There is a deep, lasting joy to running. Like many valuable things in life, that joy comes in part as a product of the struggle. Nike's co-founder Bill Bowerman said it well, "The real purpose of running...is to test the limits of the human heart". As a parent and a runner, I see the parallels between the joys and struggles of both. Nothing has given my wife and I more joy than our kids. Nothing has been a greater challenge.
Many great quotes about running could be echoed about parenting -
"(Running) teaches us to challenge ourselves. It teaches us to push beyond where we thought we could go. It helps us to find out what we are made of. This is what we do. This is what it's all about." –
PattiSue Plumer, U.S. Olympian
And we love both for it.
KidRunner exists to combine the world's most popular sport with the world's most common shared experience. It was designed specifically so that people who loved and needed to run before having kids could use world class sports equipment to keep running with their kids. And loving it!
Why run often and never outrun your joy of running? There are countless studies outlining the myriad advantages. In August, 2018, Runner's World magazine cited 6 science-backed ways running improves your health and Competitor.com lists another 10. Any internet search results in countless more. What do they all have in common? -
Running improves -
- Your mental health
- Your physical health
- Your emotional health
And when we became parents, we found ourselves needing more of all of them! Why? For the same reasons the journal, Psychology Today cited in their review of, "4 Tips of Managing Parenting Stress" -
"Parents are often faced with managing a busy schedule including job related responsibilities, household duties, and raising their children. These demands occasionally result in parenting stress which is stress associated with being a parent. Parenting stress is associated with both parenting behaviors and child adjustment."
When we became parents and tried to keep running using traditional jogging strollers, we found ourselves at a crossroads - How to retain all of the well documented and personally experienced benefits of running while facing new levels of stress as new parents? Pushing heavy, awkward running strollers was not giving us the benefits we sought and often increased our stress. We were negotiating with our spouses about, "who gets to run without the stroller", "who has to push and who gets to run naturally", "who is going to take care of the kids while the other runs"....The last negotiation was particularly painful for us because running together was one of the things that we loved to do as couple. The benefits of running and the new challenges of parenting were increasingly at odds.
So after five years of R&D, multiple innovation and design patents and thousands of miles run by new parent runners, our greatest reward is seeing KidRunner parents combine the things they love and need; running with parenting and enjoying all of the incredible benefits of both -
"KidRunner is a game changer" -
Anthony D. Competitive Triathlete and Dad