Innocence

Tonight I ran the stairs at Long Beach and got a surprising treat.  My goal was to run 20 sets of stairs, then run on the bluff for a bit.  Well on my 8th set a large family comes along at the bottom of the stairs to leave the beach.  The mother is getting everyone accounted for, baby out of stroller, and then continues up the stairs.  There were 3 little boys, a little girl, and the baby the mother was carrying.  This is just to give you a little background on what I was working with.

Now, as I work on my 9th set one of the little boys excitedly asks "Can I race you?"  I was like what?  Race? Can't you see I'm an old lady and barely making it up and down these stairs?  He may have been about 6 and his name was Arthur.  Since I was still working on my 20 sets and was going back up anyway so I said ok.  Even though he was only about 6 or so, I barely beat Arthur. LOL!  He was on fresh legs though! :-)  Then his other slightly older brother wants to race me too!  I guess his thought was she barely beat my little brother, I know I can beat her.  And he does because a sista was tired.  Then the little sister, Kimberly wanted to race me too!  It's hard trying to race a 4 year old. Lol!  Then the oldest brother wanted to race me.  I could tell by looking at him that he probably did not play much.  He had to stop on the second flight of stairs, so I tried to encourage him and let him know that sometimes we need to take a break and regroup before you start again.  They were all cutie pies and it was definitely a surprise to have them all getting involved with a complete stranger.  I started to lose count of my sets because the kids kept wanting to race me and I was distracted.  So I'm sure I did more than 20 sets, but I'll stay on the conservative side.  Afterwards I ran for 15 minutes on the bluff.

The kids reminded me of my childhood and how we would race each other and make up games to play.  So tonight, instead of being a pain, the stairs were a treat  all due to childhood innocence.  Thanks for the refreshing reminder kids!

Enjoy the journey!