Who needs practice?

A couple weeks ago Hot Wheels mentioned that it's been a long time since he's had a running race, so he'd like to do another one. As luck would have it there's a race next Sunday, with Spiderman no less, and it's close to my brother-in-law's house, so his cousin will likely come to run as well. He's mentioned a few times that he needs to practice and he'll run laps of the house. Then every now and then we have weeks like this. Wednesday we went apple picking and to a corn maze at a big farm where the kids ran around plenty (although not in the maze, they did follow the no-running rule there), Thursday night we met up with friends at the playground and the boys ran around for almost three hours- sunset was 6:24pm and we left about 6:40pm. Yesterday a bunch of boys from his class all met up at the local park after pre-school, there was two hours of non-stop chasing, running, jumping, etc and last night we were at my friend's house where the boys ran around the yard with her three kids for another two hours. It was so much activity this week and I didn't think they'd be up for running at the boardwalk this morning. Of course they were, and they wanted to play on the beach as well, you guessed it, running. I had Cutie in the baby carrier and for a while I had Superman on my back along the boardwalk, there's a decent workout for walking. On the beach I did some walking lunges, with Cutie still in the carrier, and I was reminded in ungraceful fashion that my quads are quite weak. Something to work on when I get back to the gym. It did remind me that I can get in a bit more exercise than I have been, little opportunities arise all the time and I ignore them. But I'm fine with that for now. On the way home from the boardwalk this morning, Hot Wheels mentioned that he hasn't practiced much for his race next weekend, it made me laugh. He's excited about another race, he really hopes to beat Spiderman, I'm not sure how fast Spiderman is.

On another note, if I could take a picture of their shins it would be embarrassing to show how many bruises the boys both have. At least they were all self-inflicted through activity. Then I look down at my own shins and realize they have likely inherited my complete lack of grace. But if they've got my determination they'll make it through the bruises and be active anyway.