shorts and just make them just that little bit
Speaker 1: easier on that eleven year old who wants to join in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, the thing is that probably only well, I
Speaker 3: don't think a six pack is necessary for high performance
Speaker 3: at all. And there is a fixation with looking the
Speaker 3: part more than being the part, and the uniform creates
Speaker 3: that dynamic. I mean that played a huge part in
Speaker 3: my life. Throughout my whole career. It was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: my workouts are good, but like, what do I look
Speaker 3: like in my uniform? I don't look race ready, so
Speaker 3: I'm not race ready, or the scale doesn't say I'm
Speaker 3: race ready, so I'm not race ready, or it is
Speaker 3: like those are not the most important indicators, not even close.
Speaker 3: And like, we have these concepts of race weight that
Speaker 3: are created and perpetuated by men, primarily who have way
Speaker 3: less monthly fluctuation hormonally, and they are being applied to
Speaker 3: female athletes as if we can somehow have a magic
Speaker 3: number on a scale that if we can stay this number,
Speaker 3: we will perform optimally based on physics formulas.
Speaker 4: But that's not how our bodies work.
Speaker 3: And then it creates this very narrow band that you
Speaker 3: have to try to exist in and achieve in order
Speaker 3: to be viewed as elite. And I mean I watched
Speaker 3: it happen on my teams where women who didn't look
Speaker 3: like that were shamed, you know, made to feel like
Speaker 3: they weren't committed enough just because they didn't have the
Speaker 3: six pack.
Speaker 4: It didn't really matter how fast they were running.
Speaker 2: That's your college team. Yeah, because in our town the
Speaker 2: high school girls wear are those uniforms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just think that's terrible.
Speaker 3: I just think that there's not a performance advantage or
Speaker 3: the or the men and boys would do it.
Speaker 1: Yes, So it's just Linda at the school you at
Speaker 1: the school you coached at. So you were coaching girls
Speaker 1: cross country? Did they wear.
Speaker 2: Oh no, there's no way I would have let them.
Speaker 1: Oh, you put your foot down. The one of my
Speaker 1: favorite images of Des Linden when she won the Boston Marathon.
Speaker 1: She's wearing those baggy shorts for some reason. It's just
Speaker 1: the whole thing is so fantastic and badass, and like,
Speaker 1: I just really it's much. It's almost it's much more
Speaker 1: powerful emotionally to watch her because she's not pretending to
Speaker 1: be or wearing that uniform. She's just sort of being her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's just wearing the things she wants to wear.
Speaker 3: Wasn't she also wearing basically a parachute of a running jacket.
Speaker 4: I feel like she was learning a jacket. Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a time. For those of you don't,
Speaker 1: Des Linden is a very very very very good American
Speaker 1: marathoner who won the year. There was a year that
Speaker 1: the Boston Marathon took place in a gale and the
Speaker 1: only way anyone you could win. I mean it was
Speaker 1: so nuts that, like, the only way you could win
Speaker 1: is if you were the single toughest, most badass run
Speaker 1: and death. Linden just sailed to I can't. I likely
Speaker 1: left the last three miles of that watching on TV,
Speaker 1: I was like, I could not believe how emotional it was.
Speaker 3: She broke an incredibly long drought in the event for
Speaker 3: an American winner. And yeah, and her book's coming out.
Speaker 4: In like a week.
Speaker 1: I think that's right.
Speaker 4: We should really do it again with Dead Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Maybe Sugar running with me. I'm like, when we returned,
Speaker 1: we don't find me a running partner, but we do
Speaker 1: settle on a grand solution to fix youth sports once
Speaker 1: and for all. Oh the Martian wonders. So here's the
Speaker 1: It's really me, not the Marshal on this one. You know,
Speaker 1: I ran competitively in high school and stopped for thirty
Speaker 1: five years, started again, and I stopped because although I
Speaker 1: was very successful as a runner, the pressure I was
Speaker 1: thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and I found the pressure
Speaker 1: of racing it grew unbearable and I just couldn't do
Speaker 1: it anymore. And I've often and I lost track of
Speaker 1: how much joy I found in running, and got consumed
Speaker 1: by the fact that the only measure of me as
Speaker 1: a runner was whether I could win a race, and
Speaker 1: that like, and I lost out on thirty five years
Speaker 1: of pleasure as a result of.
Speaker 4: It's too bad.
