And they're off!!

Training for the OneAmerica 500 Festival Indy Mini-Marathon began yesterday, with Meelyn and my husband beginning their alternating three days/four days per week running schedule. Yesterday, they both ran two miles, a paltry distance for them. This distance will increase to twelve miles the week before the Mini (which is held the first Saturday in May).

Last night, my husband and I were talking about their training and how excited he was that Meelyn was starting off this year on such a positive note. "Last year at this time, she couldn't even run a mile," he reminisced. "This year, she ran the entire two miles on our first day of training and didn't stop to walk even once."

He then went off into a riff on his running times and how he hopes to improve the time he achieved at the Indy Marathon last October -- he did the half-marathon and completed the course in 2:10, which is the same time he achieved at the 2006 Mini. He and Meelyn had a time of just over three hours for the 2007 Mini, their pace slowing up a lot after Mee developed that blister at the sixth mile.

He worries me when he talks about running times. It seems to imply that he plans to leave Meelyn in the dust. I said this to him and he gave me an inscrutable look.

"You don't seem to really understand what I'm telling you about Mee's training, do you?" he asked.

I was uncertain. "No, I guess I don't."

"My point with telling you about how well she did with her training is to bring to your attention to the fact that if there's going to be any leaving in the dust, it's going to be her leaving me, not the other way around. If it doesn't happen at the Mini this year, it will definitely happen the next time we run together."

Amazing! To think that the very same baby who flatly refused to crawl and who showed a supreme disinclination to ever get up on her own two feet and walk when there was a staff there on hand (me, Daddy, Nanny, Poppy) to carry her, is now old enough and athletic enough to outrun her muscular, cardio whiz-kid of a dad.