Mother and son(s) share passion for running: Anna Tarasova

Ultrarunner Anna Tarasova was never allowed to do sports by her parents. They told her: “You need to train your brain first,” and “your legs are already strong enough.” How different is the way the Girona-based ultrarunner is raising her own children now: both her sons, Nikita (9) and Miguel (12), are passionate about running, and together the family spends as much time outdoors and active in nature as possible.

For Tarasova, running is not only a way to spend time in nature, compete, or live an active lifestyle. She also hopes her sons are learning important life lessons through sport. The mother of two tries to teach them to accept difficulties, she says. “For example: not to be afraid, not to give up, and to move toward a goal, no matter how unattainable it may seem at first.”

Phones

There is another lesson she hopes her children will learn through running: how to live happily in silence, above all without the constant noise of information from mobile phones.

“I would like them to love being alone with themselves, in silence, without any mobile devices,” says Tarasova, who moved to Catalonia 13 years ago, “so they can hear themselves and understand their own desires.”

The mother of two says she is shocked by the way children are growing up nowadays, with their lives dictated by devices from an early age.

“This is an era of total phone addiction. I see how huge numbers of children have been consumed by their phones and the kind of consequences that has.”

“Kids stop talking and going outside. Even in cafés and restaurants, children and adults never let go of their phones. I try very hard to raise my children without electronic devices.”

Tarasova herself is active on Instagram, which she considers her “personal diary.”

“I don’t think it is necessarily bad to be active on these platforms, as long as they do not consume our entire lives. In our family, we consciously step away from our phones and try to be more connected to our environment.”

The environment Tarasova, originally from Moscow, refers to is nature in particular.

“There is so much beauty surrounding us,” she says, adding that God invited everyone to learn about and love what He created.

Read the full interview with Anna Tarasova in Nafent Running volume 2, available in the Nafent Magazine webshop.