My Son’s First 10k!

I’m back!!!  I missed everyone!  But wow, what a couple of weeks I’ve had!

First of all, I want to thank everyone so very much for all the kind words about my last past. (Which seems so long ago now!)  I truly appreciate all the positive comments.  It was kind of a toss-up for me as to whether or not I would actually post all those over-the-top pictures of myself, but then I figured, what the heck? I am nothing if not over the top. 😉

Anyway, thank you.  Your comments just made me smile and feel so very good, and they are all truly appreciated!

Now, onto the reason for my absence:  I have spent all this time working feverishly on an end-of-season project for DS#1’s hockey team. I have been working on this thing for two solid weeks, to the point where I actually pulled an all-nighter a week and a half ago to get it done. (I was up for 40 hours straight, lol!!)

The DVD took a lot of time and effort, but it was well worth it to see the kids’ faces when they watched it at the end-of-season party. I love the enthusiasm of 9- and 10-year-old boys. 🙂 Their parents were pretty happy with it too, to the point where I was asked to make over 20 copies! I did finally put the finishing touches on it yesterday and am now making the copies. I wish I could show it to all of you, because I’m damn proud of it, but these aren’t my kids, and I don’t think I should be putting pictures and videos of kids on the Internet without their parents’ explicit permission.  Sorry!  It’s too bad, because it’s pretty awesome. 😉

So now back to really important things, like running. 🙂 Specifically, yesterday was a huge day in our house.  I know most of you been following along with my ten-year-old son’s story about training for a 10K. Well, yesterday was the day!  Eight weeks of training all came down to one morning:

That’s him, holding his training plan, with all the days crossed off except for one. He doesn’t look very awake, does he? 😉 He doesn’t wake up very  well.  But, I let him have some peanut butter and toast for breakfast, and then we were on our way.

My mom and sister met us there, and my husband was there as well. The only family member not there, actually, was my youngest. He had a hockey tournament this weekend, so one of the moms from his team was kind enough to take him overnight so he could get to his game at 8 AM. Hockey families are the best!

We got there at about 7 AM, and it was unbelievably cold. Like, 25° cold! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve run in colder weather, but it’s one thing to run at home, and another thing to run in a race, where you have to stand around for an hour waiting. DS#1 looked a little bit nervous about having to wait so long in the cold. He even put his gloves on, which he never does, because of course he’s a 10-year-old boy, ha ha! We met up with my friend Carrie, and then later we found my friend Cindy as well.

We found my mom and my sister, and then we hung out the warming tent for a while. I have to say, the warming tent wasn’t really all that warm!

We knew we were going to start the second wave at 8:10am, and we figured we’d get pretty close to the back, so we got out there about 8:07. We were ready to get going by then, just because we wanted to warm up! Within a couple minutes, the starting gun went off and then people started moving. When we got to the actual start, I made sure that DS#1 turned on his Garmin, and then we were off.

The race had a lot of twists and turns, and there was a surprising number of people, which made it rather challenging. I made sure to tell DS#1 over and over not to go too fast, because he does have a habit of starting out pretty fast and then getting tired.

I knew he wanted to run the whole thing, even though he told me he didn’t really have a goal. So I made that my secret mission: to encourage him to keep running, no matter what, and no matter how slow. I wanted him to walk away feeling accomplished, and I knew that running the whole thing would be what did it for him.

We wound our way through the streets of Plymouth, Michigan, and of course, the history major in me just loved all the beautiful houses. DS#1 didn’t even notice the scenery; he was too busy trying to focus on running. He hardly talked at all, while I managed to talk constantly, it seemed.  What can I say…I don’t like silence when I’m in a crowd of a few thousand people!

I made conversation with a lot of other racers, mostly because the pace that DS#1 had set was actually pretty comfortable for me.  I made sure to keep an eye on DS#1 constantly, and encourage him to go around people when he needed to, or to slow down when it sounded like he was laboring too hard.  People were very friendly, and several people commented about him and his age and encouraged him as we passed.

About a mile in, I noticed that he had something in the front of his sweatshirt pocket.  I could see it bouncing around, whatever it was. So I asked him, “What you have in your pocket?”

“A bottle of water,” he answered tersely.

“What?!” I answered. “Why did you bring a bottle of water?? There’s water along the route!”

He answered in the way all 10-year-old boys would:  “I don’t know.”

It was at this point that I realized that I had failed in not bringing along his little travel water bottle. I felt like such a bad mom, because I knew that he wanted to run the whole thing, and I realized that I should have known that he wouldn’t even want to stop to get a cup of water along the route.

I immediately offered to take it from him, but of course he said, “I’m fine.” I kind of harped on it a little bit, but then I could tell he was getting angry, so I let it go.  You know, for about five minutes, before I started harping on it again. 😉 Once again I could tell he was getting frustrated, so this time I let it go for good.

I tried to keep him from focusing on his pace, but I could see him looking at his watch pretty often. So finally I asked him what his pace was and he said it was around 11:40. I could tell he was pretty frustrated. I told him not to worry about it, that the only thing that was important was that he finished. He didn’t say anything, so I knew that he was focusing, and I decided it was time for his mom to shut up and just let him run.

We ran for a long time without talking, and I even refrained from talking to other people. I wanted him to be able to concentrate and not have to worry about focusing on me or anybody else. I did have a moment where I had to laugh though.  We had just rounded yet another corner, when we found this young girl sitting on her mother’s lap on the porch of their home.  She was wearing a St. Patrick’s Day hat, and of course, they were both all bundled up because it was 25°, but every time somebody went by, she yelled out at the top of her lungs, “Top of the morning to Ya!”  It was adorable and hysterical!

