One thing I’ve learned over the past few years of parenting is that your children pick up your bad habits quickly. One slip of the tongue and your child is suddenly has the mouth of a sailor. Sit in front of the TV one minute too long on the weekend and you’re raising the next ESPN Ultimate Couch Potato on your hands.

Thankfully, it seems that my healthy running habit is what’s rubbing off on Henry. Perhaps it counters the unhealthy video game obsession he has. “Wanna play Mario Kart Wii? No? Let’s play Rock Band! Daddy, can you play Man (his name for TeamFortress 2)? You can be pyro!”

On the 4th this year I ran in the Ladera Ranch Freedom Run 10K and Henry was dying to do the 1K Firecracker race for kids. “I’ll run like you, Daddy!” Emma grudgingly participated despite complaining, “Ewww… I don’t like to get sweaty!”

I ran an acceptable 54:50 myself and then walked with Emma, Henry and Marla over to the 1K starting line. They had an excellent warm-up courtesy of a personal trainer in Ladera and then we all went to the start line.

We managed to avoid being trampled at the beginning and I followed Henry. He set a blistering pace at the beginning, passing lots of others. As we hit the 500m mark, other children were getting tired but Henry was just getting warmed up. We rounded the corner with 200m to go and he unleashed his “kick”. His finish time for the 1K was a blistering 4:16 (about 7:55 minute mile). This boy has potential!

Afterwards we cooled off with a little splashing in the back yard before packing up to head to watch the fireworks at the lake in Rancho Santa Margarita. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset and then a pretty good fireworks show for a small community.