Running with the Kiddies!

Today it looked like rain. But, as the morning went on the sun peaked out and the temperature rose fast. I had forgone my morning run in trade of sleep and 20 minutes of P90X-the rest to be finished after work. I had all of my gear so I sat 5 minutes before lunch trying to decide, do I go out and run in the warm humid air, declining the refreshing shower as I would be running to and from the office or do I grab my stuff and head to the indoor track at the gym next door? Opting for the cool-ness of the icerink below the track and the shower I got ready for my run.

Deciding this was an excellent opportunity to test out my lap counter on my new Garmin 305, I pressed lap and off I went. About half way I noticed a group of kids doing drills with a coach on the rink stairs. A couple of laps later they were doing jump drills along the yellow lane lines. Another few laps and the coach yelled "GO!" and off they went sprinting in one massive group. I happened to be right beside the pack as they started and I noticed out of the corner of my eye after 100m or so this little boy grinning his face off at me. I smiled, and thought "Does he want to race?" So I sped up, he ran faster but kept at the same pace as me instead of speeding ahead. "Okay" I thought, "I'll do one nice fast one and see if this kid wants to stick with me." So I sped up a little bit more, and sure enough he kept pace. By then a bunch of his little friends caught up to him and huffing and puffing I paced them all back to the start. "You guys are good runners," I said to one of them, "You too," said the smiling kid. Thanks kiddo, thanks :-)

I finished my run with the last kilometer barefoot. I took off my Vibrams and just went for it. The interesting thing was that those last 5 laps were actually faster than the ones previous. Maybe it was the memory of the kids or the coolness of the track floor, but I didn't care. I had a great run. I had managed another 8.5k in my Vibrams, paced a pack of 10 year olds and lived to talk about it. Go figure.