This year, I ran She.is.Beautiful with Heather’s 2 daughters and with Chloe and Cameron in a double-stroller…and joined by Isa, T.’s classmate and Maya’s big sister!
I’d been worried I had either shin splints or a stress fracture so I hadn’t been running for about 2.5 weeks, so doing the Baby Mama 5K with all of the girls instead of doing the 10K was the perfect re-introduction to running training!
I can’t wait to run this event Cameron and Chloe.
It was a great event–not only because both T. and K. (as well as Isa) all crossed the finish line…running! They didn’t just run across, they sprinted!!
This was remarkable because I could see in Isa’s and K.’s faces that they were struggling during those last 2 miles. All of them did a lot of walking in the first mile causing me to feel a little anxious about the rest of the run! But, they allll persevered and were so supportive of one another, despite their varying abilities.
T. warmed up after 1.5 miles and was ready to run and run and run while Isa and K. were clearly struggling, but she didn’t complain or make them feel bad. In the meantime, Isa and K. held hands to support each other.
It was a little bit of a challenge for me to manage the differences–at one point, K. wanted to just stop and T. wanted to run! I said K. could wait until Isa’s mom caught up…or T. could run ahead and wait for us at the finish, but I told them I wasn’t comfortable with either of those options, so we had to stick it out together!
The girls are all so proud to have finished. T. wants to do another one and K. was so excited to tell her teacher about it. The other day at school, I saw the girls wearing their shirts from the event.
In the end, I am also reminded of exactly why I run and why I hope our kids run…it is such a confidence booster to know you can finish something you weren’t sure you would–I hope they look to that moment when they finished and recall that they made it despite their doubts!
I’m looking forward to running with them again next year (and with my girls, too!)!
Of course, we saw Jenny and her daughter Julie (who is Dylan’s age)! This was Julie’s second year running the event and they improved their pace by a whopping 1-minute per mile! That is no small feat!
Oh, I should mention, our day didn’t end here. Cameron spent the afternoon at a bday party for Ben and Sarah and Dylan went to HAKT’s house to play. Chloe sacked out from exhaustion!
