My daughter isn’t hiding her face…just wiping sweat at the time I took the picture.

I’ve never been one to sign my kids up for something they’re not interested in or make them do something they don’t want to do.

When it comes to running, I’ll ask if they’re interested, and all three of them have been somewhat interested at separate times, but if they lose interest (as they have) I won’t push it.

But my youngest daughter is the first to come back around on it….although in fairness, she never totally lost interest.

We’ve run together a few times, me and her.

We ran the Thanksgiving morning race together here in Framingham back in 2023…and she wanted to run it again with me this year. (She may only want the shirt…but she understands she has to run the race in order to get the shirt.)

She did want to do some practicing ahead of time, so we ran 3 miles together Sunday morning.

She’s been running quite a bit - she did a bunch of running with the field hockey team in the fall, and she’s been going for a mile or so on the tread every so often for her own conditioning.

So 3 miles is still a little intimidating for her.

We did 5 minutes at a jog and then 1 minute walking, and then slowed it down a bit more towards the end.

We’ll probably do something similar next week, and on race day. (It’s less than ideal that we’re only doing it a couple of weeks before the race, but that’s how our schedules worked out.)

And if we run the Thanksgiving 5K and she decides she doesn’t want to run that far again for another couple of years, so be it.

One of the big reasons I can’t force my daughters to love running is because I didn’t love running until I was older - when I was their age it was not something I was interested in at all.

Maybe when they’re in their twenties the interest will be there - or maybe my youngest will continue with it now.

Either way, I’ve enjoyed the brief times I’ve been able to run with each of my girls in their youth.

As they get older, maybe we’ll be able to run together some more - and maybe on my future long runs I’ll be able to have them join me for even a few of the miles. (Or maybe they can tag team and run a few miles each!)