Strong women, complaining women

The big race I was organizing is over. You can see photos of the event here. 

Watching a sea of over 1800 women running and walking together was thrilling. There was a tangible feeling of excitement and comraderie in the air. So much strength and vivacity. I felt proud to watch women and girls of all ages, fitness levels and body types participating in this event. I had an overwhelming sense of the power women have. Our strength is not only in our numbers, but our resilience and perseverance.

My husband jokes around that we have a way of speaking to each other — he calls it Reddy and Able speak, after Helen Reddy, the woman who sang, "I am Woman." He bases it on the words and phrases we use to talk to encourage each other. For example,  "you're amazing," "you're a powerful woman," and "you go girl." Whatever. He's never given birth or been pushed down by "the man." But, that's a topic for another blog.

I've learned a lot from putting together a race with the words "love your body" in them. First, finding shirts that fit every body type is virtually impossible and women complain. A lot.

I heard so many complaints last year, that I took it on as my problem to solve. This year I was determined to get it right. Finding good shirts has been the bane of my race director existence.  My boss and I looked at several kinds of shirt manufacturer samples. We made a very informed decision and felt good about it. But, when women picked up their shirts (in sizes they picked themselves from measurements I listed on the registration site, incidentally), the whining began.

"This isn't a medium!?"

"How do you expect me to fit into this?"

"Does it come in any other colors?"

and the most common complaint,

"Can I exchange this for a different size?"

It seems that no matter what the effort, we girls will always find something that wasn't good enough, didn't work for us, and didn't meet up to our expectations. Maybe we're strong, but satisfaction is definitely our Achilles heel.

My solution next year? Socks.