When race directing brings on a case of “mommy guilt”

This year on Mother’s Day, I was at the Fredericton Marathon when my eleven-year-old son sent me an Instagram post saying that he missed me. Ouch. It broke my heart.

My twins were only six years old when I started organizing races. Their birthday falls within days of Maritime Race Weekend. In hindsight, that was poor planning on my part. Needless to say, they don’t get birthday parties anymore – but I still make a homemade cake.

Last year, race-kit pick-up was on their birthday – this caused me a significant amount of mommy guilty. Honestly, they handled it much better than I would have as a kid. Fortunately, the boys have friends with parents who are corporate travellers or serve in the military – so they understand that lots of parents travel for work. I have a spectacular husband, who is an amazing parent and keeps our household running.

My sons will be twelve by race weekend and are finally old enough to start getting involved with race weekend. Hopefully, this will help them to see why I put in such long hours and hopefully they won’t become resentful in their teen years. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.

I’m about to hit the road again — I’ll be away for 14 days in June travelling for work. It’s race-season – being away most weekends in the summer and living out of a suitcase pretty much comes with the territory of being a brand ambassador and race director. I’m not complaining, because I love what I do. I’ll be the first to admit in the off-season (from October to April) that I have more down-time than I know what to do with. I guess that’s when I’ll make-up for missed family-time.