Wow, that's a lot of blood.

It pays to be healthy. I know from experience that carrying around a few extra (20 or so) pounds can suck the energy out of you faster than a fat man can suck down a triple thick milkshake from McDonalds. I have been running fairly regularly for about 2 years now and, in an attempt to maintain some sort of interest in an activity that has become, for me, something comparable to waterboarding, I have changed things up a bit. I no longer run on the road since that was WAY too time consuming and rather painful at times. To find scenery that I have not seen a million times already required longer and longer runs which, unless you are able to speed up at the same time that increase distance, take more and more time. Now I bike up to my local Cardinal Fitness and spend about 15 minutes or so on the treadmill trying to go faster and faster until eventually I break the world record for the mile. Right now, if I push it, I am at about 7 minutes per mile so I don't think the world record is going to need rewriting for some time to come. This seems to have done the trick as I am now much more interested in keeping in shape than I have ever been, mostly because I can go in, knock out 2 miles or so, and then move on to the elliptical machine for a while where I can watch old episodes of Family Guy or my accumulated video podcasts of "The Onion News Network."

Jen, my wife, recently decided that she wanted to work our more regularly, and since we have two young sons we have been alternating who goes to exercise and who stays home with the little ones. The whole workout process can take up to 12 hours a day if we are not careful. Then one day she had a brilliant idea: bring the boys to the playplace at the gym so we could work out together! Surprisingly, our oldest son, Ryan, didn't have a problem with this despite the fact that when he was young he would routinely scream as though he were being eaten by tigers the minute we tried to leave him in any kind of daycare situation. Our youngest son, Ethan, also had no problems with this idea. He loved being in the playroom with his older brother and all the new toys and gizmos to which 10 month-olds are attracted. We were able to have a nice workout without incident, and even decided that we would buy a card that would allow us to bring these two little princes to the playroom whenever we came to work out.

The next time Jen brought them in was a different story, however. Ryan was still fine with it, but Ethan hadn't napped well in the morning and so was a little more on the cranky side than the last time he came in. He cried, much the way his brother had years before, like he had been stung by jellyfish. Mean ones. Lots of them. Jen had to cut her workout short and take the two boys home and wait for me to return from school before she could go back.

We tried this process again last Saturday afternoon. Again, Ryan was fine and again, Ethan cried. To ensure that at least Jen was able to complete a work out, I volunteered to take the boys to the local park to play for 40 minutes or so, vowing to return to pick her up when she was finished. So off we went, the Doyle boys, to what we call the wooden park.

This park is an amazing place. It has the typical park fare - swings, sandbox and slides - but it also has baby swings for little Ethan and what appears from outside the park to be a castle made of wood. In this castle there are small passageways for little people that wind and turn every which way. These passages often lead to dead ends but just as often they end at a staircase or ladder which will take you up a level. There are several levels to be explored in this castle and at the highest level, or battlements, the kids have access to the entire top of the structure which contains 3 different slides and several poles which can be used to slide down safely or, if we are talking about little boys playing, unsafely to the ground. There are numerous ways to have fun and just as many ways to get hurt while playing at this park. Ryan loves it and so do I.

We played on the baby swings for a while to calm Ethan down a bit, and once we had accomplished that task, Ryan set out to patrol the castle. He made it to the top with no problems and even struck up one of those 5 minute best-friendships that are so common a this age. The new BFF's were two slightly older boys who looked to be about 6. They were playing tag and invited Ryan to be part of the game. He was more than happy to play the part of the tagger due to the fact that he has seen "The Incredibles" about 700 times in the past week and is now convinced that he can run as fast as one of the little superheroes from the movie, Dash. Watching the boys take off on their initial runs I was surprised at how fast he actually was. Clearly we are not in the superhero speed range, but for a 4 year old he is fairly spry. The older boys even commented on his speed as well which made Ryan all the more likely to throw caution to the wind and put all his energy into moving faster.

After a few laps around the park almost being caught by my boy, the older kids decided that they needed a new tactic. Being slightly older made them slightly smarter, which allowed them to work out the fact that if they cruised into the castle passageways, Ryan's speed wouldn't trouble them so much. That little tactic worked like a charm, and Ryan immediately fell behind in the chase. He would get halfway up the ladders inside and would look down to see the two older boys running away. With an audible sound of disgust, he'd climb back down and begin the chase again only to have the other boys employ the same passages to evade him. This lasted for a few minutes with everyone enjoying themselves when Ryan ran around the back of the castle where I couldn't see him. He was only behind there for a few seconds when I heard a THUD followed loud screams.

I came down from my perch with Ethan in my arms and made my way to where Ryan was. One of the little boys who had been playing with Ryan came out from the passages and said to me, nonchalantly, "Wow, that's a lot of blood." Ryan came out next holding his mouth and face which was, and I must give the other little boy credit here, covered with a lot of blood. I grabbed his hand and quickly took him to the car where we used the last of Ethan's baby wipes to clean up most of the blood from his face and clothes. The two boys brought a bottle of water for us to use to help clean up and said that they hoped he'd be ok, which was actually really nice to hear. He got blood all over his shirt and his Manchester United shorts, so he wasn't thrilled with that, but by the time we got back to Cardinal, he had stopped bleeding.

Jen had to cut her workout short because Ryan kept asking for his mom, but she was more than happy to do it, not because it got her off the treadmill, but because she is a great mom and does a wonderful job of taking care of her little boys. Eventually we will figure out a work-out schedule that doesn't involve crying or bleeding children, but until that day comes, I'm gonna make sure that the baby wipes and pacifiers are kept well stocked in the diaper bag.