I’m a Bobcat now. I’m a feral, crazy, vicious animal! All because I switched schools this year. I used to be a Husky, but now that I’m at my new school, I’m a wild thing! 🙂 Today the bobcats had their fun run. I was rather impressed with my superstar second graders: they exceeded their goal of $750 and raised almost 1000 dollars for our PTSA! We celebrated that with an extra free choice time yesterday and a fun run today.
Whenever there is an opportunity to work out while on the clock, I always jump at it. So this morning, I woke up, got dressed, and packed the clothes I would need for a solid run into my go bag and prepared myself to run for real at the fun run.
The first roadblock happened on the way down the hill away from my house, still in my car. I realize I forgot my inhaler in my bathroom. I put my brave face on until I got into my classroom, read the schedule and realized that I was going to be outside for nearly two hours. I either had to run for the entirety of the run, or I had to run for a portion of the time and then stand around outside in the cold air, and I had failed to pack my running jacket. I was going to be standing around in my humongous PTSA t-shirt, running pants and my dress jacket on the track, or shivering. Classy. But still, I thought, no problem. I can do this.
During my morning break I whined to Bradley via text. Ever my superhero, he sprang into action and brought me my inhaler and two jackets. Two old jackets. Two jackets that hang in my closet because I loved them when I was a beginning runner and I’m sentimental about them, but they are huge. Coupled with my huge sail of a Tshirt (there was a size mixup) and I felt heavily laden with clothing. Again, my superhero sprang into action, went to Target and bought me a brand-new running top! He wished me a happy early birthday and took off to deliver Gigi’s helmet before gym class. Our hero…
It certainly changed my outlook.
The run itself was very fun. Our awesome PE teacher set up a bunch of stations around the track. While mileage was encouraged, the idea was simply to stay active for the whole time. Kids could run obstacle courses, do ball kicks and a bunch of other stuff, and enter their data into a drawing for prizes. It was really neat. I ran almost the whole time. I forgot my inhaler in my classroom and had to run back to get it, but after that got taken care of, I ended up running about 4.5 miles, or 17 laps. I had one little girl who stuck it out with me for well over a mile. I was so impressed with her tenacity and willingness to take it slow, rather than burning out in a sprint. I kept turning in surprise that she was still there with me every time I turned around. What a sweetheart!
It was so much fun to run and play and sweat with all of my students. I had several kids who I didn’t know who ran with me for a bit and made conversation with me. I felt very included in my new, school community, today, and just plain good. Today started out a little bit hard but ended up just totally excellent. Thank you, Bobcats!