As Mary Beth has stated, one of our great family traditions has been a local road race on Thanksgiving morning while Mom is home hard at work on the feast for the day. So, eight of us entered the BGCM Turkey Day 5K. One of my stated goals for today was to “keep Hunter in sight”. He and I have run portions of several 5K and 8K races together over the past few years. But, after doing a few workouts together in the last month I knew that he was looking a whole lot faster than his granddad. I have prodded him several times in the last two years about being the first grandchild to beat Big Daddy in a race. He would have easily done that in September at the Swim for Drew across Lake Murray but I had chosen to do the Outer Banks Triathlon that weekend. Oh, by the way, he earned a varsity letter this year for swimming at LHS. Well, this morning he ruined one of my goals before we even got to the one mile mark. At that point, he was already out of my sight. I was pushing pretty hard while listening to my two girls chatting right behind me. A thought ran through my head, “oh my, I’m going to get beat by the girls and Hunter in the same day”. On a recent track workout, Hunter was consistently doing 800’s 15 seconds faster than me. So, last night I calculated 15 seconds times six halves is 1:30. He beat me by 1:27 today. Hey, I’m still better at math than he is. Hunter ran a 2:02 minute PR, finished in 22:17, placed 4th in his age group, and never let Big Daddy catch another glimpse of him after 3/4 mile. Since I failed on that one goal I had to fall back to a few alternate goals that I had, have a good time running with my children and grandchildren, don’t get hurt doing a 5K, smile as I cross the finish line and burn enough calories to feast on Jackie’s wonderful Thanksgiving meal. Christi was the only one of Team Whetstone  to come away with an award, but we all enjoyed celebrating with her. Peyton, you’re next, or are you going to let Hagin have that honor?

Michael Whetstone