Musing of a High School Father: Birthday Edition

The past week was one of the oddest weeks I have ever experienced in Chicago. Monday had the Boston Marathon tragedy; Thursday had six inches of rain which produced a “rain day” for our local schools and major flooding in the area. Friday had the Boston bombing capture which had people glued to their TV’s, Saturday had our meet at Lake Park get delayed so the snow could melt off the track and Sunday we celebrated the 18th birthday of our daughters.

Jessica has been limiting her running to help a sore shin heal so she decided to bike the 25 miles from Wilmette to Lake Park to cheer on her teammates. Debbie, not wanting her to ride alone, decided to ride with her on Saturday morning. I left the house in the car around 9:30 AM to head to Roselle and got the call around 10:00 alerting me that the ladies were stuck in Des Plaines; stranded by closed roads due to the swollen Des Plaines River, unable to get past. I needed to head to Des Plaines to pick them up. Luckily, after picking them up and loading up their bikes we made it just in time for the start of the meet.

Courtney ran the 3,200 in 10:51 hoping to leave enough in the tank to come back strong in a stacked 1,600. She came back with a 4:58 to take the victory over Kaylee Flanagan, Courtney Clayton the other participants. I must admit it was fun watching Courtney Clayton run the 800 and relay prior to the 1,600. She is not just fast, but also a very smooth runner.

Earlier in the week my sister, Anne, called me to ask if I thought Court and Jess would like a Road ID bracelet as a birthday gift for those times they ever run alone. It made me chuckle thinking about them running alone. Back in November of sophomore year, Jessica was training to run Foot Locker while Courtney was done for the season letting her legs recover. Since the rest of her teammates were done as well, Jess needed to keep training alone. Since it gets dark around 4 PM in November, a training buddy made the most sense. But who?

I got this. I remember setting our plan that I would meet Jess at home at 4:15 after school to join her on her training run. During the day, I started thinking about this upcoming run multiple times.  I’m in good shape; I’m pretty fast; I can hang for a couple miles! The first mile was a warm up at probably a 7:30 pace. All good; still able to breathe and carry on a conversation. I think she’s going to be surprised by my solid effort. We got to a corner and we came to a momentary stop. Jess tells me that the next two miles will be at threshold pace (whatever that meant). All I knew was that tomorrow I was going post to my Facebook page that I can still hang with an All-State athlete. She said, “Ready? Let’s go.”

After 100 yards I was 50 yards behind. Crap! Not only are my lungs about to explode, but it is pitch black and I’m losing sight of my daughter. The only reason I’m here is to keep her safe and this is quickly turning into an epic fail. I acted fast and summoned just enough lung power to scream, “I’ll be right here when you turn around! I think my diamond earring came out.”  Well, since I don’t have a pierced ear, it was not a very good excuse to use. She made it back to me safely about 12 minutes later and we jogged the mile back to our house laughing about my effort.

I still get asked if I’m a faster runner than my daughters. My mature answer, “Whatever.”

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