No training words of wisdom today… other than Nike’s famous words: “Just do it” and a funny story.  I’m sitting here, showered and feeling good after a run/walk with a friend.  I really think the hardest part of exercising is motivating yourself to do it.  Last Thursday was especially hard, motivation wise, for me since my boys had off of school.  But I knew I needed to, so we headed to the park for a run.  My oldest decided he’d rather go into the library than run so that’s where he went.  My younger 2 decided to run with me.

My 7-year old is faster than me, so he was ahead of us as we ran around the park.  He’d run, stop and walk, notice us getting closer than start to run again.  This continued for 2 1/2 laps.  Then up ahead I see a police man get out of his car and approach my son.  He stopped my son, talked to him, and then my son continued running.  I wondered what he said to my son, as I was too far back to hear.  I then realized I wouldn’t have to wonder too long because the cop was now approaching me.

Of course my mind starts going 100 miles per hour (much faster than my legs) as I try to predict what the cop is going to say to me.  Am I a negligent mom for not keeping my son right next to me?  Is he going to report me to child protective services?  Is what I’m doing wrong?  The cop approaches me and for whatever reason I decide to not stop running.  Not that I was running away from the cop, but I let him walk next to me and talk while I continued running.

“Are you ___’s mom?”  “Yes I am.”  “He told me he’s exercising with his mom.”  “Yep, but he’s faster than me.”  “Well, I had to check because someone called us to report a child that looked lost running around the park.”  “Oh, no he’s not lost.”

I had to give him my name, date of birth, and address.  The cop assured me that I wasn’t in trouble, that he just had to follow-up on the phone call.  Before he left, he even praised us for exercising.  But by the time I got around to my son, he had quit and was sitting on a bench ready to go home, “Right now!”  Being stopped by a cop really freaked him out and he didn’t want to keep going.

I then started looking around at the other moms at the playground a little suspiciously (I assumed one of them didn’t think I was being a good mom and called the police).  I told my son, very loudly, that the police man said it was good that we were exercising and that we didn’t have to stop.   You see, this is a downtown park of our borough and there are always kids all over unchaperoned.  So it’s a little hard to believe that someone was worried about this 7-year-old boy who was obviously running laps around the park.   So I was feeling a little angry that someone had “the nerve” to call the police on me.

Of course there is an off-chance that someone really did think he was lost and was concerned and all.  If so, thank you, kind stranger, for caring enough about my son to call the police.  But regardless of whether your intentions were good or not, now my son doesn’t want to run again.   And that really stinks.

I guess that will have to motivate me to get faster so I can tell my son that I can keep up with him.

♥Becki

Update: So I just reread my post and I have to apologize for the tone… it’s just dripping with sarcasm and negativity – but my intention was for it to be a light-hearted, funny post.  Truly, I can laugh at the story… I mean how many people can say they were stopped by the police while running?  Do you have any funny exercise stories???