Notes
My son Brady's first 5k!!
Brady is 9 years old and has run with me plenty of times in the past, but it has been nearly a year since he has run with me. About a year ago he told me he didn't want to run anymore. I decided not to push him because he is active in other ways and if I pushed him he would get a negative attitude about running and the chance of him coming back to it would be much less.
He told me a few weeks ago that he wanted to run again so we have been talking about it since then. It came up again on Friday when we were at Big Peach Running Store in Atlanta getting his sister some new shoes. He was trying to talk me into getting him some shoes too since he was going to "start running" I told him that after we ran a few times we could get him some new shoes, but for now he needed to prove that he was actually going to run. We made the commitment to run Sunday (today) and this was that run.
He reminded me which I am very proud of him for. I had just got done eating so we set a time for 7:30. He came back at 7:20 and stood over my shoulder until I finished what I was doing.
The plan was for 1 mile. He has run about 2 miles with me at the longest, but that was either very hard or included walk breaks. He even ran a fun run at school a couple times, but was really tired and complained and wanted to walk.
Once we got going he was asking if maybe we could go a bit further than a mile. He was sounding great and breathing and striding awesome. He told me he was still breathing the way I taught him over a year ago when we used to run.
We then decided to do 2 miles and walk if needed on the way home. He still suggested.... maybe more, so that was when I decided we would go the 3.1 mile route I run sometimes and walk if needed on the way home.
He continued to sound great the entire time and ran a very steady and nice pace. He mentioned at about the 2 mile mark that the excitement made the pain much easier to deal with - I told him that is how it is to run a marathon :)
He ran the entire way without even a single complaint. He even mentioned that he could have gone a bit faster and we finished that last .1 strong.
Although this wasn't a race, it was his first 5k distance ever, and at 29:48 with some left over that is awesome and I am very proud of him!! :)
These are his splits:
9:55
9:32
9:35
0:46 (.1)
He will be passing me very soon!