Saturday, May 30, 2009

Running as a family

Ran the very laid back and close to home Save Our Skin 5k last week with most of the family. (DD was at a sleepover.) We broke into two groups - Run and Walk/Run. B2 and dad were the walk/run group. B1 ran with me. He made his usual smart alec remarks of encouragement - professing his love and appreciation for his short, old mom who runs like a girl... a really old one. Somebody proposed a wager of $5, which the old short lady accepted. (Wait - it wasn't a bet. I'd never contribute to the delinquency of a minor by agreeing on amateur sporting events. No matter how annoying the snarky little brat was being. The $5 in question was a performance bonus.)

The course wasn't quite as flat as I'd thought, but we were making pretty good time.
Mile 1 @ 9:25. Mile 2 @ 18:30, Mile 3 @... where'd he go?

B1 and his long legs had kicked into the next gear just before the Mile 3 marker, and he zoomed past me for the last tenth of a mile. His finish time was 27:01, close to a minute ahead of me. All those weeks of short runs to build mileage for the ING Challenge at school have turned my video gaming string bean into a runner! I finished at 27:45. Not as fast as I hoped, but about 4 to 4-1/2 minutes ahead of last year, if I'm remembering correctly.

We grabbed water and food and settled in to watch for the other two. Before B1 finished his blueberry muffin, Dad and B2 were coming along the last stretch. The completed the course at 46 minutes. That was a little slower than B2's 44:41 at the Big Peach 5k, but quite a bit faster than his first 5k of the year (53:00-Run the Reagan 5k) , back in February.

I'm so very proud of both boys. And, I've never been so pleased to lose $5.

3 comments:

Slamdunk said...

Congrats--motivation takes many forms; even green ones.

carla said...

VERY COOL.
I can not wait to runwalk a family fun race with my Toddler!!

mappchik said...

It was a lot of fun, and I'm already looking forward to next year's race. It really is just about the perfect race with the kids.