A Fairly Selfish Mom Considers the Fit Family

When it comes to running marathons, I am a self-serving sort of person who will sacrifice a good deal to train. Running lets me be selfish in a masochistic way, and it's the masochism that buys me the time for long runs and speed workouts. In other words, if I told my husband that I needed three hours on a Saturday morning to seek out the perfect pair of jeans, he'd snort, say something about cleaning the gutters, and I'd be playing dragon-attacks-dump-truck in a sandbox instead. If I tell my husband that I need three hours to run 20 miles, I get the time.

The upshot of this is that no one else in my family ever exercises in a regular, deliberate routine. Brian squeezes in a run here and there, and Henry... well, we think very liberally when it comes to Henry's fitness.


(please recall my note about giving up on my hair for the next few weeks.)

This is all to preface my review of Fit Family with a major caveat about the reviewer (that would be me). Heidi Hill, the author of the recently released book and reader of my blog, graciously mailed it to me to review, apparently knowing my penchant for sarcasm and lust for empty calories. A toast to her gamble!

If the book I'm writing is meant to be a motivational course in the social psychology of motherhood and running, Hill's book on family fitness is Active Family 101. I mean this in the best possible way. As a foundation for building a healthy family, the book is an incredibly comprehensive resource when it comes to each activity it covers: hiking, biking, running, cross-country skiing, swimming, dance and yoga, and strength training and stretching. Its explanation of nutrition is also thorough for the Whole Foods family and those who aspire to have one, as we all should. The time-management discussions are likely most useful to parents who are just beginning a fitness transformation in their families, as I think many of the ideas in this area are probably common sense or quickly realized by parents who have been active for a while on their own. To be fair, there is no panacea for the multiple demands on our time or the dilemma of child care, so it's not like Hill is overlooking creative tricks. I admire her for not giving my advice on deciding which parent gets to go for a run: "I birthed a human from my nethers. I run first." (Note to readers: this totally works.) And I won't fault her for neglecting to include a section on the sport of bubble chasing.

Fit Family is an accessible, well-organized guide that gives equipment advice and practical checklists for successful family adventures and to my knowledge, no other book on the market is available for this purpose. The book is well worth having to remind yourself that your children might need stuff on your outings, a simple notion that I usually forget. The book even made me consider yielding a few minutes to my husband and son to do something active.

Now if you're looking for an inspirational cultural study on the quiet little revolution in family and sport that we can attribute to mother-runners, well, I'm working on it...