Keeping Up With The Siblings

As the youngest child and only girl in my family, I always wanted to do whatever my big brothers were doing. Whether playing Laser Tag, watching Magnum PI or being a member of the Pac Man Club in our neighbor's garage attic, I wanted to be where they were. A five year gap with Topher and a seven year gap with Greg understandably meant neither one wanted their little sister hanging around. As adults, I'm happy to say that we have all become friends and ,while they still tease me mercilessly, Greg and Toph do let me hang out with them. One of the things that has brought us closer together has been running.

None of us were what you would call athletic growing up. Greg played soccer as a kid and bowled in high school, Toph joined the football team freshman year of high school an did a little weight lifting and I bounced between soccer, basketball, karate, and whatever else piqued my interest. Most of our extracurriculars were slightly dorkier pursuits like, marching band, the school paper and, in my case, The Spartan Morning Newscast. Despite that pedigree, we all found running in our 30's. My brothers were first to start running about five years ago and I attempted to join them when Topher was inspired by the infamous Krispy Kreme Challenge held each year in Raleigh to create the Dover Donut Dash. The four mile course was an out and back from Greg's house with a stop at our parents at the two mile mark to consume six glazed Dunkin Donuts. Since then, we've moved on to more sophisticated races like the annual Dogfish Dash in Milton, Delaware, the Air Force Navy Half Marathon and the Seashore Classic. In all of these races, they have smoked me. Hopefully, I can beat them at our next competition.

 This summer, we've decided to take our Patterson Sibling race team on the road to compete in the Mad River Half Marathon and Relay in Waitsfield, VT. Toph will  be running the Half and Greg and I, because Greg refuses to train for a Half, will compete in the Half Marathon Relay. While we're all pretty confident in our abilities to run the distance, it's the elevation that scares us flatlanders.

I'm hoping some hill interval work will help me prepare for the race. Unfortunately, for my brothers, there are no hills to speak of where they live. No matter what, I'm sure we'll have a great time as always. It's amazing that more that more than 20 years after Greg and Toph left home for college, I still want nothing more than to keep up with them.