So after a late night at a big family party, I was planning a little trot later on in the day when our youngest visitors had headed home. All would be nice and peaceful, with just my parents-in-law staying. Just before lunchtime we took sis-in-law and her 3 children over to the next village to the cycling festival they were having. The children are full of energy (as young children are) and we thought they could have a go on their scooters, play in the ace playground and burn off some energy before having to sit in the car for a long trip home.
The plan was going well, they scootered in the school’s playground (have you ever seen a 3 year old bunny-hop on a scooter? Quite impressive. And scary!) Then we headed to the playground were 3 year old made a bee-line for the swings, and 6 & 8 year old headed to the zip line, with my son in attendance. A few minutes later, we saw a child fall from the zip wire and with a sickening jolt we realised that was my oldest nephew.
He was shocked and crying, but concious, so as his mum sat him down to give him a chance to recover, I suggested hissiblings ran races to amuse themselves. When middle child was bored of beating his little sister, I joined in and the three of us raced across the field, then I cheated and carried little sister on the return journey (being very careful not to trip and cause more injuries) and also to let big brother win (most important!). I then told him that although he was faster than me, I could carry on running for a very long time if I had to (just to make me feel better at being beaten!)
The end result was that my nephew has broken his arm and will need to be in a splint for 4 weeks. He’d been very brave, and we were all very relieved that he was going to be okay. Obviously at this point popping on my running stuff and heading off for some “me-time” didn’t seemed the right thing to do in the circumstances, so I’m going to take my “nephew & niece-race” as my Juneathon activity for the day.
And I still need to sort my poorly car out – but that’s for another day, and hopefully it won’t take so long it messes up another running day!
Oh and just to cheer us all up, cuddly kitten pic of the day:-