Speaker 1: And now I'm wondering should we should we since we're
Speaker 1: banning stuff, lots of stuff, should we be should we
Speaker 1: be banning kind of serious competition until I don't know,
Speaker 1: fifteen or sixteen or something. Should we push out the
Speaker 1: Is there any reason why thirteen year old should be
Speaker 1: competing at the national level?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: In my view, Well, you know, I was at the
Speaker 2: Millrose Games about six weeks ago and noticed that they
Speaker 2: had a race for the fastest eight year old in
Speaker 2: the world and they had these, you know, these tiny
Speaker 2: children lined up. They you know, from different countries. I
Speaker 2: don't know where they came from, but they all ran
Speaker 2: like the same time, like ridiculously fast. And this is
Speaker 2: one you know we're talking about before you mentioned various
Speaker 2: models for doing things we don't need to do the
Speaker 2: national championships at age thirteen and twelve, Like maybe in
Speaker 2: a lot of sports around this country, there are these
Speaker 2: ridiculous championships of like little children, and there's just there's
Speaker 2: no reason for that. And the country that doesn't do
Speaker 2: this is Norway and they have incredibly robust participation and
Speaker 2: then like great success with their athletes after So I
Speaker 2: would tell the Martian let's let's forget the championships. You
Speaker 2: know what I before fifteen say.
Speaker 1: I did this. I did this recently and I can't
Speaker 1: remember what it was. Fifteen year olds with sixteen year olds.
Speaker 1: Someone made a list of the top English sixteen year
Speaker 1: old male milers enemy runners over the last thirty years
Speaker 1: somewhat years, and the question raised was how many of
Speaker 1: them went on to be world class adult milers And
Speaker 1: the answer was such a small number that it was like,
Speaker 1: You're like, wait, what so if we're doing sports at
Speaker 1: that age, because we're trying to identify people who will
Speaker 1: be talented as adult athletes, it's just about the worst
Speaker 1: predictor of imagine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not working.
Speaker 3: So what I was just thinking in this story, like
Speaker 3: the reason why we have the National Championships is for
Speaker 3: the adults exactly, and for the sponsors and the people
Speaker 3: want to make money hosting it and getting the TV
Speaker 3: rights and all that stuff. It's like, show me the
Speaker 3: eight year old who's like, you know, I want to
Speaker 3: raise the best eight year olds in the world.
Speaker 4: Mom, can you look that up?
Speaker 2: That exists? Right? You know?
Speaker 1: Hold on, Let's go to some questions for Linda. How
Speaker 1: do you as a coach solve the problem that you're
Speaker 1: more likely to favor the gifted ones than the not
Speaker 1: so gifted ones. Is that a problem?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know exactly. I mean, I think you
Speaker 2: have to be aware of the fact that you may have,
Speaker 2: you know, favorites, and I mean, I would say it's
Speaker 2: more about favoritism because sometimes the best one is not
Speaker 2: your favorite. So I think it's just takes awareness on
Speaker 2: the part of the coach to recognize that it's not
Speaker 2: building the team to to focus solely on the best girls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's hard. I mean, Lauren, if I
Speaker 1: was your high school coach, I would be famous, right, I.
Speaker 4: Don't know, do you know my high school coach?
Speaker 1: I mean, I know. My point is that there's a
Speaker 1: natural the kind of the success of the athlete invariably
Speaker 1: reflects back on the coach in ways that it's not
Speaker 1: always something that's not always.
Speaker 3: The story didn't make the book, but and I'm still
Speaker 3: a little bit upset about it.
Speaker 4: No, I'm just kidding. But my high school.
Speaker 3: Coach, by the time my senior year came around, he
Speaker 3: was getting really swept up in the accolades and how
Speaker 3: it reflected on him and there was some indoor meet
Speaker 3: that I really we'd never focused on from southern California, Like,
Speaker 3: indoor track is not really a thing, but there is
Speaker 3: this one place that you can do it with a
Speaker 3: wooden track, and so we would go and.
Speaker 4: Sort of have a relay every year there.
Speaker 3: But he's like, no, you're gonna run the invitational mile
Speaker 3: and the Invitational two mile. These used to be prestigious
Speaker 3: races twenty five years ago.
Speaker 4: I want to coach someone who wins these races.
Speaker 3: And so we were training over Christmas break for the
Speaker 3: first time ever, like doing these hard workouts in a
Speaker 3: time of year when normally we're just going on fun runs.
Speaker 3: I was not enjoying myself. I was feeling tired from
Speaker 3: the cross country season. And when we got there, I
Speaker 3: ran the first race, did terribly and I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't want to do the second race, and he's like, no,
Speaker 3: you need to do the second race. This is a
Speaker 3: big opportunity. Is like pushing me to do it. And
Speaker 3: I was like, Coach, I'm not your racehorse. And he
Speaker 3: loves telling that story to people who'll start bust out laughing.
Speaker 2: He's like, can you believe that?
Speaker 3: Can you believe she said that to me and then
Speaker 3: but then he apologized in the car later he was
Speaker 3: like it was he actually said, he's.
Speaker 4: Like, I was getting swept up. I was making out me.
