Fiona's marathon

Fiona is running a marathon. A kids' marathon. Her own private one.

She started tonight. She and I went to the little spur of the Galena Trail that is exactly 1.0 km long and ran it both ways after supper tonight. We ran a pretty decent 9:00/km pace, which included a couple of shoe-tying stops and some "silly running".

She had a lot of fun. We talked the whole way, with the respiratory demands of her bubbly conversation helping set a do-able pace. She wore the heart rate monitor for a while and liked that. She felt very strong and grown-up to be running with me and finished feeling strong.

When we got home we made two small footprint stamps, one left and one right. Then we printed off a calendar. For every kilometre she runs she'll put a stamp on the calendar. When she gets up to 42 stamps we'll run the extra 195 metres and call it a marathon and then we'll do something special to celebrate.

I first read about this approach at kidsrunning.com. Often programs like this are put on by an organization with a lead-time of 6 weeks, and kids get together on the final day to run the last 1.2 miles (or 2.2 kilometres or whatever) for the big finish, and then everyone gets a medal. It would be great if there was something like that for her to take part in, but we'll do okay on our own I think. Sophie is also planning to take part, which will be nice.