Hope for Haiti 5K- My race with my Son

Today my son Jacob and I participated in the Hope for Haiti 5K at our church. At this run, all proceeds went to the Haiti relief. Jacob had said before that he wanted to run a 5K sometime, so this seemed like the perfect race for him to try. The whole basis of this run was that I would get to run WITH him, I was not going to go out fast or try to place, but I was going to let him set the pace and control when and if we walked any. This actually proved harder than it sounded, because I wanted to take off, it was hard to get in a pace and I think I could have done very well in my AG, but I found out that I had a great time running with Jacob and watching him turn it on at the finish line. So here is our race report:

We got to the church around 8:10 and got registered and then hung out with some friends we saw there. We then made our way down to the start line by jogging, trying to get loose. we got lined up and waited for the horn to sound. Jake made very sure to tell me to not run off and leave him, and I promised I would be right behind him.

We started out at a decent pace and had a pretty uneventful 1st mile. Jacob was holding his own and we ran an 8:53 1st mile! we saw one guy already leaning over grabbing his shorts and we both thought he was going to blow chow! We took about a 10 second walk break after mile 1, but we kept plugging along, at a slower pace, but we kept going.

Mile 2 was a 9:49 mile. Jake was slowing a bit and we started to walk a little bit, but he only would walk for about 10 seconds and then start back up. At one point, it was a gradual uphill and Jake says to me, "I don;t know how you do this, this is hard" LOL I just continued to encourage him and we got to the top of that hill and we saw the finish line!

Mile 3 went by fast. we were about 50 yards from the finish line and Jake throws in a kick! He is smashing it to the finish, passing men, women , children, it did not matter. I just sat back and watched him with a smile.

All in all, we finished in 29:11 and 29:15 respectively. Jacob placed 3rd in his AG and I finished 10th in my Ag (See, I could have done very well). It was a great time for me as a father, one day I will remember for years to come!