On Saturday 18th of June my 9 year old daughter Holly joined me for our first race together at our local park with Rainbow Run.  The route was out and back from around the Water Tower to the Sea Wall over looking the Suspension Bridge.  We dressed all in white and Holly cartwheeled to the start in excitement.

She ran quite a bit more up to and past the colour stations.  These were tremendously exciting and she made sure she got a good hit on each colour, green particularly – one of her favourite colours.  Her only real complaint was that her feet hurt half way through which seemed a relatively reasonable issue all things considering.

It didn’t matter about the time.  Holly found the very best bit getting her medal at the end and then going for an ice cream and victory lunch at Cafe Arabia afterwards.  She understood that she’d earned that and that is something that no one can ever take away from her.  The best bit for me was her saying that she wanted running shoes and to do it in fancy dress next year!  Running bug caught?  I think so!

(Photo credit: Faolan Alley)

As a 10.0 experience run my nutshell of this also got a mention in this weeks Marathon Talk as a kudos for parents getting kids into running.

Perhaps we’ll even get up for a Parkrun sometime 😉

Happy running!