This year’s Booksin Walkathon was bittersweet: it marked William’s last as a student and our last as a family. Our first was all the way back on October 10, 2009, when Julia was in kindergarten:

This was our thirteenth Walkathon. Starting with our first in 2009, we didn’t miss a year until 2017, when Joe had moved on to middle school and William was still in preschool. We picked our streak up again in 2018, but lost a couple years to the pandemic and bad air quality. In the end, we’ve spent a lot of hours over the last decade-and-a-half listening to music and watching hundreds of kids walk in circles in the sun. Naturally, we have pictures of this year’s festivities.

This year, William went in with a mission: he wanted to earn the top prize, an LED-adorned, light-up frisbee, which would require him to walk 20 miles over the course of the five-hour event. This would make him the first Wong to reach the highest prize tier: neither Julia nor Joe ever pulled that off, which would have required 25 miles in their day (though they would have had a couple extra hours to reach that milestone).

William had never come particularly close before: the lure of chasing friends around the playground was always too strong. But he told us weeks ahead of time that he was committed to making it happen this time around, so we let him skip his soccer game so he wouldn’t miss two critical hours. We arrived at school in plenty of time for him to be ready at the start (Julie had already been there for a couple hours, running the registration desk), and he walked or ran more or less the entire time, stopping only for bathroom breaks and to grab a hot dog for lunch. In the end, he made it to his goal with a little under 15 minutes to spare and, exhausted, claimed some well-earned rewards. Julie and Julia were there at the finish line to congratulate him as they wrapped up shifts punching lap cards.

Thus concludes our Booksin Walkathon story. William will most likely want to return as an alumni walker at some point, and he may work some volunteer shifts to fulfill high school graduation requirements, but our days of dedicating an entire Saturday in October to celebrating the Booksin community are behind us.

Gallery: Last Walkathon