The Lesson My Kids Learned From Running a 5k

Today, I ran a 5k with my 10 yr old daugh­ter and 13 yr old son. My hus­band ran the 1k with our 5 yr old daugh­ter and 6 yr old son. This was not my first 5k. Last year I ran this same one and I barely sur­vived. This is the Stone Ridge 5k and it helps to raise money for our local schools. I ran last year only because we need a play­ground for our new ele­men­tary school (my kids have to run at recess..no jun­gle gym).

Let’s start at the begin­ning. Last year I ran or rather walked most of the 5k and I would never have made it if it hadn’t been for my brother-in-law who ran with me (he’s in the army so he runs all the time). He pushed me to keep going. I thought I was going to puke when I fin­ished and while I was proud of my accom­plish­ment, I felt like crap!!

This year the 5k comes up again and I decided I was going to try to train for this one and maybe it would be a bit eas­ier to run. My 2 older kids joined me in the train­ing. (You can read my blog post about how I became a EA Sports Active 5k Com­mu­nity Leader.) We did the work­out plan from the EA Sports Active 5k Chal­lenge and ran 3x/week. We all were really sick for 2 weeks and we didn’t work out as much dur­ing that time. We were just get­ting back into the swing of it this past week. I was wor­ried it would really mess us up.

This morn­ing at 9am, my daugh­ter, son & I ran our 5k. Here we are before we left the house look­ing all spiffy in our EA Sports Active t-shirts (Thank you EA Sports).

This year I didn’t run for speed. I wanted to be sure my kids fin­ished and knew that you have to fin­ish what you start. The day was COLD (40 degrees) and pour­ing rain and they were less than thrilled. But WE DID IT!! We did a slow run the entire time. My kids never com­plained (and our hands were like ice cubes) and they kept going. I am SOOOO proud of them.

This year was so dif­fer­ent. I felt fan­tas­tic dur­ing the whole run. I was able to keep a steady pace through­out the whole 3.1 miles. We stuck together and encour­aged each other to keep going. I even man­aged to take a few pic­tures dur­ing the race.

As we crossed the fin­ish line, my 13 yr old says to me, “Mom, when can we start train­ing for next year’s 5k?” I knew then that he was hooked.

As I crossed the fin­ish line (about 41 min), I felt so great. I wasn’t tired. I really could have run more. I was so into my run­ning that I didn’t even real­ize I had a huge blis­ter on my ankle and was bleed­ing all over my sock & shoe. All day long I have been on this high that I can’t really describe. I feel like I could accom­plish anything.

I know that the dif­fer­ence was the train­ing. I felt stronger and I def­i­nitely had more endurance. And it was so much fun because the kids and I felt like we were play­ing a game instead of work­ing out. By nature, I’m not an ath­lete, I have to work at it. That is the biggest rea­son I love the EA Sports Active..I don’t feel like I’m work­ing out. My mind­set is even dif­fer­ent. When I say I have to work­out, I dread it. But if I tell myself I have to play the wii, well that just sounds like a whole lotta fun.

I put together this video of our 5k (yes, I was even able to record a video while run­ning my 5k. I haven’t wanted to say this, but run­ning the 5k was kinda easy. I’m sur­prised at how train­ing can really make a huge dif­fer­ence. I know in my head it does, but it’s the rest of me that had to expe­ri­ence it to believe it.

Here are my 2 younger kids after they fin­ished their 1k. They were so proud of them­selves because they ran the whole way (and they had to run uphill and then downhill).

Now for the les­sion, I didn’t care if my kids ran all the way or if they fin­ished in 30 or 50 min­utes. I just wanted my kids to know what it feels like to set a goal for your­self, set a plan to attain that goal and then accom­plish the goal. They showed me they can do that even when faced with adver­sity (rain and cold). I’m so proud of my fam­ily. We have decided that next year, all 6 of us are going to train and then run the 5k.

Dur­ing the last mile of our run, a woman and her trainer were run­ning right behind us. The woman wanted to stop run­ning and walk, but her trainer wasn’t going to let her do that. I heard him say over and over, “look at her shirt and remem­ber who YOU are active for.” I thought that was fan­tas­tic and it made me really proud to be wear­ing this shirt. We got a lot of com­pli­ments and ques­tions about the shirts.

I am active for “ME” because I know that if I do not take care of me first, then I am of no use to any­one else. I need to be account­able to “ME”. I need to love “ME”. I need to be sure “ME” is happy.

dis­clo­sure: EA Sports sent us the t-shirts for our 5k because I am a Com­mu­nity Leader for my 5k. I con­tacted EA Sports about becom­ing a Com­mu­nity Leader because I LOVE the prod­uct. I talk a lot about it on my blog but it is because I LOVE the prod­uct. They have not com­pen­sated me in any way for my past blog posts. I will be receiv­ing the EA Sports Active More Work­outs when it comes out next month because I am a 5k Com­mu­nity Leader.

EA Sports Active Com­mu­nity Leader Badge

Related arti­cles by Zemanta

• EA SPORTS Active 5K Chal­lenge (the17thman.typepad.com)
• Fit­ness Fri­day — Train­ing For the EA SPORTS Active 5K! (momspective.com)
• EA Sports Active gets More Work­outs Nov. 17 (joystiq.com)

Tagged as: accomplishment, community leader, EA Sports, EA Sports Active, EA Sports Active: Personal Trainer, Fitness, geek, jungle gym, local schools, pouring rain, puke, recess, running, steady pace, workout plan