Run Baby Run

Kevin has decided that he wants to run a 10K the last weekend in March. He has 11 weeks to train. This past weekend, we went to the mall to get him new running shoes. He just started on Tuesday. As a former long distance runner, I've been offering lots of tips and tricks. I've warned him that even if he doesn't want them, he's gonna get them. And not just from me, but from myDad and Wiki too. See, myDad was a long distance runner. In high school he was the best long distance runner at school. He won races all the time. He won city races, county race, tri-county races. Had he not given up his running career because he got married and had a kid, who knows what he would have done in his Junior and Senior years of high school. Wiki was a long distance runner. She ran road races with myDad from a very young age. In high school she was the 2-mile state champion in track her Sophomore and Junior years. Her senior year, an injury kept her off the team. Wiki is also very small. She'd be around 4-6 inches shorter than her competitors but none of them could keep up with her.

And then there was me. I was a long distance runner. I ran my first race when I was 7 years old. My PE coach, who was also Wiki's PE coach, realized that I might be a runner after she saw Wiki win a race. So she recruited me to the track team. A track team made up of 4th-6th graders. I was in the 2nd grade. But I could keep up with them. Then when I got to the 4th grade, I was placed on the middle school team (then 7th & 8th). Every year I competed in 1500m races as part of a school team. In high school I was a miler. And a pretty good one. I wasn't state champion level but I was always the best on the team. Then I got recruited to the cross country team. That's when I really started running. Some days I'd clock between 8-10 miles a day. I went running in the morning before school, went running after school at practice and then when my dad got home around 8pm, went running again. Always with my dad right next to me. The bane of my dad's existence at that time was that I ran just to run. I wasn't focused on being the best. After years of training Wiki he had me to deal with (polar opposites). Finally after a year in college I retired. I've gone running occasionally since then, but I haven't run a race in over 13 years. Which shows. Since I quit running I have gained 80 lbs, most of it in the 3 years after I quit. Yeah, I still ate like a runner.

So add this all up and Kevin has joined a family of runners and then decided to run. Oh, and have I mentioned that we're all coaches as well? Good luck Kevin.