There was no soccer practice tonight, and if the tourney showed us one thing, it’s that the Boy Ain’t Got No Stamina, so Justin and I went down to the Rec Center to run laps.
Now, I won’t make any bones about this: I hate running. I hated it in high school, I hated it in college, and I don’t much care for it now, but the coach wants the kids to be able to run two-miles and then do a full practice, because he likes to be the team that wins at the end of the game when they are tired and you are not.
Anyway, while the Boy might be able to just run a mile and be fine, I do have some old knee and ankle injuries to think about, so we didn’t just run a mile straight out. There’s a big timer running on the wall, so for now what we’re doing is running for one minute, then walking for one, continuing this till we’ve done the 18-laps-that-is-a-mile (works out to about 90-yards/lap, 66% of the distance covered while running).
Near the end of the first mile, I told Justin we were going to run the last lap normally for the first half, then I wanted to ‘really’ run for the last half. By this point, he was getting a little bushed (did I mention the no stamina?), and claimed he didn’t have enough run left in him. I did it anyway, and he sort gimped along a few feet behind me, and we started walking a few laps to cool down.
Now normally people, I don’t believe in money-as-motivation, but there’s a lesson I wish I’d learned earlier in high school that I wanted him to understand, so I proposed a deal: we finish walking this lap, then we race for a lap: he wins, he gets a buck.
Surprise, surprise. He won.
(Not by much, my ego begs me to mention.)
While he was grinning and walking, I said, “Here’s the lesson from that: if you want it, you’ve always got a little more run left in you. Right?”
“I guess,” he said, and we kept walking.
Then: “Can we do it again?”
I didn’t want to; my legs had felt like overcooked spaghetti during the first one, but when he wants to, even after doing about 1.4 miles, then you have to encourage it.
“Sure.”
That time, I beat him… on the third corner, I started to pass on the outside. He glanced over his left shoulder and didn’t see me, so he slowed down for a second.
No, I don’t get anything if I win. (Except a feeling that I’m not quite dead yet.)
Afterwards, while we walked a lap, I said “there were two lessons there.”
“Yeah?”
“First one: don’t stop running til you’re actually done. Do you know what the second one is?” (Meaning to say something about not worrying about what the other guy is doing.)
His answer: “Don’t let the old man beat me?”
Close enough.
