What woman wants to be the subject of such well meaning comments as, “Oh, you must be so tired,” certainly not most working mothers.  We tend to spend the extra fifteen minutes (sorry there is no such thing as the 5-minute face on five hours of sleep) that it takes to carefully apply coordinated eye, lip and face paints before heading off to work.  Recently, a young gorgeous law student and I had an interesting conversation at our volunteer posts about why many of the runners who take part in The Hartford Marathon Foundation’s Events are very prettily made up at six in the morning? Since I have a decade or so years on this aspiring young advocate, I thought that I could give her a wise answer, which is that runners don’t compete because they want others to feel sorry for them.  Runners want to speed over the finish line in long-wearing lipstick that is as fresh as any news-anchor’s. Runners and working mothers don’t want any spectators feeling sorry for them, not at work and certainly not on the race course. A fellow blogger on this site, “Runner Mom”, Casey Madsen titled her May 18th article, “Don’t Make It Look Too Easy”. Madsen was referring to a conversation that she had with her teenage daughter about how stay at home moms have to spend so much time doing chores. Casey’s daughter would never want to be one of those types of stay at home moms who appear tethered to both sticky toddlers and floor mops.  Upper-crust neighborhoods are chock-full of more glamorous and less sticky stay at home moms, but in most middle class suburbs the stay at home moms feel fine displaying a more naked face.  Sweat resistant eye and lip make-up don’t necessarily make running or being a working mom look easy, but they do make it look pretty darn beautiful, if not awe-inspiring.  My husband witnessed my not so pretty upchucking last year after I had completed the Hartford Half.  I was so pleased that instead of “my poor baby” he said, “I don’t feel sorry for you Mandy. Nobody said you had to run a half marathon”.  Nobody forces any woman to run competitively, but if we do choose to run, why not look fabulous doing it! Check out the “Avon Anew, Lip Plumping Lipstick in Cocoa” that I am wearing in this photo that was taken by journalist Steve Smith of the Glastonbury Reminder News.