And we're still going...

"How many seconds left?" my oldest asked as our shoes repeatedly hit the loose rocks on the road.  I glanced at my phone, and more than seconds were left.

"How are you feeling?" I asked her in return.  She didn't seem out of breath, so I wondered what was bothering her.

"Okay," she answered, "Just my side hurts a little."

"Make sure your posture is good.  Don't forget to breath," I told her.  We had 2 and a half minutes left of that particular interval of running.

We were on Week 4 Day 2 of the Couch to 5K running program, and it was only our second day of running 5 minutes straight.  I remember the first time I realized she was a natural at running.  We were at a homeschool p.e. group in Virginia, and the coach was running the kids for a warmup.  We had arrived late, and she asked me if she could go catch up with the other kids.  After I gave the okay, I watched her sprint to the back of the group and steadily catch up with a group of older kids.  She was pretty quick.

After moving to Texas, I had put her in another homeschool p.e. class, and she had a great time, but she told me she wanted to do something where she could earn a medal or trophy.  I couldn't (and still can't) afford monthly payments for competitive type activities, such as dance or martial arts, yet, and I racked my brain for ideas on what she could work on.  When I remembered her natural knack for running, I decided to see if she was interested in training together.  Her eyes lit up when I told her about the local 5K races, and how kids could enter, too.

At first, she was running at a faster pace than she could maintain, since she was so used to sprinting to simply catch up with someone.  "We're going for distance," I had explained to her, "not speed so much.  We want to be able to keep going for a longer time."

"Oh, so not like a cheetah?" she had asked. "They can run super fast, but not for a long time."

I laughed, "Exactly.  Not like a cheetah."

So, we had been working for 4 weeks on not being cheetahs.  At that point, as she was slowing down slightly, I could tell she wanted to quit, perhaps not out of pain, maybe out of boredom.  (We run just on our end of the street, as there is hardly ever traffic, so it is quite repetitive.)  "We have to teach our bodies what they can do,"  I said, "We can keep going."

She smiled, "Yeah."  A few more steps went by.

"See?" I asked her, "We're still going."  Her smile was infectious as I looked sideways at her.  A few seconds later, "And we're still going!  Every time we run, we're helping our bodies to be able to run longer.  We're getting stronger."

"And we'll be able to do the whole race?" she asked.

"Yes, we'll be able to do the whole race," I answered.  About a minute later I added, "And we're still going!"  She laughed at me for repeating myself again.  I laughed back at her, "You're doing great."

Finally, the C25K app dinged at us and told us to start walking.  I smiled at her, "See? You kept going!  Good job!"  I gave her a high-five.  Her expression was proud and excited.

By the end of the day's run we were both feeling awesome.  It's been wonderful to bond while we're running together and mutually working towards a goal.  The C25K program has been great.  It hasn't pushed us too hard to where we're sore and exhausted the next day, but we can definitely tell a difference in our ability to run.  It's gotten easier every week to keep going.  We both cannot wait for our first race!