Presidential Fitness Award

{May 21, 2010}

1st Grade is the first year that you can try to get the Presidential Fitness Award. Our wonderful P.E. teacher gives them a paper at the first of the school year giving us all of the things they need to accomplish to get their award. Marcus was able to pass everything off before Christmas break, so we were just waiting for the final thing which was running the mile. A couple of months ago we got the permission slip that we had to fill out allowing our children to run the mile. We could choose he could run 1 mile in 9 min & 22 sec or 1/4 mile in 1 min 48 sec. Mrs. B told us that the mile is easier to pass off, so that is what we signed up for.

I had really high hopes to help him train for it, thinking maybe this is the one time in my life that I will learn to run because I will be doing it for my son! Well it was horrible weather for the weeks leading up to it and Carson had just left so we were trying to get used to our "new" life. The week of we tried it out he hated every second of it, so after much complaining he got through the mile in 10 min and 30 sec. We tried it again and that time their was more complaining, so he got done in 13 min! I was really nervous for him because I knew how upset he would be if his friends did it and he didn't. Well the night before came and he had a birthday party to go to and he claimed he "hurt" his knee and would be unable to run the 1 mile run. After talking about it quite a bit he finally asked me what this award was all about and I told him it was an award from President Obama. He then proceeded to tell me that he sure wished that other guy would have won because he didn't care to get an award from him!!!!

The morning came and there was some serious crying and throwing fits. My parents offered to each pay him 5 dollars if he would just try! We were able to go over and cheer him on, I was very nervous and excited for him! You could tell he was quite nervous, but once they said go I was so impressed with how well he did. He ran and ran! I only saw him walk two different times for like 3 steps each time. We were so excited for him when he ended up running his mile in 8 minutes and 58 seconds! That is 24 seconds faster then what he needed to do!!! The best part was he wasn't trying to over run and be faster then everyone, I love that attribute about him, he is very comfortable with who he is! And he was soooo proud with his accomplishment!

Marcus and his friend Jarett