Daddy Cool: 'A familiar red face tootled past me'

CHILDREN inherit many characteristics from their parents. From her mother, Daughter One has been blessed with beauty, poise, elegance and intelligence. From me? A beetroot-red face after vigorous exercise. I know this, because in a father-daughter bonding exercise, we became training buddies for the Bupa Edinburgh 10k.

I did the race for the first time last year and thought it would be good if she swapped her couch-potato existence for pounding the pavements. Four months ago, she would have been left trailing the number 11 bus. Now she could beat it between stops. Well, on a good day, downhill, with the wind behind her and blister plasters firmly attached.

My exertions of the sporting variety have always ended with a profoundly scarlet tinge to my face that probably has an underlying physiological cause. Perhaps it is exaggerated by the embarrassment of always doing badly.

Whatever the reason, Daughter One showed early signs of red-face syndrome while giving her all as captain of the school hockey team, although I attributed some of it to her snarling rebukes for team-mates she didn't think were entirely pulling their weight. But it resurfaced on our training runs around Arthur's Seat, so I knew that for her, as for me, it is a trait she will have to endure for life. It was almost reassuring to look back and see that heavy-breathing carbon copy following me around the hill.

But it was only on the big day that I found out she had inherited two of her mother's other characteristics. The first is the sheer determination to make sure I'm kept in my place by beating me at everything. This comes out most alarmingly in games of Scrabble, where my supposedly superior dexterity with words is routinely belittled and trashed. The second is her dogged persistence in not being shaken off in more than 25 years of marriage, no matter how hard I try – a formidable combination. It was just my luck that Daughter One decided to display both on the day of the run.

Up through Holyrood Park we went, with her tucked comfortably behind me. Then a flash of pink shirt topped by a familiar red face sped past. It took a lot of effort not to shout, "Stop", as I did when she was an errant toddler who listened to me. Without a backward glance, off she shot, leaving me trailing. A little bit of me died on that hill but, as I dawdled over the finish line at Holyrood Palace, I had time to reflect that perhaps it's time for me – like the Queen – to hand over to the next generation.

•This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 16 May 2010