William's First 5K

Let me start off by telling you how lame I am. After taking up running for my health and to run with William, I apparently didn't truly understand the extent of "Start Slowly" that I needed to heed. Apparently starting off with your first run after 20 years with a 2.5 mile run is not "Starting Slowly". After a month of this every other day and stretching to a 5k is enough to start hurting. Enough and long enough after running to cause concern. I went to the Orthopedist who took an x-ray, saw nothing interesting, then sent me to get an MRI...
Stress fracture! Dang. Since it doesn't hurt to walk on it, he didn't insist on crutches or a cane, but it takes 6 to 8 weeks to heal and then I shouldn't attempt any impact type exercising for 4 months! Ugh!

Well, William had joined me for my last couple of runs before the prognosis, and he was completing 2.5 miles in 25 minutes with energy to spare. He desperately wanted to do a 5K run which would just be another 0.6 miles. But with me not able to run till November and base rules implying that he would need to be shaproned around the course, it was looking like he would have to wait a long while. But, the Yokosuka base has 5K runs a couple times a month, it seems, and the latest one was being attended by half a dozen people from work. I found one them that volunteered to escort William. Game On!

It was a very warm day at 8:30AM with a temperature of 82F and humidity at 68%. We made sure he was hydrated and Caroline was waiting along the way to give him water to drink and douse him with water. And, he was off!
Since I didn't need it, I let William wear my GPS watch. He forgot to start it until around the first bend and stopped it long into his cooldown, but you can generally see how he did:

And, 29 minutes and 20 seconds later, William crosses the line!


So, he has beat my best, and only, 5k time of 32:02. I can't wait until November to start running again...

They had several age categories. William was in the men's 18 and under category. We felt like that was a pretty brutal group to be in, but he ended up placing 2nd in his division! Way to go William!