I Raced My 10 Year Old for $1000 and Lost
Lessons were learned.
Thanks to a potent cocktail of hubris and an inability to recognise my own physical decline, for the last four years I’ve been locked in a very real, high stakes $1000 foot race against my now 10-year-old son.
What does that mean exactly? Well, four years ago I told my son that I would literally give him $1000 if he ever beat me in a sprint. We’ve been racing ever since.
Why did I do this? I wish to God I could remember. Because I thought it was funny? Because I thought it would teach him hard lessons about hard work paying off?
But if I’m being completely honest I most likely did this because I was 1000% convinced he would forget about it in a couple of weeks.
He didn’t. He remembered. He absolutely remembered. And I’ve been in a world of pain ever since.
The Beginning
Alright, let’s start at the beginning.
The year was 2019. My then six-year-old son, bolstered by a growing obsession for Beyblades and Pokemon cards, began asking my wife and I how he could make his own money. We looked at one another, eyebrows raised. Could this represent a potential teaching opportunity? Was it time to start figuring a weekly allowance? Should we start paying him for doing chores around the house?
I had a brainwave.
How about, I suggested, we let our son "earn" money by setting a series of goals he could work towards and potentially achieve. Any goal was fine: academic, athletic, artistic. He could learn his times table for $10. Or do 20 pull ups without stopping for $20. As long as the goal represented a challenge and encouraged some sort of personal growth, we’d go for it.
Great idea, my wife agreed. Let's do it.
We built a reward system operating on scale. If the task was easier to achieve, the reward was lower. At six he earned a couple of dollars for teaching himself how to spell his favourite word, "dragon." One month later, after weeks of practice, he earned $20 for teaching himself to land a backflip on a trampoline. Stuff like that.
But at some point, my son asked me a question that would haunt me for the next four years.
“Daddy, how much if I beat you in a race?”
Some context: My son is fast. Very fast. He learned to walk at 10 months and was properly running a month later. He’s been a beast from day one. I’d hear it all the time from other parents at the playground: “He's quick isn't he?" "He's really coordinated." “What are you feeding this kid?”
I’d always tell them he gets it from his daddy.
Because once upon a time I was also fast. In a childhood filled with impromptu sprints, I don't remember losing a race once. In high school I did the track and field sweep, winning the 100 meter, the 200 meter, the high jump and the long jump.
But that was a long time ago. As of 2023, I'm 42, still in decent shape -- albeit less explosive with a bum right knee. But in my imagination I am still that 15-year-old kid, bounding past competitors like a pasty Scottish gazelle.
"Daddy, how much?"
And that’s when it happened. That’s when the hubris kicked in.
"$1,000," I replied. "I will give you one thousand dollars if you ever beat me in a race. You'll never beat me. Ever. I'll crawl from my death bed to beat you."
His eyes lit up.
"$1,000?" He whispered to himself, trying to parse this impossible number with childlike wonder. Or calculating how many Pokémon booster packs it would get him.
"That's right," I said, again.
"One thousand dollars."
You’re Next
We established a loose set of rules for the race.
First off, it was a sprint. He couldn’t ask for a 5km or 10km race, for example.
Secondly, the race had to be agreed to beforehand:
“Yes, we’re racing for the thousand dollars.”
“Yes, we’re racing to that agreed upon point 70 meters in the distance.”
Someone else had to witness it, or officiate it. That was key. I didn’t want to be beaten on a bizarre technicality in a race I didn’t agree to. He couldn't employ trickery or dart off without forewarning and claim he beat me. This was serious business. This was for $1000.
But, in the meantime, my son also negotiated a race with my wife, his mother. One with slightly lower stakes: $20.
A month or so later, just before bath time as the sun set, my son challenged my wife to an official race. She's not much of a sprinter, but she put up a fight. In the last 10 meters my son dropped the hammer. He cruised to victory. At 6 years old he was the second fastest person in our house.
What happened next remains burned, etched deep into the folds of my decaying hippocampus.
He took the $20 note from my wife, folded it neatly into his little dinosaur wallet. He turned back and pointed at me with a tiny, determined finger.
"You're next."
A Literal Nightmare
I raced my son frequently over the years. His dark, serious face obscured by a fringe of loose curls, flapping in the wind.
He’s a strange case, my son. He emerged from the womb tanned and wiry, with pistons for legs. Over the years he developed into a frighteningly gifted athlete. He’s the state rock climbing champion, plays soccer at a high level, and spends every waking minute ping ponging around the house like he’s in an episode of Ninja Warrior. He’s good at almost every sport he tries. When he was 9 years old he caught COVID-19. Instead of resting, spent the time off school successfully teaching himself to do a standing backflip in our front yard.