Speaker 3: I wanted that, and you never wanted it, and I
Speaker 3: just wasn't listening to you when you were trying.
Speaker 4: To tell me. So it's real. It's a rare pressure, man,
Speaker 4: that's a rare coach.
Speaker 1: So we had a whole series of things we wanted
Speaker 1: to ban. Oh yes, can we? So we wanted to
Speaker 1: ban bun huggers and crop.
Speaker 4: Tops around there?
Speaker 1: What's it man?
Speaker 4: Around there? I think.
Speaker 1: Parents, parents, we're banning a competition before fifteen fifteen? I
Speaker 1: think it's reasonable.
Speaker 2: Chis are okay, it's just not.
Speaker 1: My running crew was over effectively at fifteen, so you
Speaker 1: just erased me from I Now I have nothing. You know,
Speaker 1: the amount of mileage I've gotten out over the years
Speaker 1: over my running exploits at the age of fourteen is considerable.
Speaker 1: That's now gone anyway, So I'm fine. I'll take it
Speaker 1: on the champion team. What's your favorite band of all
Speaker 1: the bands? If you can only do one of those,
Speaker 1: we can bend the parent the championships. The bun Huggers
Speaker 1: and oh and the college scholarships.
Speaker 3: I know my favorite band, college scholarships is my favorite
Speaker 3: band mine. I think it would downstream solve a lot
Speaker 3: of the other problems. They could basically neutralize parents, most
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 1: Just that expression is so fantastic. Neutralized three parents up
Speaker 1: on stage talking about the virtues of neutralizing people in
Speaker 1: our position.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then there'd be less motivation to host the
Speaker 3: eight year old World Championships.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Well here's a good question. Does a change
Speaker 1: in women's girls sports need to start at the grass
Speaker 1: suits level or we'll have to or are we talking
Speaker 1: something has to happen top down? Can there be a
Speaker 1: can we have a revolution that can change this? Or
Speaker 1: or do we not? Is someone that you talk about
Speaker 1: it kind of you want a czar? You want you
Speaker 1: wanted Michelle Obama to kind of step in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that would be nice.
Speaker 1: She's so many people have so many czar jobs for her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, it's like Michelle, not basically every intractical problem
Speaker 1: America has.
Speaker 2: We think, Look, Michelle, I think it has to be both.
Speaker 2: I know that's a bit of a cop out, but okay,
Speaker 2: let's start with the top though. If we ban the scholarships,
Speaker 2: that is going to have this trickle down effect and
Speaker 2: it's going to you know, permeate all the way down.
Speaker 2: That addresses the larger issues with you sports more than
Speaker 2: you know the ones the specific to girl problems. But
Speaker 2: I think it would transform the whole the whole game.
Speaker 3: And then a similar high level thing I think would
Speaker 3: be mandatory coaching education for anyone working with female bodied athletes.
Speaker 4: I think there's I can't think of.
Speaker 3: A single reason why we wouldn't do that with the
Speaker 3: giant gap and knowledge we have.
Speaker 4: And then everyone, of course should buy our books because.
Speaker 3: That'll be the grassroots thing that'll create like our own
Speaker 3: me too moment where you know I'm not standing for it.
Speaker 1: We need that on the on the grassroots thing, the thing,
Speaker 1: and both of you would have way more knowledge about
Speaker 1: this than me. But am I being overly optimistic if
Speaker 1: I say that this the change is going to happen
Speaker 1: when the girls themselves stand up and just say this
Speaker 1: is nuts. It's like if you're the coach of that
Speaker 1: team and you observe that there are someone's disappeared and
Speaker 1: no one's really talking about why someone's on her third
Speaker 1: or fourth unexplainable stress fracture, someone's beliemic someone and then
Speaker 1: the person who wins the race from the other team
Speaker 1: is so scarily thin that you're worried about her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you can normalize anything, just going to say
Speaker 3: in the culture, right and so yeah, I think, but
Speaker 3: I don't think that it's fair to put it on
Speaker 3: the girls. I think that I really think parents, you know,
Speaker 3: parents don't have enough to do if they want to
Speaker 3: get involved. This is how you should get involved, which
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, like, don't stand for it. Can you
Speaker 3: talk about that about stepping in, not being afraid to
Speaker 3: be the parent that says no, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: do the extra thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think, you know, it's funny. In my book,
Speaker 2: I was trying to kind of both understand where parents
Speaker 2: are coming from and also be, you know, offer a critique.
Speaker 2: And I think that it is important that parents recognize
Speaker 2: they have agency, that they don't have to go along
Speaker 2: with everything that you know, that extra strength and conditioning
Speaker 2: training or you know, weight workout that might be helpful,
Speaker 2: the supplemental training like the soccer club in my town
Speaker 2: that offers six year olds that they can say no
Speaker 2: to that it's okay to say no to that.
