5k with Kade

In the light of my last post, I decided to run a 5k with Kade that happened today.  It is an annual run in our little Thief River Falls so it is a pretty small race with not very many participants, so a good chance to win. :)  Anyway, I like running the 10k which they have at the same time but with my not so regular running these past months I didn't want to just finish it and get a bad time.  It is funny because if I'm going to enter a race I have to do semi good ( that is semi good for me which means a good chance to beat my best time) or else I don't want to do it.  First, all races cost quite a bit of money and to me there is no point wasting money when I know I'll do horrible and I might as well run that on my own.  But that's just me, I know other people look at it differently.  So the thought hit me this week, that this is the perfect opportunity to run with Kade because I wouldn't feel bad that I missed my race and I can just do this for him and with him.  So I told him yesterday that we're going to do something fun together. :)  Truthfully, it started out with crying about it but later on he was telling nana that tomorrow he's running a race with me so I guess it didn't take him too much to convince him, I just had to give him some time.  He thought there is no way he could run the whole 5k (or 3.12 miles) but I kept encouraging him and telling him it's ok to walk some.  To my surprise he did awesome.  I had to tell him to slow down a few times but then at the end I thought maybe he was able to go faster.  He did walk a couple times but only for a few seconds and he was right back to running.  He passed 2 girls around his age (and the only kids under 11 that ran) and he was really pumped about that.  Then as we approached the finish line Ehren was standing there with Ani and Kason and Kade just ran hard at that point.  I had to almost sprint to catch up so I was right behind him when he crossed the finish.  It was so much fun to do it with Kade and to see how much confidence it gave him.  Of course, kids under 11 run for free and so they don't get any medals or even mentioning about how they did which I think is a bummer because kids like Kade would love to be acknowledged for the hard work they did.  So when he accepted the fact he won't be getting a medal he was telling me "mom, maybe you'll get a medal".  And I told him oh no, there were much faster ladies than me and maybe I could have gotten a medal if I tried running fast by myself, but I didn't care about the medal, I wanted to do it with Kade.  And sure enough, they call my age group and I got a 2nd place so I got a medal.  Unbelievable! :) Those faster ladies were all younger or running 10k.  But since Kade got a faster time than me I gave him my medal.  He so deserved it.  We made it together in 33 minutes and a few seconds which I think is really great for Kade's first 5k ever.   I personally would like to beat 22 minutes some day but the few races I run I usually do a longer distance so I don't know if I'll ever work on my 5ks again.  Maybe when I'm too old and limpy to run any longer. :) It was just an awesome experience to do it with my son and it meant so much more to me than a ton of races I've ran by myself.  I hope he'll really enjoy running as he gets older so we can continue to have our running times and racing times together.