My situation was a little different. I’d just turned 38 years old when I agreed to the race. Still fast…ish, but clearly at the beginning of a slow physical decline.
But I was still in decent shape and the races were easy at first. I’d slow down to make him think it was competitive then peel away at the last minute. I wanted him to believe it was possible, to push to his absolute limit.
But when he was 9 years old, something changed. I remember it vividly. We went for a quick 5km run in the reserve near our house and he was just different. His strides seemed more purposeful, powerful. He kept a pace he was physically incapable of before. He was a different animal.
At that point we hadn’t raced in a while. I couldn't remember the last time he even mentioned the $1,000. I remember making a mental note to myself: The next time we raced I’d go full speed – 100% – just to make a point.
Just weeks later we had our first race in around three or four months. I remembered that mental note: 100% power, no mercy. Time to teach my son a lesson, show him how far he was from defeating his old man.
His friend did the countdown. We were off.
I was like a coiled spring. I went full pelt, huge strides, good technique. Running at this speed, I usually stripped away from my son with relative ease. This time was different. Halfway through the race I looked back to see how far ahead I was. But he wasn't behind me…
He was right alongside me.
Literal nightmare scenario.
When in the fuck did he get this fast? I tried to accelerate but I couldn't -- I was already blowing a gasket, nothing left in the tank. I went into full panic mode. This little bastard might actually beat me.
I made it. Barely. In what amounted to a 70-meter sprint, I beat him by maybe half a meter? That was me running at full speed, no mercy.
I looked at my own son in disbelief. How did this happen? He was just a kid. A 9-year-old kid. What the hell happened to me? Was he getting much faster or was I getting slower? It had to be a combination of both.
That's when I looked down and noticed: He wasn't wearing any shoes. He'd been running in his bare feet the whole time.
My son had almost defeated me in a race without any shoes on.
Breaking Point
Watching your children develop is a wild process. Some changes occur over long periods of time, others happen overnight.
My son is 10 now. In the 12 months since that close call we raced a lot. Some days it was close, other days I beat him by a decent margin. Those times were tough for him. He’d go silent on the car journeys home, discouraged and sullen. “I’m getting slower,” he’d whisper quietly, fighting back tears.
And sometimes it did feel like he was getting slower. After growth spurts he’d seem less coordinated – like a strange flamingo figuring out how to control his newly stretched out limbs.
But there were also times when he made stratospheric leaps instantly. Signs of what was to come. I remember two specific incidents.
The first was in May this year. Our extended family did a 5km fun run for charity. All the adults and kids took part. At the horn, my son took off at an ungodly pace. I went slower, assuming I’d catch up as he ran out of steam. He didn’t. I finished the race just under the 30 minute mark. He finished in 23 minutes.
I couldn’t believe it. I had a feeling he could beat me in a longer distance race – but seven minutes? I was shocked.
His athletics carnival was a few weeks afterwards. I watched on as he dominated. Obliterating big strong kids who were a year older than him. It had been a few months since our last race at that point. The evidence was starting to stack up. That night I went home and took a long, hard look at myself in the mirror. A few more pounds on the old belly. A bit more junk in the proverbial trunk. The spring in my legs was gone. I knew it was now a matter of when, not if.
There was an air of finality about our last race.
We’d just got done playing soccer together with a group of friends. The sun was setting. In the encroaching darkness he uttered the words I’d been dreading for weeks: “Let’s race.”
I went quiet. For the first time in four years of racing my son, I was nervous. But I had to go through with it. We established the race parameters and it was on. My walk towards the start point was a funeral march.
The tension was palpable. A friend counted us down. My heart was thudding in my chest, adrenaline flooded my legs.
Ready.
Set.
GO!
In my terror, I slipped. I landed face first on the cold grass. Pathetic. My son – a good sport – stopped, I picked myself up. “That doesn’t count,” I howled, like a wounded antelope. “THAT ONE DOESN’T COUNT.”
Okay, let’s go again.
The second time I got lucky. A good start. I was on. I ran what I can only describe as a perfect race for a man of my increasingly limited abilities.
But halfway through I looked across: my son was right there. Right at my shoulder at the precise moment I felt myself flagging. I was overcome with desperation, drowning in the knowledge that this was no longer in my control. That the fate of this race was in the lap of the gods.
In the end it was tight. Very tight. In my heart of hearts I knew I lost that race. But it was close enough for me to scream, “A DRAW! A DRAW!”
