The turtle and the hare

Dayven is blessed with the gift of speed. He can go for a month without running and still do a 6 minute mile. Some people just have the gift. The rest of us have to work at it. We woke bright and early this morning at 5:30am to compete in the Firecracker 5K race. We are part of the Cat Financial Running Team and our race times are averaged out and compared against other companies for the Corporate Challenge. The team usually counts on Dayven's race time to help pull the average up, but not today. To save me from a coronary, he offered to push Wyatt in the jog stroller. He “slowed himself down” enough to run along side me for the first two miles, saying encouraging things like "Can't you go any faster?" and "You should really pick up the pace". By the time we had reached the two mile marker, he had decided it was just too painful for him to run that slow, so the boys took off and left me in the dust. If you’ve ever tried running with a jog stroller, I don't have to tell you it is like running with a bag of bricks. 18 lb turkey + 22 lb jog stroller + wind resistance + hills = BIG bag of bricks. Of course, Dayven took it in stride. Wyatt loved going fast and squealed at the top of his lungs as they whizzed by the other runners, hearing shouts of "hey man, can I hop in that thing!?" I ended up finishing it in 28:35, much slower than my boys. It's far from my personal record, but not bad, I guess, considering I haven't been getting much running in lately. We're not sure of Dayven and Wyatt's official time. His microchip, which calculates your time, was hooked on Wyatt's stroller (instead of his shoe) and the machine was unable to read it properly. Still, our team came in second place (Vanderbilt University took first). It sure felt good to get back in the game and I'm anxious to compete in the next race, with a faster time I hope.



We spent a couple of hours at the pool this afternoon but despite our efforts, Wyatt continues to have lukewarm feelings about swimming. He was a trooper, but he ended up having more fun sitting on the sidelines playing with his pool toys and watching the big kids do their thing.

Nashville has an amazing fireworks display, supposedly the 3rd best in the nation, after NYC and Washington D.C., but we decided to forgo the fireworks this year. We figured it wouldn't be much fun to battle the crowds with a crabby kid who was up way past his bedtime. Dayven grilled his famous cheese burgers and we washed them down with a cold beer. Wyatt even had his own miniature burger, cut up in Wyatt-size bites. There was quite a fireworks display going on right in our neighborhood, so we listened to the rumbles and the snap, crackle and pop from the cozy confines of our living room sofa. The perfect way to spend an evening in my book!