Speaker 3: And from just the other day when I drop my
Speaker 3: kid off at the five hundred dollars Spring Soccer Experience
Speaker 3: a practice, I'm n wait till you hear this part.
Speaker 4: I was like, see you, Jude.
Speaker 3: And then one of the parents that I know is
Speaker 3: a parent of another kid in the class, and she's like,
Speaker 3: you're not staying, like God, So it makes it tough
Speaker 3: to you know, we're giving each other pressure.
Speaker 2: We're staying at a practice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wasn't going to stay and watch the practice.
Speaker 1: God, God, this is what I have to look forward to.
Speaker 1: Wait where someone is waving frantically at me from off stage.
Speaker 1: But I so we got to end soon. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to fill the runners out there. I wanted to
Speaker 1: get to toss them a bone. And someone asked this
Speaker 1: question of you, Lawrence, since you're this, you're you're running.
Speaker 1: It's so rare that we get to hang out with
Speaker 1: like it's fun. But I'm still bitter about not getting
Speaker 1: to go running with you. But because you know, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you why I was looking.
Speaker 4: It's not too late. What are you doing this?
Speaker 1: This is the thing the those of us who are
Speaker 1: just kind of every day runners. When we run with
Speaker 1: people who are at your level, you guys Floatt, and
Speaker 1: we're running and you look over and you're just sh
Speaker 1: and it's like magic. It's like watching a magician do
Speaker 1: a trick, right, and you're like, oh my god, you're
Speaker 1: not even you're not breathing and not like you're just
Speaker 1: you're touching the ground, and you're like, how is this happening?
Speaker 3: That sounds like you're an intellectually curious person. Most people
Speaker 3: are like I like, I'm like, do you want to
Speaker 3: run with me? They're like, oh no, no, no, I
Speaker 3: would never do that. I'm like, I promise I'll run
Speaker 3: the pace you want to run, and they're just like, no, definitely.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well the question this is really for the two of you,
Speaker 1: and then we really do have to stop. What did
Speaker 1: you guys like the most about parathon training? Then do
Speaker 1: you start? And then we'll let laurd th boy this.
Speaker 2: A thousand years ago that I ran two forty nine.
Speaker 1: If I had one two forty nine, I would have
Speaker 1: a T shirt that said all right, so like William
Speaker 1: and Horn here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and in super shoes. I'd be like two thirty.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, you're right, you know I had a great
Speaker 2: group to train with, and the training is the fun part,
Speaker 2: not always, but it's the camaraderie that I got in
Speaker 2: the marathon training and you're out there a long time.
Speaker 2: So for those you know, the training runs were kind
Speaker 2: of fun to do too, you know, when they weren't miserable.
Speaker 3: I didn't have a group, but I did get to
Speaker 3: have my professional coach, Mark Rowland at organ Track Club Elite.
Speaker 4: I had always had him in a group.
Speaker 3: Setting and I was the only one doing a marathon
Speaker 3: and that's normally the time year I did in New
Speaker 3: York when track and field athletes are taking a break,
Speaker 3: and so I had him to myself and he would
Speaker 3: ride his bike alongside me and we got to have
Speaker 3: all these really nice chats and like, I just loved
Speaker 3: that was the last year we worked together, so that
Speaker 3: to have that, I have a lot of fond memories
Speaker 3: from that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a lovely way to end because
Speaker 1: it's a reminder we've been talking about what's wrong with running.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I always try and tell young
Speaker 1: people and I try to get them to become runners,
Speaker 1: is that this thing, the camaraderie stuff, is something that
Speaker 1: is just magical, like going on a long run with
Speaker 1: a group of people who you are friends with, are
Speaker 1: close to, and you've worked out with before. There's there's
Speaker 1: something there that she'll never find anywhere else.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, and I think that that love, like that's
Speaker 3: what drove our books. It's like when you know that
Speaker 3: you have something worth fighting for and protecting, and we
Speaker 3: really just want to remove a lot of the garbage
Speaker 3: that's getting in the way of that, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, thank you so much to the two of you,
Speaker 1: and thank you to all of you, and go get you,
Speaker 1: go buy your books and get them.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: This episode of Revisionist History was produced by Liam and
Speaker 1: Giestu with Kiara Powell, Bendadapfh Haffrey, and Jacob Smith. Fact
Speaker 1: checking by Kishell Williams and Tally Emlin. Our showrunner is
Speaker 1: Peter Clowney. Original scoring by Luis Garra, mastering by Sarah Brugerer,
Speaker 1: and engineering by Nina Lawrence. Special thanks to the ninety
Speaker 1: second Street Why crew and my panel of potential running
Speaker 1: partners Lauren Fleishman and Linda Flanagan. I'm Malcolm Glappo.