It took me three days to build the course.
Not because it was complicated. It wasn't. I was four and I was working with whatever was in the backyard, which meant I was mostly dragging things from one place to another and figuring out where they made sense as I went. It took three days because my arms got tired and I kept stopping to think about it, and also because on the second day my dad came outside and asked what I was doing and I told him I was building an obstacle course and he looked at it for a long moment and then said okay and went back inside, which I was grateful for.
By the end of the third day it was done.
I stood at the start and looked at it.
The first section was a weave through Hina's old bikes, two of them laid on their sides in a zigzag, plus my little red one propped up on its kickstand in the middle. After that was the leaf pit, a big pile I had raked up from under the tree in the back corner, packed in tight between two garden borders so you had to go through it and not around it. Then came the floor is lava section, which was the dead grass patch near the fence that my dad kept saying he would fix and never did, and I had laid out stepping stones across it using some flat rocks from the garden border and a Frisbee and the lid from a plastic storage bin. Last was a low crawl under the garden table, which I had draped an old bedsheet over so you actually had to go under instead of just stepping around it.
Kitchen timer on the back step. Start at the fence. Finish at the back door.
It was not a serious course. I knew that. It was toys and leaves and dead grass and a Frisbee. But it was what I had and I needed somewhere to actually move without breaking anything, and the backyard was big enough and had no furniture.
I went inside to get Hina.
* * *
She came outside, looked at the course, and immediately said she was going to destroy it.
"You have to run it first," I said. "I need a baseline."
She stared at me.
"A what?"
"I need to see how fast a normal person does it."
"Call me normal again."
"Hina."
She looked at the course again. I could see her actually thinking about it now, her eyes moving from the bikes to the leaf pit to the stepping stones to the table. Ten years old and already competitive about everything. I had been counting on that.
"Fine," she said. "But I get three tries."
"That is literally what I was going to ask you to do."
She grabbed the kitchen timer off the step, reset it, and handed it to me.
"Ready," she said.
I started the timer.
* * *
First run: two minutes and thirty seconds.
She hit the leaf pit too hard on the way in and sank up to her knees and had to pull herself out, which cost her a lot of time. She also misjudged the stepping stones and had to stop and rebalance twice. Under the table she went too fast and knocked the bedsheet off the corner and stopped to fix it, which I told her she did not have to do, and she said she was fixing it anyway.
She came out the other side breathing hard and put her hands on her knees.
"Two thirty," I said.
"I know. Again."
Second run: one minute and forty-five seconds.
She had learned the leaf pit this time, went in at an angle and kept her knees up. The stepping stones were faster because she remembered where the gaps were. She still knocked the bedsheet but she didn't stop for it.
She was already turning around before I finished saying the time.
Third run: one minute and one second.
That one was actually impressive. She moved through the bikes like she had memorized them, hit the leaf pit running and was out the other side in two steps, crossed the stepping stones without breaking stride, and went under the table flat and fast. She hit the back door with her palm and spun around with both arms out.
"One oh one," I said.
She pointed at me.
"Beat that."
[Good data. She improved significantly between run one and run three. Familiarity with the course matters. Pattern recognition is doing most of the work. Akira should not expect the same thing. His first run will be harder because he built it and still does not fully understand what his body does yet.]
I already knew I was going to be slower on the first run. I had figured that out watching Hina. Knowing a course and running a course were different things, and I had not run this one yet. My body was also new to me in a way I was still figuring out. Fast was one thing. Controlled and fast at the same time was another thing.
I set the timer.
Hina leaned against the back step with her arms folded, looking satisfied with herself.
I started.
* * *
The bikes went fine.
I threaded through them without touching any of them, which felt good, and I was moving fast enough that Hina made a small sound from behind me. But then I hit the leaf pit.
The problem was I went too fast into it. My front foot sank and I overcorrected and went sideways and ended up on one knee in the middle of it with leaves everywhere. I got up and pushed through but I had lost a lot of time and I could feel it.
The stepping stones were worse. I had set them far enough apart for a ten year old's stride, which was not my stride. My legs were short. First stone was fine. Second stone I had to jump to reach and landed with too much force and the stone shifted and I had to grab my own balance before I kept going. Third stone I skipped entirely and just ran across the edge of the dead grass, which felt like cheating but I was already behind.
Under the table I went too fast again and caught my shoulder on the leg of it and it scraped and I hissed through my teeth but kept moving.
I hit the back door.
Five minutes.
I stood there with my hands on my knees, leaves in my hair, a scrape on my shoulder, breathing harder than I expected to be.
[Five minutes, eleven seconds. For reference, Hina ran it in two thirty on her first attempt.]
I knew. I had the timer.
[I am not saying it to make you feel bad. I am saying it because you need the number. That is your baseline.]
Hina was trying very hard not to laugh. I could tell because she had her hand over her mouth and her shoulders were shaking.
"Not a word," I said.
She laughed anyway. She was ten. I wasn't really surprised.
I picked the leaves out of my hair and looked at the course. The shifted stepping stone. The crooked bedsheet. The rut in the leaf pit where I had gone in sideways.
Five minutes. Hina's third run was one minute and one second and she was ten years old with a quirk that made small electrical bursts and no particular reason to be fast.
I had Overdrive and I had run it in five minutes.
That was embarrassing. Not in a way that made me want to stop. In a way that made me want to run it again.
[He is not upset. Good. He is frustrated but he is redirecting it. That is the right instinct. The body is capable. The control is not there yet. Control comes from repetition. This is where we start.]
I reset the timer.
"Again," I said.
Hina stopped laughing.
"You want to go again?"
"Yeah."
She looked at me for a second. Something shifted in her face, less amused and more something else that I didn't have a word for yet.
"Okay," she said. She pushed off the step and stood up straight. "I'll time you."
She took the timer out of my hand.
I went back to the start.