There was a stretch of time where my entire family participated in marathon weekend. To be clear, no one ran the marathon, or even the half, or even the 10K. A 5K is a hard limit around here. A couple of times all four of us ran it — not together because our children were always faster than us — but in earlier shorter-legged years, the kids did the 1K Youth Run. In his younger days, my son had a tendency to treat each sports-like activity with the seriousness of an Olympic event, and the Youth Run was no exception.
Watching this race was always entertaining. There were kids like mine, running like a gold medal was on the line, there were walkers, wanderers, some with a grown up running buddy, some without (just released at the start with a hope that they followed the crowd and in fact ended up in the stadium). There were also always some marathon finishers still crossing the line — the folks who were not avid runners but they were going to accomplish every mile — and the crowd would erupt in cheers as they came through.
Anyhow, it’s a fun event. This year’s will be April 29th at noon. You can register kids aged 10 and under on the Illinois Race Weekend website. Beginning at 10 a.m., there will be a bunch of kid activities in the Great East Hall of the stadium.