On Friday evening, we were eating dinner at a LR550's house when the topic of conversation turned to running. LR550 and I were planning to go for a run on Saturday morning. LR550 mentioned that there was a 5K scheduled to start at 8 AM on Saturday morning. LR550 suggested we run in the 5K.
After agreeing to run, we quickly excused ourselves to go home and get some sleep. Mini-Mattis is used to getting 10 hours of sleep per night. I didn't think he would be in a good mood running 3.1 miles on less than his normal amount of sleep.
As it was, Mini-Mattis was in bed and asleep around 11:30 PM on Friday night. The alarm went off at 6:05 AM and I began to get ready. I dared only eat a 'carb control' yogurt and half of a protein bar.
At about 6:45 AM, I called and woke up LR550. LR550 and Mini-LR550 were readying themselves when we arrived shortly after 7 AM. We piled into the Omega-Mobile and headed for the race.
We arrived - registered - pinned on our numbers - stretched as quickly as possible. There were probably 350 folks on hand for the race. The number of kids participating surprised me. There were more than a dozen kids in the "9 and under" category.
We met up with Chris (wearing yellow shirt in the photos) by the starting line. Chris has run in a couple of longer races. He has run in a 1/2 marathon (13+ miles) and a few 10Ks. He was definitely the most seasoned distance runner in our group.
The race started and the 5 of us stayed together for maybe a 1/2 mile. We climbed a long hill. On the downhill, Chris started to pull ahead. Mini-Mattis and I tried to pick up the pace a bit. We began to separate from LR550 and Mini-LR550. We maintained a decent pace until about the 2-mile marker. Chris was probably 200 yards ahead of us when I set Mini-Mattis free.
I did my best just to keep moving as we started a long incline. Mini-Mattis upped his tempo and left me behind. I glanced up maybe a minute later to see Mini-Mattis had made up the 200 yards between Chris and us. Mini was now running side-by-side with Chris.
Chris and Mini-Mattis ran together until the final straight away. At that point, Mini-Mattis turned on the jets and headed for the finish line.
About a minute later, I finished 'huffing and puffing' and completely spent. I found Chris and Mini. This is Chris had to say...
"I was feeling pretty good about myself and how I was doing. I looked down beside me and there was your son. I asked him, where is your dad? He told me he had left you in the dust... I figured, 'okay, I guess you're running with me then'... he could have talked to me the whole time we running. He wasn't winded at all. We got to the final straightaway, and he just took off. I tried to catch him. I didn't let him beat me. But, I just couldn't catch him. ... I was proud of how well I ran but then I looked ahead and saw a 7-year-old beating me."
Mini-Mattis was the first of our group of 5 to finish.
We certainly didn't break any speed records on Saturday. We didn't train for the event and it shows. But, we all ran to the best of our abilities. We all finished the race.
I believe I have said this before on the website - Mini-Mattis has heart and a tremendous competitive spirit. He is an extremely hard-worker. There are lot of kids out there with more God given talent. But, there aren't too many kids that have the focus and ethic to out work him.
The race results were just posted - More than a half-dozen 7-year-olds ran. Mini-Mattis was the first 7-year-old to cross the finish line by more than 2-minutes.
