Friday – 1:00 p.m. (41 hours to race start)
After lunch, there were three more items on my checklist before shabbos:
A run.
A sign.
A drowning.
The “IronKids” run was a chance for kids…
(To do a triathlon?)
No, just to do a one mile or a half mile race.
(With medals?)
With medals. Stevie wanted to get right up at the front of the crowd of kids lining up at the start line.
“Hang back here with me.”
“Why? I want to run fast.”
“You will.”
“But why do I have to stand back here, behind all these babies?”
“Trust me.”
I took my 10-year-old by the hand. I felt his small fingers close around mine like he was gripping an oversized door handle. The crowd packed in around us. There were strollers and tattoos all around us.
(Little kids with tattoos?)
Their parents. There is a portion of the endurance sports community that has anywhere from one tattoo all the way up to a sleeve.
(What’s a sleeve?)
A tattoo that runs from your shoulder down your arm to your wrist. Think movie star/actor, The Rock.
(So, you were surrounded by tattooed weightlifters?)
Quite the opposite. Endurance athletes tend to be on the small side and very thin. We were surrounded by tattooed 20 and 30 somethings, in tank tops and shorts, with little children between the ages of 3-5.
It was surreal. The race was open to kids of all ages and there were kids the same size as my Stevie, but there was a phalanx of strollers and pre-k kids right in front of us.
(Crying children?)
A few. Others were complaining about having to wait for the start. Stevie looked at me and exclaimed,
“Can you believe all these little kids?”
(Little kids? He’s a kid.)
As a parent, I see him as my dad refers to Stevie, “My little guy.” The fact is, he’s not that little anymore and I want to keep doing these races with him even after he no longer needs me too.
The start horn sounded and Stevie tried to step forward, but I held him back like a hold-down arm on an Apollo Saturn V rocket.
(A what?)
The Apollo Saturn V rocket took nine sets of astronauts to the moon. The 363-foot-tall rocket weighed six million pounds and put out 7.6 million pounds or 34.5 million newtons of thrust. The rocket needed to be held back for a split second when its engines ignited, or it would have tipped over before it built up enough thrust to propel itself skyward.
(Your 10-year-old was going to fall over?)
No, the little kids in front of us were and I didn’t want either of us to step on them.
“Now!” We ran. As father and son, we weaved in and out of the tiny tots and their tiny legs. Once we cleared the minefield of little-legged runners and their parents Stevie attempted to pull me with him like a kite in the wind that wanted to break free.
“Slow down.”
“But I want to win.”
“You can’t catch the bigger kids, but if you pace yourself, you won’t have to walk and get passed by the little kids.”
We ran around the orange cone in the middle of the street that functioned as the turnaround/midway point.
“Now?” Stevie asked me.
“Now.”
I counted down as we got within a quarter of a mile from the finish.
“400…300…200…100…”
Fifty feet from the finish line announcer Mike Reilly held out his hand and Stevie gave him a high-five.
I asked Stevie how it felt afterward.
“Everything hurts … and I’m dying.”
It was hot and both of my sons had run their hearts out. Eric had chosen to run on his own. I had wanted a picture of us together, but it was good for Eric not to be held back by Stevie and good for Stevie to have me all to himself for a change. At the finish line, I asked them for a picture and a smile. I got the picture. I realized that not everyone is like me. There are those people…
(Like your own children…)
Who, while they will work through adversity, they will not smile when it is over.
David Roher is a USAT certified triathlon and marathon coach. He is a multi-Ironman finisher and veteran special education teacher. He is on Instagram @David Roher140.6.
He can be reached at [email protected].
