Life is A Journey...Come Follow Our's: Racing With The Popes

When you're a Pope (a Brad and Maria Pope at least), there are certain expectations that you must live upto. One is that you'll be a quality citizen and maintain a good character. Another is that you'll enjoy being out on the boat. And one more is that you'll be physically active. Well my friends, Quinn is certainly living up to all three, but today, we're going to focus on the working out part since Quinn has now participated in his first 5K run and has been to his first Half Ironman Triathlon.

Quinn's first race took place on Labor Day as he and I participated in Run for a Child. This is my favorite 5K of the year in part because our friends The Andersons run the event and part because it's just a well organized race. This year was particularly fun because Quinn got to run it with Sara, Brenda, and me.

Sara, Maria, Brenda, and Quinn...Ready to Race

We were all out at the race at 7am for our 8am start time figuring we might want to warm up/ loosen up a little bit. As it turned out, only Quinn was doing much warming up as you can see in the video here:

When the race started Quinn was already worn out from his warm up and screamed the entire first mile. I can hear myself now telling him and the people we were passing "We don't cry when we're running" and "I swear I just fed him." Nonetheless, he cried until he fell asleep then it was all up to me to win the race. Brenda and I got to the 2 mile mark when the water station aids called out "Great job...you're only the second stroller." 2nd?!?!? Oh heck no...I was going to be the 1st stroller if I was that close...so I took off passing the 1st stroller and taking the lead. Turns out we were the first stroller finishers and 2nd finisher in my age group (stroller and all) with a time of 25:40. That's not that fast for a 5K, but it was fast enough for this race!

This past weekend, we travelled as a family up to Branson where Brad competed in his first ever Half Ironman Triathlon. A half Ironman consists of a 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile bike, and a half marathon (13.1 miles) for a total of 70.3 miles! Though Quinn and I were not able to watch the good majority of the race, we were there for Brad to cross the finish line with an incredible time of less than 6 hours (his goal!). Brad finished in the top 30% of his age group and we are all so proud of him. He trained really hard, followed his coach's plan to a "t", and really earned his time. Up next, no doubt, an Ironman in 2011!!