At that moment, my son knew he had me.
“Okay, let’s go again then,” he replied coolly.
“What… right now?” I asked.
“Right now.”
“You don’t need a break?” I asked, almost pleading.
“I don’t need a break,” he replied. “Do you need a break?”
I did in fact need a break but I agreed to a second race anyway.
This time it wasn’t even close.
I don’t remember much, just the feeling of it. A feeling you only have in nightmares. Running from an ill-defined monster, legs churning in quicksand. A rising claustrophobia paralyzing every muscle in your body, flooding your organs with a profound terror. Only this time the monster was my own son. And he wasn’t behind me. He was in front of me. Two meters in front of me, and gaining ground fast. I knew I couldn’t keep up. I knew I didn’t have it in me. My body was crumbling.
It was over. I lost.
The End
I fell over the finish line and lay on the ground for a couple of minutes, cackling hysterically .
My 10 year old son approached. He grabbed my arm, lifted me up and pulled me into a massive, sincere hug. He was in shock, complete disbelief. We both were. He kept wandering around in circles: “I did it. I did it. I did it.”
I was feeling it all. Pride, sadness, nostalgia. Relief was part of it, for sure, but above all I was content. Subconsciously, maybe even consciously, I wanted to lose this race. In some ways this race was designed specifically for me to lose.
And in the end I was fine with that. On some level I knew this was inevitable. I knew my son would get faster as I got slower. That the lines plotted on this cursed graph would one day cross over, but this race -- this infernal race -- pulled at twin blind spots in my parental psyche.
First, the refusal to accept the ravages of age. There's a difference between knowing your body is slowly decaying and truly understanding it. It's the reason punch-drunk boxers come out of retirement for "one last fight." In our minds we're always at the peak of our powers. In our absolute prime.
Secondly, it's almost impossible to really imagine our children growing up, getting older in the same way everyone gets older. In my mind I'm still the same teenager, galloping past everyone at speed. My son, too, is frozen in my imagination. He'll always be my baby boy, the 6-year-old spending weekends teaching himself to backflip on a trampoline.
Everyone is getting older all of the time. This race was a physical manifestation of that grand truth. Yesterday I was rocking my son to sleep in the dead of night, today he conclusively crushed me in a 70-meter sprint. Children are a living, breathing reminder of the passage of time. And our own mortality.
I Got Faster
Now all that was left was the money.
My son barely mentioned the $1000. Didn’t ask for it, didn’t badger me. He was content to bask in the victory of beating his dad’s old ass in a footrace. I was the one that brought it up, a few days later.
Over the course of the last four years, people regularly asked me what I’d do when my son inevitably defeated me. Would I actually give him the money? Or would I put it in some sort of trust fund and let him have it when he was older? That always felt indescribably lame to me, the worst kind of “Dad move.”
I always intended to give it to him. That was always part of the plan. Allow him to fold $1000 into his tiny dinosaur wallet and let the chips fall where they may. And that’s precisely what I did. We drove to the bank and opened his very first bank account. I transferred the money to him that night.
In the weeks and months before our final race, I began to reflect. I knew that what happened after he won the $1000 would be just as important as earning the money in the first place. How often does a 10 year old get given that amount of money with no strings attached? This would become a core memory for him, make no mistake. A once in a lifetime opportunity. I truly believe that what he does next could potentially define the type of adult he’ll ultimately become.
Turns out he already has a plan.
He plans to put the money into three distinct buckets. One for spending and one for saving. The third bucket? That’s the one that made me realise maybe – just maybe – I’d done a half decent job of raising this kid.
He wants to give a third of his money away to those who need it most.
To who? He hasn’t decided yet, but I did catch him on an iPad researching charities that help the homeless, so that’s a safe bet. He’s a beautiful boy, truly. Maybe the most important lesson I’ve learned over the last four years is this: Trust your children. Give them the benefit of the doubt and good things will happen.
The day after the race I cut a pathetic figure. Out on the porch, doing standing jumps, running hill sprints. I was completely fine losing a race to my 10 year old son, but it did make me realise that – aged 42 – I was firmly in use it or lose it territory.
I wandered back into the house, hobbling like the broken old man I’d become. My son was on the couch playing his Nintendo Switch. He looked up for a second, saw me and my physical distress. A withering lump of flesh in the process of decay.
“Don’t worry Dad,” he said, looking back at his screen. “You didn’t get old.
“I just got faster.”
Reading this while holding my son who is a month old. I needed this tonight, thank you.
You’re an amazing writer, Mark. Have always loved your work, this might be my favourite!