26:51

What is that number...?

Our son, Jace (age 7), ran in his first 5k yesterday when he raced in the MacAttack 5k at Silver Lake in Rochester. He ran an 8:39 pace for a 26:51 finish. I didn't race, but ran with the little guy. Just two weeks prior to school ending he had to run the mile and he did that in 8:08. He has been asking us almost daily if there are running only races. We've entered him in a du and a tri (he won the HyVee Kids Tri), but has been itching to do some running only events so I looked up the Rochester Track Club's Youth Grand Prix schedule and decided to get him into some of those. I ran with him yesterday to make sure he stopped and/or walked when he needed to--we didn't need him going out as hard as he could then quitting and feeling bad and mad about it. We did the first mile in 8:14--I tried to slow him down after that and we actually stopped for water once about 2/3's in then kept going. When he was about 100 yards from the finish he sped up and ran all the way thru the finish line.

The youngest age group was 10 and under. We were absolutely NOT looking to place. This was a 'see if you can complete the whole thing, walking, jogging, or running.' However, he wasn't far behind the top 3 as he was about 1 minute out of 3rd place. The results aren't posted yet, but I think he was 4th or 5th with everyone in front of him in the 10 and unders being 9 or 10 years old.

They had great post race fuel at the MacAttack. I was happy to see Jace take advantage of this. He drank a bottle of water and a little more, had some apple slices (McDonalds Dippers), and a giant chunk of Great Harvest wheat bread. Then we went to Fazoli's and he took down a plate of penne pasta, a couple breadsticks, and on the way home he had almost a whole Snickers Marathon bar before he finally said he was "full". Nice work.