Monster Mash

Last Year's race shirt

Figured out the first of my fall races and signed up for the spooktacular Frankenthon Monster Marathon in October. I ran this last year as a build-up to Cactus Rose and it was a lot of fun with some really great swag. My friend Clea is also running it. She's a strong runner - a real speed pixie - so I'll certainly have my work cut out trying to keep up with her!!!

Some other race plans are in the works, but they will live or die depending on the outcome of various other happenings in the next few weeks.


We've started taking Gavin to gymnastics class on Wednesday evenings, and he absolutely loves it. Gymnastics is a fantastic base for any number of sports, and it's great fun too. We've been looking for somewhere to channel Gavin's almost limitless energy for a while, and I think this is it. He's been walking and running with Nancy and I ever since he was really small, often for several miles at a time, and it's very rewarding as a parent to see him reap the benefits of the healthy and active lifestyle we've tried to encourage.

Last week he was in the 5 to 8 year old class. They ran loops around the gym as a warmup, and Gavin lapped every other kid in the class - he just bolted out of the gate, never slowed down and ran with a huge sloppy grin on his face.

As a running dad, that really made my day.

The two girls who teach the class are great with the kids, and you could tell they were all having a blast. It's wonderful to see him do something that he enjoys and that he's really good at - you could just see the confidence pouring out of him as he bounced around.

And while he was enjoying the class, Dylan was enjoying running up and down the corridor outside, yelling up a storm and laughing his head off. Nancy and I traded out watching Gavin and trailing Dylan because he went for the entire hour - up and down, up and down, chattering away. Although his vocabulary is limited to "mamma", "dadda", "brother", "oatmeal" and "oh oh", he supplements with his own little language of grunts and yells.

I'd better keep myself in shape, otherwise they're both going to be leaving their old man in the dust.