Will's Half Mile Run

The base has a 5k race nearly every other week. They often have children's events to coincide with these runs. William loves to run, so we entered him in the latest run. The 5 to 6 year olds ran a half mile loop, while older kids did 1 mile or 2 miles while the adults ran the full 5 kilometers.

The 5 to 6 year olds were the first to go. William is in the red and blue striped shirt. We had walked over the entire course with him to ensure he knew where to go. It was essentially a trip around the block for a half mile. The leaders, with William among them, took off at quite a clip. They then let loose the next two groups of kids and started to assemble the adults on the combined start and finish line...

They were starting to talk them up and get them excited, but then everyone realized that the 5 to 6 year olds had rounded the bend and were bearing down on them. They truncated their speech with a "Have fun" and let them loose just in time to clear the area for the first half mile finisher. First up was John Wood who is the son of Vinny Wood who is a habitual marathon runner. No surprise that he brought the lead. Bringing up a very close third was...

William!

They pulled all the kids on stage and awarded the top three finishers in each category. William was called first as the third place winner of the 5 to 6 year olds and collected his prize of a Calvin Klein duffle bag and running shoe key chain. All the kids got a pretty cool beach toy set.

All in all, a very nice running event.