Monday, May 19 -- All Around SeaWorld

4 miles in tall, wet grass. Good to run again. If I keep this up, I'll have 8 miles before the end of the month! (sigh)

For some reason, my very lengthy detailed and frankly, very enjoyable, post was lost and didn't save to a draft. So, shoot.

Saturday, May 10 -- The Kitchen Run

I decided to run with ETK (age 8) and a friend of his today.  Normally, ETK runs the race with his mother/my wife, but I thought I’d give it a whirl today since I’ve been a little lax in my running training lately.

 

As a starter for this post, neither of these guys have done much running, other than as a part of sports practices, games or recess. I guess that means they actually run a lot more than the typical person?  Probably. This was ETK’s third 5K event, but in the two prior races, he walked a pretty good chunk of the distance.  Our collective goal was for him to run the entire distance today and we’d go as slow as needed to do it and steadily.

 

The start time was supposed to be 8:00, but unexpectedly nice weather brought out a lot of morning-of registrants (which is great – this event supports the Kitchen, my non-profit of choice).  We hadn’t done much coaching together, so we ran about a half-mile down and back and I talked them through what it’s like to run in a group of people and how they need to run a steadily increasing pace rather than sprinting/walking. They’re eight years old, though, so a straight line just isn’t going to happen for them. Oh, and apparently you have to wrestle periodically during a run.

 

The bottom line is all three of us ran the full distance and we all sprinted the last 1/8 mile.  The time was around 36 minutes, which I really couldn’t be more pleased about for their first shot at a 5K. I have been trying to improve my time and today I would have been shooting for sub-23 minutes, but I’m much more proud to have witnessed the accomplishment of these guys.

 

“When’s the next one, Dad?” ETK is ready to run again.   So, I think June 21 is the next one.