Nan and I jogged the North Salt lake 5K with Abe and Breanne this morning. It was really, really cool for me. I ran with Abe the whole time and paced him and coached him through it and it was such a fun experience. The dude totally impressed me and made me proud in his first 5K at the age of 6 years old. He was excited to do it, and he was really coachable. As we jogged I taught him about the importance of going out slow and pacing evenly. And I gave him some pointers on his arm swing which he implemented. He was really steady, but definitely working hard from the get go. After about a mile we passed 7 or 8 year old kid being paced by his Dad who had obviously gone out too fast. At the half way point we stopped at the aid station for the first time to grab some water. He refueled well and then kept running. He said the water made him feel less tired and he thought that was cool. Then Abe started getting a side ache after the big drink of water. So I taught him how to breath out as loud and as hard as he could to get rid of it. He walked a bit trying to get rid of it. Then he jogged and breathed out hard, and pushed through the discomfort without complaining. Then the kid we passed earlier caught back up, clearly intending on not letting Abe beat him. When they were only about 7 feet in front of us the kid would keep turning around and commenting to his Dad things like "oh no, they're still right behind us". And "Why is that guy not wearing any shoes??" (I was running barefoot since I wasn't racing). But that lit up Abe's competitive juices, and it started to become a sprint between the two kids. But i told Abe to hold back because we still had a long ways to go, and to just run steady. He did that, just kept a steady clip, breathing out hard to keep the side cramp at bay. Within a minute or two of that the kid buckled over hands on knees and stopped running, clearly having overexerted himself to try to stay in the lead. Abe just kept powering forward, pretty enthused at the quickly growing gap that I was informing him of and that he was still running fast. (haha, 10-11 minute mile pace is cruising for a 6 year old distance runner apparently). Abe ran the rest of the way in and picked it up really well for the last 400 M. He ended up beating the other kid by over 2 minutes in that last mile which was kind of funny. He finished in 34:04 - a 10:57 avg pace. And I couldn't be more proud of him in his first 5K. He was tough and had a great attitude. He has really grown up a lot in the last year...he would have quit that race a year ago when the going got tough and started bawling probably. And although we didn't pay for race shirts, I bought him one afterward, and he was so stoked to have it. He was proud of himself, and definitely earned that shirt. They only had men's medium sizes left so its way too big for him, but he was stoked still the same. He'll probably wear it to bed for the next number of years and fondly remember his accomplishment of finishing his first 5K. Its pretty cool how he and Breanne find joy in running so young. Maybe they will burn out by the time they are 10. Or maybe they will love it all their lives. Either way we wouldn't force that or anything on them...but its pretty cool for now that they get so psyched about it and have so much fun doing it. After the race, nan and I ran up mueller park trail which was a really nice time. Great trail.
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