11-Year Old Perspectives on Running Races

I'm running a few races in March...a 5k and a half marathon. The half marathon is near Indianapolis and I signed up to do it with a friend. It also offers a quarter-marathon distance, if you do not want to run the half. I had never heard of a quarter-marathon before this race. Anyway, we are trying (unsuccessfully at the moment) to get another friend to run it with us. Our friend has run races before, so that is not the issue. I think he run a few miles every so often, so he is not out of shape. I can't figure out why he won't sign up.

The race is 45 days away, and I am (kindly) emailing him reasons every single day as to why he should run the race. However, I know that it is easy to not open up all of your emails, or read them. So, I sought the help of my wonderful 11-year-old students to help me accomplish my task. I have a lot of kids that ran cross-country in the fall so they were more than thrilled to help me out. Two of my students, "G" and "K", wrote the following reasons of why a person should run a race. They made me smile and laugh.

• Running for 5 minutes makes you feel like you can run around the whole world.
• Running is exercise and exercise is good for you.
• You get to talk to your friends when running a race.
• It makes you feel like you are on the red carpet because there are so many people cheering for you.
• Running to a shop is better than driving. Save the Earth!
• Running makes you feel relaxed.
• Running a race is tons of fun.

There were other reasons, but the ones mentioned above were my favorites. I especially like the fact that they think running for 5 minutes makes you feel like you can run around the world and how it makes you feel like you are on the red carpet. I hope it will help convince my friend to run the race. Maybe it is just me, but sometimes I wish I could see the world through the eyes of a child again.