Oliver's first 5k!

My 6 year old, Oliver, has been asking for a while if he could do a race with me and his dad.  He'd done a mile here and a mile there with us, but nothing major.  So when we had a weekend with back to back 5k's right in our neighborhood, I decided that maybe we could give one of them a shot.  He *REALLY* wanted to do the Zoozilla 5k, which runs up the giant hill that cuts the zoo in half, then goes back down through the zoo, but having done that race and knowing that Oliver's kind of a wimp (he gets that from me, unfortunately), we decided to try for the Shadyside 5k instead.  It's a much flatter race and there are usually a lot of kids doing it, so I thought it was a good first race for him, just to see how it goes.

The race started at 8am so I got him up a bit before 7am, we got dressed, and out we went.  Unfortunately, my plan to park in the public lot right behind the start line was foiled by the roads being closed (doh!), which wasn't an issue last year because I got there super early.  So we had to park like half a mile away and I made the poor kid run/walk with me to the start, because we still had to register.  We managed to register and get our chips on our shoes, but I was still pinning my number to my shirt when the gun went off.  At this point Oliver starts to have a full on freak out, thinking we're going to miss the race, but I managed to talk him down and we started off.

We ran down Walnut Street to Aiken, and then down onto Ellsworth, and Oliver was doing great.  About a half a mile in he started to get very annoyed that I hadn't brought water for him, and we managed to *almost* get run over by the leaders because we were on the wrong side of the cones when I had to stop to tie his shoe. At one point he said, "Are we winning?" and I had to point out ALL the people ahead of us, including the super fast guys who had almost run us over.  When he would ask to walk, I would tell him we could walk when we passed some landmark in the distance, and he was a pretty good sport about it (better than I am when Haakan does that to me when he paces me - there's usually cursing involved when I get told "just run to that lamp post up there").  Around the halfway point I reminded him that there were pancakes at the end and his face lit up and he took up for a while.  He loved the crowds and was high five-ing everyone, and the runners who were around us were very encouraging to him.

When we got to the final stretch up Walnut Street, I told Oliver it was time to sprint, and holy cow, I don't think I could have kept up with him if I'd tried.  Given the burst of turbo speed at the end, I definitely don't think we needed all those walk breaks.  Final time was 38:41 and he couldn't have been prouder.  Unfortunately, they didn't get his name recorded for the results, just his number, but he wasn't in medal contention, anyway (some of those kids were really speedy!).

It's really an amazing thing to be able to share something like this with one of my kids.  At his age, there's no way I could have run a 5k, and maybe if I had been more into sport and such, I wouldn't have had to find my healthy habits as an adult.  And really, one of the biggest reasons I started running was so that I could set a good example for my kids.  I always thought it wasn't as big of a deal for boys, since they're just kind of expected to be good at sports and such, but it's really just as important to be a role model.  With Oliver, he gets obsessed with winning and will become frustrated and decide he doesn't want to do something if he can't win.  I think me going out and doing races and not winning is a good thing for him to see, and an even better thing for him to experience.  At the end of the day, we're all competing against our best selves, on so many levels.  It's not about accolades from other people or getting a medal, because really only a small number are going to get that.  It's about putting forth your best and each time, trying to surpass it, because it gives *YOU* joy.  If that's a lesson he can start to learn early, I don't think it will ever serve him ill.