There comes a time in every parent's life when you have to stare down the barrel of your kids surpassing you. I thought I had more time, but as I huffed around 5k with my nine-year-old son this morning, I realised I have a big decision to make; do I get myself fitter so I can keep up with and inspire my child to improve his own times, or do I start putting lead in his water?

There is a rule in parkrun: any child under the age of 11 must be in sight of a responsible adult. Now I think I might already be pushing the "responsible" bit, but soon I'll be struggling with the "in sight" part. When I was learning to drive, my instructor said, "In stationary traffic, a good rule for how far away from the car in front you should be is that you should just about see their wheels in the windscreen". And upon my first attempt at this, he said "when I said just about see the wheels, I didn't mean with a pair of binoculars".

But next time I'm bringing binoculars.

Back in the olden days, when I was beating kids for fun, you could rely on them racing away too fast at the start and then collapsing into heaps after 5 minutes, and you could easily pick them off. Some of them were better trained, learning the parkrun secret, "don't set out like a fucknugget", which I had hoped the boy would do, because there is nothing more satisfying as a parent than telling your child they are doing life wrong.

On the back of 4 parkruns and a 2-minute improvement in each, it was unlikely that it would happen again. Nowadays, 28 minutes is comfortable enough for me. I don't run many minute miles that start with an 8 anymore.

We started, and he was keen to overtake a few people at the start, but every time he did, he'd look over his shoulder to make sure I was still there. I have a much bigger turning circle and slower turn of pace; it was like an oil tanker trying to keep up with a little zippy moped in a busy street.

I told him we needed to run each mile in about 9 minutes to get the 28 he wanted; the first was in 8.22. That was way too fast; he'll pay for that later. And that was with high-fiving every low-hanging branch of the trees on the back straight.

The course is two laps, and at the end of the first lap, he said, "I need to drink some water", and took a swig from his bottle. I was a bit disappointed that he felt like you need to drink in a run like this, but was happy to slow down for a few seconds. The second mile was done in 8.19. Faster!

It was around this time last week that I asked him, "You've done 3k out of 5k, what is that as a percentage?". He's usually good at that kind of thing, but instead of giving me the answer straight off, he huffed and puffed and said "dunno". So I'll be upping his cardio maths from 2 hours a week to four.

There was some slowing down in the last mile; a few others overtook us. It was nice to see him smacked in the face a bit by reality. He plays a lot of Roblox, where you can become a quintillionaire within days, selling pumpkins or being able to bench press a juggernaut by pressing "train" a few dozen times. Running improvement doesn't happen like that; it's slow and jerky and sometimes goes backwards. That said, it's been smooth sailing so far. At this rate, he'll be running in the Olympics in a month. Before Christmas, he will cause some massive singularity in Great Denham Park as he completes the two loops faster than light. The whole village gets swallowed up in a ravenous black hole.

The last mile was a little slower, 8.25, but he was going for his sprint finish and I left him to run on his own, y'know, cos I'm nice like that. I huffed over the line about 10 seconds after, with the volunteers giving me as big a WELL DONE as he, because clearly, I looked like I needed it more.

You probably know the whole point of running is to eat junk treats at the end. I was about to head to the cafe and get myself a well-earned coffee, and I asked if he wanted a snack. He said "nah, I'm ok". He seemed to just be happy with the glow of a job well done, a PB, a marker of his progress and the straightforward enjoyment of running. He didn't need any snacks or gimmicks to make it better.

Kids these days?

That will all change when I get him on Strava.

Reminded me of a week earlier when I was playing the Game of Life with his twin sister. I won the game, according to the rules, because by the end, I had the biggest house, the most money, and no dependents. She faffed around, filling her life with loved ones, taking a late retirement to change careers as an artist and ended up retiring in a little beach cottage with a car full of hamsters. And then she tries to convince me that she won??

Kids are so stupid.

RunningandStuff