Running with Sam

I forgot to include the story of my early morning run with my nephew, Sam, in my previous post, "Loads of Company! Part 1." As I had mentioned early in that post, during an evening walk Sam had said that he would rather be running. So I had told him that we would go running while he was visiting. I forget which morning we made plans for, but I had told him we'd go at 6:30am. That morning, when 6:15 rolled around, I highly contemplated not getting up. I figured Sam probably wouldn't be up, and would balk at getting up to go running. But, I had promised and I had to at least see if he still wanted to go. Much to my surprise, when I came out to the living room, Sam was awake and sitting on the stool waiting. Barefoot. I asked him if he had his shoes for running and he said he couldn't find them. We looked all over and couldn't find his shoes. I asked if they were under the cot he was sleeping on, or in the bathroom he'd used the night before. He said "no," but went to double check. That woke up Mom and Gail who came to join in the search for his shoes. Someone asked the question of, "Are they in Little Pumpkin's room?" I couldn't see why they'd be in her room, and we continued searching all over the house. Sneaky Sam, unbeknownst to the rest of us, went into Pumpkin's room and returned with his shoes!!! I guess she had been trying to walk in them the night before and, to her credit, had "put them away." Sam found his shoes on her shoe shelf! It was quite funny though we got a bit of a late start on our run.

We took Gunther with us, and I was fully expecting Sam to start with a full-on run that I wouldn't be able to keep up with. So, I told him I

30:37

   Early this spring, Jason and I said we were going to do a 5k this summer and that we were going to make each other train for it. Well, that didn't exactly happen. I think I may have run two or three times since April and only for 1 mile or less. But, in August I decided that I was going to run the Freedom 5k that was in 2 weeks. I had seen the run advertised at the park a few times and that Friday I just decided to do it. My reasoning was that if I never signed up for a 5k, I would never actually run. So I went and registered and thus began my two weeks of training to be able to run 3.2 miles all at once.
   Three times a week, I'd go out after taking Gunther for his run (which I rode a bicycle for) and walk about 1 1/2 miles to the park. The first time, I set my iPod to go 1 mile and then I ran, slowly as it may be, around the park for a little beyond my goal. Each time, I'd set the distance a little further, and each time, I'd make myself go beyond the goal. I had it figured out that I needed to gain a quarter of a mile with each run in order to be even close to running 3 miles in 2 weeks. Somehow, and I'm not sure how, I almost made it. My last run before the big day was 2.71 miles and for both weeks, I was averaging 12 minute miles. (That's really pathetic, by the way.) I have to say, after the first couple runs, I wondered why I was even doing it as my legs hurt a lot and my knees seemed to protest each night. But for the most part, it got somewhat better as the two weeks passed.
   The Saturday of the 5k arrived and I got up at 6am and rode my bike down to where the race was being held. I got my goodie bag of stuff and waited for the race to start. The race was to start at 8, but there was a pre-race ceremony and stuff going on. I felt kind of weird as a lot of