Turkey Trot

At Calvin's annual physical, his doctor asked him about the amount of exercise he got each day. Now, in the past we've been pretty lazy about this on a regular basis. We go hiking on a lot of our weekends, and some of our weekdays, and we'd go biking every now and again, but on a lot of our school days we didn't have structured exercise mixed in. When he asked us the same question last year, I realized that with homeschooling there was no gym class, and we started training for our local Holiday Hustle run. The first few runs he ran some and walked some, but when the race rolled around, after a month of running about 3 times a week, he finished in about a 10 minute mile.

But when the question about exercise came up this year, we were a little more prepared. Since Calvin learned to ride his bike sans training wheels this year, he would break up almost every fall school day with periodic rides around the neighborhood. And since he met the girl who lives next door and the two became fairly inseparable, he's spent almost every afternoon riding bikes or racing through our yards. His pediatrician listened to his answer this year and replied, "Oh, so you participate in the sport of RALAMM, then," which he explained gleefully to our blank stares meant "Roll Around Like A Mad Man."

And yes, I'd have to say that he does participate in that sport a lot these days. And between that, the regular biking, and the Parkour class he took weekly through our homeschooling group this year, when we started training for the one mile this year, he nailed it. The first time out he finished his mile in 10:30, no walking, and probably would have gone faster, but I was pacing him. We kept to a steady training schedule anyhow—on Sundays he and Jon biked 3 miles around Hudson Mills while I ran, and twice a week Calvin and I would run a mile together.

This year we're busy on Holiday Hustle day, so he signed up for the local Turkey Trot charity race instead—one mile around Hudson Mills trails—and the day for that was today.

Cold and rainy—not a perfect day, but not terrible like running in the Shamrock Shuffle in several inches of wet, wet snow, either. To get my own run in for the day I started out from home intending to meet Jon and Calvin at the starting line, about 6.5 miles from our front door. Unfortunately I underestimated that distance by about a mile, so I missed his take off, but I did get there just in time to see him cross the finish line less than 9 minutes later.

Maybe next year we'll sign him up for the 5k.