When we hit mile three, I could hear him struggling, and I decided It was time to be the mom.

I held out my hand and said, “Give me a water bottle.”  He started to argue, and I said it again. At that point, he must’ve decided that it really was hampering him, so he reached in, pulled it out, and handed it to me. I told him I would hold onto it for the race, and anytime he wanted to drink, I would give it to him. He seemed relieved, and he asked me for a drink about a half mile later. He drank from it without slowing down, and then handed it back to me.

At mile four, I decided it was time to be a coach. I told him that he only had two more miles, and that I knew he could do it, that he could run the entire thing, and that I was going to be there with him the whole way. I also told him that if he ran the whole thing, I’d let him have whatever he wanted for breakfast. (That statement would bite me in the butt later.)

He didn’t actually say anything; he just kept running.  For the remainder of the run, I did my best to encourage him. He kept looking at his pace, and I knew he was getting frustrated with himself. So I started to encourage him to run faster. We were past the halfway point by then, and I knew that he had more in him than what he was doing. I’d seen him run between 10 and 11 minute miles at home, even for longer runs, and at that point, he was averaging about 11:40, so I knew he had the ability to do more.

I began to give him encouraging words again, just telling him he could do it and to keep it up, and to push a little harder. And sure enough he did, a little bit. As we got to mile 5, I continue to motivate him, telling him he could do it, and to just give it a little more. At one point, he got sick of me, because after one particularly long string of encouragements, he yelled at me, “I’m trying!” Oops.  🙁 Sometimes I can be a bit of a nag, I guess.  😉 I backed off after that, and just let him do his own thing.

Just as I figured, when we got closer to the end, he went faster. Pretty soon we were rounding the corner, getting closer to the end. He was passing a lot of the walkers by this time, probably a lot of them folks who started out fast but couldn’t run the whole thing. I could see him get motivated by this, and he kept working a little bit harder. The people he was passing were really impressed, and many of them offered him encouragement as he went by. It warmed my heart to hear them, and I could tell it motivated him a great deal. As we got close to the end, I texted my husband and my mom to let them know we were close, and then I stepped back, so that I could get a picture.

Pretty soon we were rounding the very last corner, and we could see the finish line in the distance. Like I knew he would, he immediately started to sprint, and I found myself yelling out, “Hey! Don’t leave your mom in the dust!” The people around us all started to laugh.

We crossed the finish line about an hour and 10 minutes after we started.  An hour and 10 minutes. Think about that for a minute. How many 10-year-olds do you know that can run for an hour and 10 minutes straight?!?!

As we crossed the finish line together he stopped his Garmin, and then…he just stopped.  I stopped with him, but I encouraged him to keep walking, because I knew he needed a little bit of a cool down, plus I didn’t want them to get run over!

My mom, my sister, and my husband were there to capture the finishing moments.

I’m not going to lie, when it was over, I was absolutely overwhelmed with emotion. I am not ashamed that I started crying when I hugged him.

You can tell from that picture especially that he was totally shell-shocked.  I let him take a breath, while I found my friend Cindy, and then we took a few pictures.

I was so happy for Cindy–she had just finished her first 10k!  Amazing to think that it was just last October that she ran her first 5k. 🙂

After Cindy went home, I could tell that everybody wanted to get warm, so we headed over to a Coney Island across the street to have breakfast.  By this time, DS#1 was feeling a little bit more perky, and of course he said, “So I get what whatever I want right?”  “Uhhhh…” I answered. 😉 He ended up ordering this gargantuan chili cheese omelette with hash browns. But who was I to argue with a kid who had just run a 10K?

Eventually Carrie joined us, and we had a nice breakfast. Afterwards, we went back outside, and took some pictures.

This was Carrie’s first 10k, too, and she rocked it!  She finished with a sub-10 pace overall–awesome!!

By this time, DS#1 was feeling much better, and he was happy to pose for a few pictures with his mom.

When we were done, we drove back home, and then ended up going to another hockey game, since DS#2’s hockey team had played an incredible game in the morning and went to the championship. They didn’t win the championship, but they still came in second place, and worked very hard.

It was quite a banner day at our house, considering both kids got either a medal or a trophy! 🙂

When we first got home from the race, DS#1 rested for a little while, and then went to baseball practice. (He insisted; I was more than willing to give him a pass!) At practice, they typically do some running at the end.  Last year when he played baseball and they did the running sprints, he almost always placed last or near last.  This past week, when he went to his first spring practice, he came home and told me, quite proudly, “Mom, when they did the running at the end, out of the 12 kids that were there, I placed third!”

I can tell DS#1 is immensely proud of himself for his accomplishments, not just with all the running, but with what running has done for him in other areas of his life.  Yesterday, after they did the running drills at the end of practice, he came home and told me that he placed third to last. I told him it was probably okay, since none of the other kids had run 6 miles earlier that day. 😉

All in all, I think this 10k was a great experience for both of us. He got to do something that I am quite sure he never thought he could. After the initial shock well wore off, he smiled for most of the day, even though I know he had to be exhausted. As for me, I got to help my son be a healthier, stronger, more confident kid.  And of course, I got to brag about him to anyone who would listen! 😉

I am so proud of him.  Stay tuned for whatever’s next…at this point, I’m still a bit afraid to ask him if he’ll ever run again, ha ha!

Thanks for reading!