Nate Running

Nate asked me the other week if he could run with me. It came out of nowhere, and I felt bad for not having asked him. I remember as a kid when my Dad would invite us to go running with him in the morning. My Dad ran in the morning, which made it even less appealing, and I would go once or twice - long enough to forget that I didn't like it.

The kids have a mile run that they do periodically at school as part of their gym class. Nate told me he finished first place in his class in the mile, and wanted to start running with me.

We've been out 3 times since then. We started at a mile the first time, with Nate hauling and me trying to reign him back a bit. We did that first mile in about 8 minutes, without him stopping.

The next run we did about 1.6 miles at around an 8:45 pace. During both runs, I would see him holding his sides at times. He was cramping up, but didn't want to say anything or stop. I told him that there's nothing wrong with working up to this and his response was "If I push through this, it'll make me tougher."

Nate and I ran yesterday, running this route, about 2 miles, at a pace of an 8m 50c mile. Nate is built to be a runner. He's 75 lbs and 5' tall with long legs. The coolest part for me is just having the time with him to run and talk, and have him like the running as well.

We've been talking about signing up for a race in the area, which would be fun to do together - a 5k or 10k probably.