Red Hook Run

Thursday night I went to the Red Hook running track. It’s a perfect 400 meter rubberized track. I asked my kids if they wanted to go with me and ride their bikes around the oval while I ran. I also asked my daughter to help me train by timing my speed intervals. She brought her stopwatch and clipbook to record my times for each interval I did.

It was a perfect night for a run - calm, cool and clear with a spectacular sunset approaching. My daughter camped out at one of the starting markers and got her clipboard ready to record my times. She wouldn’t let me go until she was perfectly ready to begin timing. My son got on his bike and started riding around with me while I did a warm up.

I had my scheduled workout printed on a sheet of paper. My daughter would check off every set as I completed it and record the time. She was using one of those freebie stopwatches which on occasion gave her trouble resetting. She was quite adamant about not letting me go until she could get the numbers back to zero. Eventually the thing wouldn’t reset at all, so we would let the stopwatch run up to the next minute mark and just subtract the time from the total for all subsequent sets.

My son would alternatively race me on his bike or run. I’d let him get way ahead of me and sprint to see if I could beat him to our agreed upon finish. During one of these races, my daughter wouldn't let me go until she could reset the stopwatch. By the time I got going I had to run all out in order to make the race close.

I had run some hard sets and by the time I was done, I was tired. My kids were also tired from running around the track. For a cool down we all walked around the track one last time while the sun was finally setting. We then left for home where we each had a bowl of ice cream.