Chair to 5K

For the past two years, Cubby has played baseball. He was pretty good at it, and seemed to enjoy it, and we thought maybe he'd play here, too.

Then the flyer came home for baseball sign-up and we realized that him playing would mean driving something like 200 miles or more every week. Because everything is so spaced out here, you see. His actual team would be based out of the village ten miles away. But the home games were played in a town 60 miles away, and the away games? Forget it. They could be as far as 100 miles away.

That's much too much driving, time away from home, and disruption for the entire family for a sport that they don't even offer in the high school.

So we had to tell him that he would not be playing baseball. He was somewhat disappointed. We were talking with him about the sports he could do in school when he's older, and the one he seemed most interested in was track.

This is when I remembered a few months ago when both Cubby and Charlie had asked me if they could do a road race. So I told Cubby that he couldn't play baseball, but he could run a 5K. So could Charlie.

They were very enthused about this.

The closest one I could find that was around the right time of year is in Santa Fe* on May 18. It's a 5K that encourages families and children, and even has a special 1K race for the smallest kids. That meant that Jack could also "run" a race and not feel left out.

At first we all assumed that A. would be running the 5K with the older boys, and I would do the 1K with Jack and Poppy. A. went with Cubby and Charlie on their ritual Sunday-after-church run this past weekend (which is only a mile, but serves the dual purpose of getting them out of the way while I make waffles and getting some of their pent-up energy out after sitting for an hour) and returned lamenting that he was not really in good running condition at the moment.

So I decided to go for a mile run and see what kind of running condition I'm in at the moment.

Though I've run off and on for my entire adult life, the last time I went running was right before I got shingles. Seven months ago. And the last time I ran three miles? I don't even know, but certainly years.

These days I spend more time than I would like in this chair being weighed down by 70 pounds of flailing children.

Or by the dead weight of sleeping children, but in the chair in any case.

Those children do ensure that I'm not entirely sedentary, but I was still doubtful as to my endurance when actually running for any length of time.

However, I was pleasantly surprised at how not-punishing it was to run that first mile. I probably could've gone a little farther, but I decided to quit while I was ahead.

When I got home, I told A. that I would run the 5K with Cubby and Charlie. He seemed delighted at the prospect. Unsurprisingly.

But of course, one mile is not three miles. I needed to increase my distance pretty quickly. So yesterday, I ran two miles. Again, it was not as hard as I had expected. The older boys will be joining me for this same two-mile run on Friday morning so they can start increasing their distance, too. I'm hoping that we'll be up to three miles in the two weeks before the race.

Of course, Santa Fe is a lot hillier than here, and also about a thousand feet higher, so it's possible that on May 18, I'll be sucking wind on the road while trying to keep up with two spry boys, but at least I have hope now that I can run it without completely embarrassing myself.

Fingers crossed.

* Not that Santa Fe is close exactly, but distances out here are relative. This does mean that we're going to have to get up at like 4 a.m. on race day to make it there on time. Whee.