Voice of a 5 year-old

Today was a tough run. One of those runs where you want to scream – “Why am I doing this?!?”

On paper it was suppose to be a 5 miler, with 3 miles at tempo pace. Instead it turned into a test of wills. Thick humidity, intermittent rain and some serious stomach woes were all conspiring to let me know that this was NOT going to be the run I had hoped for…no this run was clearly going to be craptastic at best. “Do you really need to do this?” that voice in my head kept asking and as I neared 2 miles I actually stopped and thought about turning for home.

But then I could hear the voice of my 5 year old as he was sitting in the backseat on our way to school this morning (ok we can discuss all the voices in my head in another post!) — “You are going to run today right Mom ’cause you didn’t run yesterday so you gotta run today, right?” And, I know my little guy will ask me when I pick him up today, “So how was your run Mom?” the same as he’s done after each one of my runs since I started on this journey. Could I really look at him and tell him that I didn’t finish? That I was having a bad run so I gave up and went home? Well not a chance of that happening so I finished my 5 miles, much much slower than I had wanted. But some how I know that when I pick him up today and look into those big brown eyes I’ll be happy to tell him that I did it!