A run with my son!

Yeah, he's six. And yeah, I had 10 miles on my schedule - the first run aimed at marathon training, not triathlon. (For the remainder of the season, I need to overlap purposes: long runs on the weekend aimed at the marathon, but I still have to swim and bike for the few remaining triathlons I'm going to do.)

So...I picked a route that was along a paved bike trail the entire way. It's hilly, but the climbs are short and always rewarded with a downhill. And I told him there was no whining allowed.

I met up with Aleks and Latosha and we were off! And amazingly, Gabriel (my son) was perfect. He asked how far ahead he could ride, and he stopped and waited for us to catch up at every point I specified. On most of the hills on the way out, he just powered up (out of the saddle...oh, to have those little strong legs and be able to climb like that! On a heavy, single-speed bike with knobby tires, too).

On the way back, a couple of times he had some trouble climbing the hills, so I ran alongside him with my hand on his back to help push a little. But he really didn't whine, which was all I could ask for - and when we were done, he said, "Next time, can we do 11 miles?" Isn't it cool that I can share my training with my kid? What a cool guy. I'm such a lucky mom.

So I've got to think of safe routes that will be good for my running plus fun for him. This doesn't actually remove the need for babysitting from me, since my three-year-old daughter still requires care, but it's so much easier on my husband to only have one kid at a time, and so exciting for me to watch Gabriel push hard and have fun exercising! He told me today he wants to do an Ironman...and can't I take him swimming more?

We did 10 miles in under 1:40; my watch said 1:40 exactly, but I stopped to use the potty half-way through and we had a couple of other brief stops too. 10-minute miles right now is a good pace for me for training runs; I won't set a time goal for New York, since it's so chaotic and fun (from what I have read - no first-hand knowledge yet!). I just want to enjoy it in something around 4 hours or so.