How to Teach Your Kids to Love Type 2 Fun

I wanted to plant a seed with my daughters: that running, including the more competitive, pin-on-your-bib variety, is as much about traveling somewhere new as it is about discovering something about yourself. Outdoor people have a taxonomy for this. Type 1 fun is fun while it’s happening: ice cream, a pool, a chairlift. Type 2 fun is miserable in the moment and fun later, in the reflection of what you just went through (and usually includes musings of when you’ll get to do it next). Type 3 fun is not fun at any point and sometimes ends in a helicopter rescue. I think the trick to maximizing fun isn’t avoiding Type 2—if you’re healthy enough for it, you gotta keep Type 2ing. The trick is keeping the portion small and surrounding it with enough Type 1 to cushion it. Getting outdoors doesn’t have to be an all-in pursuit. And if you’re agro enough to think that, I guess you can call everything that’s not your Type 2 pursuit “recovery.” I chose the Litchfield Hills Road Race (LHRR) as the setting for this life lesson. Litchfield is a little Connecticut town (population about 1,250) two or three hours from New York, depending on traffic. My trips out of the city and into nature have lately centered on the Catskills, and Litchfield feels like a different country—more New England, more refined. Agrarian but refined. The race distances were manageable: a 7-miler for me, a 2.3-mile race for my 13-year old daughter, who runs cross-country and has opinions about Hokas, and a one-mile run for my 10-year old daughter—her first race ever. The cannon (it’s a literal cannon) doesn’t fire until 1 P.M., which the race’s own website frames as a perk: “Sleep in.” This is true. It is also true that a June race starting at 1 P.M. is the exact moment the sun absolutely sucks. This leads to a nickname for part of the race: “Microwave Mile”—an unshaded stretch along Whites Woods Road, appropriately near St. Anthony Cemetery. The mansion entrance to the Belden House. But the real reason I picked Litchfield was Belden House, which meant the Type 1 was handled before we ever pinned on a bib. Belden House & Mews opened last year in the center of town, a three-acre spread combining an 1888 Victorian mansion and a 1959 modernist annex—the town was a mid-century haunt of Marcel Breuer and Eliot Noyes. The food at Belden House is arguably the highlight, with a seafood tower and aged duck breast that are standouts. The perfect balance of Type 1 and Type 2 fun made for a memorable family weekend getaway.