Brooke's 1 Mile Run

Today marked a 1st for Brooke at school. She had her 1st mile run which she has been "training" for since school started. This is part of their PE program and so this is something that is mandatory. Well, we showed up at Pinkerton Park and watched her class line up to start the run. Now, this wasn't a race but the kids were told to pace themselves, to run without stopping - well, as much as possible, and to not let anything or anyone slow them down.

(This is a pre-race picture of Brooke and one of her friends Incidentally, this little girl came in first with a time of 8:26.)




Parents were encouraged to run with their kids but since I had Connor and Liam and my camera in tow I didn't plan to run. Dale had two meetings in the morning so he wasn't planning on being there. At the last minute he decided to dash back to Franklin between his meetings. He took Liam to the finish line to cheer for Brooke and I headed over to the middle of the "track" which made several hair-pin turns so that I would get some great shots of my little girl running her little heart out.







Well, after the exciting start I learned two things about Brooke. 1) Competition of any sort does not motivate her! She could care less about it! 2) It offends her to have her mother yelling at her to run instead of moseying along the track!!

Now to digress a moment. I had kind of gotten a little bit of a hint this summer about the whole competition thing not being Brooke's cup of tea. I tried to entice her with the YMCA swim team (I wanted her to learn her swimming strokes better) by telling her that she would get to race against other kids and it would be like a contest. Well, when she heard that she said, "Yeah, don't sign me up for that." So we didn't.

Here's the story....the start of the race was great and all the kids were excited so once they passed me I cut across the park to about the 1/2 mile mark. I'm waiting and waiting for Brooke and then I spot her way down the trail and she has stopped to talk with some girls and she has actually turned around and started walking the other direction. She probably saw a pretty flower she wanted to pick - I'm not exactly sure what sidetracked her. Anyway, at this point I start yelling at her to run. After all, this is not recess and this is being timed! Do I sound like one of those out-of-control hockey moms?

Well, once she gets to me I decide the only thing for it is to run with her. So me, my camera and Connor all join in the run. Of course I feel like I'm herding her instead of running with her and she is getting quite perturbed that I won't let her stop to smell the roses! I felt like I was encouraging her but she didn't really see it that way. At one point she said to her friends, "My mom is usually nicer than this." Ha! She'll thank me one day!! I think it was just the hungry tummy talking because she also said her stomach was getting really angry with her! I fed her a breakfast of eggs and bagels - you would think that would be the breakfast of champs!!

So as you can see there are no pictures of her crossing the finish line because I was running with her across it. By the way - did I mention that I didn't come dressed for the run meaning that I didn't have everything restrained properly? I'm sure it wasn't a pretty sight!

Here are some pictures of the boys playing in the park before and after the run. It was the most gorgeous fall day!!