Today was the first day in what we hope becomes a neighborhood tradition: we texted a bunch of our friends and asked them to meet us at the nearby high school track for some communal laps. Only one other family was able to make it, but it was really nice to chat with my friend while Bradley did the same with her husband and we all ran about four miles. We ran at about 11 minute miles for about 40 minutes. I’m not sure, exactly, because this was one of those magical days where the technology and I didn’t work well together.
While there, Gigi practiced her triple jump and all the kids ran a few laps. I feel weird saying I make my kids exercise, but I feel like we force our kids to do vital things like eat vegetables and go to school, I also think that we have parental responsibility to keep their hearts healthy and muscles strong through exercise. Our kids just go for it, now. Jude ran a half mile today and Gigi did 3/4 a mile.
When they aren’t running and we are at the track, our kids play in the sand pits intended for the long jumps, high jumps… All the jumps. We drag along a bag of sand toys and they happily construct sand castles while we wave at them each time we make our way around. With the added benefit of another family at the track, our kids had the best time!
I hope the Sundays in our future are similar to today. I hope our numbers grow and our neighborhood families have one more opportunity to come together as a community.
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I felt pretty good as I finished out my week as a runner. While I didn’t meet the running schedule as completely as I had hoped, I did up my mileage and run further distance. Today I ran about four miles and I plan on running fast two milers on Tuesday and Thursday of this week. Otherwise I want to run a four miler once or twice and a six mile run on Saturday. We will see what works. This could be a wild week with a track meet on Tuesday, late work night on Thursday and girl’s sleepover on Friday. I’ll do my best!
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