Ho John Lee’s Weblog

This evening my 9-year-old and I ran the Palo Alto Moonlight Run. The event is run every fall, in the evening, when the moon is full (or nearly full) so there’s light to see on the course which runs around the Baylands.

I really wanted Emily to have a fun time at her first race event. We did the early 5K family walk/run, which isn’t officially timed, and they encourage family participation, including dogs, kids in strollers, etc, so it’s a pretty casual, festive affair, with a DJ, frisbees, and booths with fun kid-friendly samples items like Hobees coffeecake, Luna bars from Whole Foods, and blinking lights from Runners High. I’d been thinking that Emily might like to give it a try, since she’s never actually run in a race or event, but has actually gone futher than that a number of times. She’s also been doing soccer this fall, (which I’m coaching,) so every week she gets a lot of sustained light-to-moderate running, which she generally seems to enjoy.

I’ve been trying to help Emily and her friends learn to run “medium” instead of “fast” all the time. I remember when I was a kid in school they always wanted everyone to run “fast” all the time. For me, at least, it would have been more productive to learn what a sustainable pace should feel like, and mix it up with some speed. Running “fast” is great, but I’m trying to help the kids I work with develop some aerobic capacity and a sense of pacing, so they can actually enjoy running or other activities later, instead of thinking of it as an uncomfortable activity to avoid. If all your running is effectively sets of short sprints, you’re going to feel terrible, and you’re not going to do much for your general conditioning either. I can also see some of the kids starting to overstride because they think taking bigger steps will help go “fast”. They’re all starting out being able to run, I’m just hoping to keep it that way.

We signed in at the on-site registration. Emily wanted to make sure she got a t-shirt. Kids get to register for free, but the t-shirt costs extra. We got extra-large, as all the shirts are too big for her to wear but she likes wearing old trade show t-shirts for pajamas these days. (She loves the “elephant poo” t-shirt from SimplyHired I picked up at last month’s SearchSIG.) An XL t-shirt pretty much comes down to her ankles.

She had lots of fun collecting a chem-lite necklace, blinking runner’s safety light, and assorted nibbles of food samples while we waited for the start. She was very serious about explaining our race strategy to me.

1. She wanted to start in the front
2. She wanted to make sure that I stayed right next to her where she could see me
3. She wanted to make sure that I didn’t go faster than her
4. Her goal was to run the whole way and be the first person or at least the first kid or the first 4th grader to finish
5. I should be sure to finish 1 or 2 seconds behind her

I suggested that she try running at whatever pace felt comfortable, and we could speed up or slow down or walk whenever she felt like it. In her PE class at school they’ve recently been running timed miles, and she said that she did a little more than 12 minutes the last time they tried it. I figured we would probably do something like 12-13 minute miles overall, possibly including walk breaks, shoe fiddling, etc.

We actually did line up at the front. Much of the crowd was in fact walking, with dogs, strollers, or kids on leashes, so lining up at the front was a good place for us to be. There were also a fair number of runners. The “serious” runners aren’t in the untimed 5K family walk/run, though, so it’s mostly slower runners. At the start, a few adult runners took off, and we appeared to start off on the trail among the first group of “kid” runners.

Emily was really excited about wanting to beat everyone, and was very pleased to have left most of the starting pack behind (I think people started getting congested at the trailhead when the main group arrived). She started getting a little side ache after a couple of minutes from going out too fast, so we slowed down until it felt better, and I told her again she was in charge of what speed she wanted to go. We passed several bigger kids that had gone out very fast and were walking. We followed some adults who eventually slowed down.

By the 1 mile marker, Emily was feeling much better and was also really happy about the idea that she was able to keep her pace and catch up with the much bigger people who went out faster than her. At the water station (1.7 miles?) we stopped briefly for a bit of water than continued. Some boys came charging up from behind us but ran out of gas before the 2 mile marker.

The whole time we were running we were also chatting about the lights around the Bay, the airport runway, the interesting and spooky looking clouds, the sillhouetted birds on the mud flats. The Palo Alto schools go on a number of field trips to the Baylands, so the kids all know lots of trivia about the local wildlife and ecology. We ran past the interpretive center toward the duck pond. Emily was very pleased about not seeing any kids her age around anywhere, and passing lots of adults and big kids.

After the duck pond, the 5K course turns back onto Embarcadero Road, which is straight and lit by streetlamps so you can see who’s ahead. No kids in sight, and only a few adults. We pass several more runners on the approach to the Baylands Athletic Center, and I tell Emily that she should start running a little faster when she feels like she’s close enough to manage it ok. She goes pretty fast for the last couple hundred yards or so, I need to shift into a more normal running stride for me to keep up.

Since it’s not timed, and we’re way ahead of the walkers, there’s not much at the finish other than people setting up for the 10K start. Emily is looking around to see if there are any other kids. We don’t see any, although I think a few adults have come in ahead of us. We decide that she’s the first kid to finish, and she also decides that she’s probably around 4th or 5th overall and that makes me 5th or 6th. She wants to know if she gets a prize. I tell her she can go collect some more free samples, plus now we can get some Hobees coffee cake. We collect a variety of packaged food samples to bring home, along with a bagel. Lots of walkers are still coming in when we pull out of the parking lot at 8:30ish, an hour after the start.

Emily says “I smoked them!”

Splits:
1 mile 12:18 12:18 / mile
2 mile 24:31 12:13 / mile
5K finish 36:50 12:19 / 1.1 miles = 11:12 pace

overall pace 11:51/mile

I’m really happy that she had a fun time. Tonight she’s been telling me that next year she wants to stay up and try the official 5K (which doesn’t start until almost 9pm). In the meantime, she’s sleeping in her extra-large glow-in-the-dark t-shirt, and is already planning to have her extra Luna bar samples for breakfast.

We’ll see how tomorrow morning’s soccer game goes…

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2005 at 12:04 am and is filed under Running, Front Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: running, paloalto, coaching