Forgive Gordon and Wade Shelton if they were a bit more excited about Sunday's GBMC Father's Day 5K than most of the other 813 finishers.
Gordon, 44, had run the race before, and Wade, 14, had won the accompanying 1-mile fun run two years ago. But this was the first time that father and son had raced as a team in the race that benefits the Greater Baltimore Medical Center's Newborn Intensive Care Unit -- a part of the hospital that is dear to both of them.
"When we had our first race, Wade won our fun run," Sandy Budd, development officer at GBMC, said last week. "Then we found out that when he had been born 12 years before, he had spent time in our newborn intensive care unit [NICU]. We thought it was really neat that someone from NICU was running (( in the race that benefits us."
"I was supposed to be born in April; instead, I was born two months earlier in February," Wade said. "I had a twin brother Paul who was born before me. They said he was going to live and I was going to die, but I was the one who lived. Our lungs weren't completely developed. Six weeks later, they said I could go home."
"He had 15 collapsed lungs in three weeks," said his father, who finished the Father's Day 5K in 23:20. "They were going to name the radiology department after him."