Saturday December 5th was the Jingle Bell Run, starting and finishing at Brighton High School in Rochester. This was the third 5K club group of fifth graders that I have taken to run a race. We had trained for ten weeks before this race. We had 10 kids in our group, but only 6 of them were able to run in the race. This was the first race for all but one of the kids.
Almost 900 people showed up on a dry day with the temp around 27 degrees. The course is very flat. We had teachers to run with the kids to make sure they had no problems during the race. I was lucky enough to run with Samantha. She had recently run a 5 mile race with her mom, finishing in 47 minutes. I started the race wearing a red long sleeve C9 shirt, black nike pants, my Asics shoes (complete with jingle bell) and a white fleet feet cap.
The horn sounded and we were off. We started near the back of the pack. The kids did a great job of running a good line and trying to safely find space and a pace. The two boys in our group, Lance and Cas went out a little faster than the girls. When we turned the corner and hit mile one, Samantha and I hit the split in 9:30. She definitely went out at an easy pace. When the boys went out fast she never changed her pace. Shortly after the mile split we ran past the two boys. Cas picked up his pace and stayed close to us for the rest of the race.
Lots of people lined the race course which made it nice for the kids. Lots of encouragement. Samantha kept increasing her pace slightly, and where I estimated the two mile mark to be , we had run about an 8:30 second mile. We turned back onto the street where the finish was and I asked Samantha how she was doing. She said she was good. I asked her if she wanted to try to pass some people on the way to the finish and a big smile spread across her face. The finish line was in the bus loop at the school, which made for a nice place to finish. When we hit the bus loop Samantha took off like a shot, I had no chance to catch her kick (rotten kid)! She finished at 26:29, me at 26:30. Cas finished 20 seconds back, Lance another minute back. Alexia, who stayed with one of the other teachers the whole way, finished in 31:00, Lyla was next at 34:00 and Alexondra finished in 41:00. All six asked when the next race was. Their smiles were priceless, and all the parents were very appreciative of their children getting the opportunity to finish. It was a great day!
ETA-
The group before the race:
Samantha and me:
Tammy
Carolyn
I hammered down the trail, passing rocks and trees like they were standing still.
Marathon Maniac #957
I just love that you do this – what a great experience for these kids, to train and then see their hard work pay off. What a great life lesson that is! You are a wonderful teacher and mentor, Craneium...
Life is a headlong rush into the unknown. We can hunker down and hope nothing hits us or we can stand tall, lean into the wind and say, "Bring it on, darlin', and don't be stingy with the jalapenos."
I've been looking forward to this report, craneium, and I wasn't disappointed. You've done a great job with those kids. The smiles in the pictures say it all. Congrats to you and the kids. Keep up the good work.
TomS
Trails are hard!
Need a fast half for late fall. Then I need to actually train for it.
Craneium,
This is a wonderful RR!!! Thanks for sharing the race with us. You're a good guy.
SteveP
What fun that must have been. I kind of miss working with the younger kids. They always do it for the right reasons, because its fun!
Way to go Craneium!
Chumbawamba: I get knocked down But I get up again You're never going to keep me down
Like SteveP said!
Hi Craneium,
What a fantastic day for each of those kids, and for you too! By the fact that they all asked when the next race is, the kids were clearly excited about how well their hard work (and your coaching) had paid off. And you must be thrilled to see such great results from the time that you and they put into preparing for the race. Good coaching like that will pay off in many, many ways, on the roads and off. You should be very proud of what you have accomplished with each of those kids. Congrats!!
Jay
Without ice cream there would be darkness and chaos.
denise