My son, Matthew loves to work out while watching the “Biggest Loser.”  He does jumping jacks, weight lifting, sit-ups and push-ups in front of the tv.  It’s really inspiring.  One week, he even asked me to run around the house with him for 5 minutes.  He set the kitchen timer on the microwave and didn’t let me stop until it beeped.  He’s asked me to work out with him other times but I usually can find something else to do instead like doing dishes, laundry or looking busy.  I think he’s concerned about the “Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day” weight I’ve been carrying around.  I noticed once, he took his half eaten cheeseburger, out to the big trash can because he didn’t want me to eat it.  I’m not sure how many mothers out there do the dreaded, “Oh if you’re not going to finish that…”  He obviously didn’t want me adding his leftovers to my meal, but didn’t want to come right out and say it.

 Today, he asked me if I wanted to run around the track with him at his school.  He said, “We’ll run a mile without stopping.”  I said, “OK, I’ll see if I can do that.”

 ”Mom, you can do it, didn’t you run five marathons, those are 26.2 miles?”

“Well, I ran/walked them, I didn’t run the whole thing.”

 ”But I’m sure you ran more than a mile without stopping.”

 ”Well, sure I did, of course I did, but I trained.”

We walked to the school, which is around the corner from our house and Matthew explained that if I ran around 7 times, that would be a mile.  “SEVEN?,” I asked.  He took off and I followed.  I kept up (kind of) and I didn’t let him see me walk “too” much.  He told me I’d have to keep track of my own laps but I never let him lap me. When he completed his 7 laps, he sat on the grass and cheered me on, “You can do it, Mom.”  I knew I could especially with my cheerleader there to applaud me and tell me that I barely passed the 10-year old girl standard.  I don’t think that was a compliment but I sure took it as one.

I was reminded of the times he sat at water stations with his father while I trained for the marathons I did for Team in Training (Leukemia and Lymphoma Society).  He and other patients were my inspiration for pushing through to that next mile.  Our team raised money and ran marathons for patients and their families.  As I think back to my little Matthew sitting there watching me and not quite understanding why he had to yell, “Go Team!” every time people ran by with purple jerseys, I’m truly grateful that he is healthy, fit and still an inspiration to me to be the same.

As I headed toward home he high fived me and challenged me to run home, which I did without stopping!  Thank you, Matthew.