Race Day!

Despite the children's attempts to foil us, we made it to the start line of our first family 5K on time. Teia decided to get up at 6 am this morning (early for her), which meant we had to squeak in a 30 minute nap before we could leave (sometimes these short naps of hers come in handy!) Kai decided he would sleep in this morning so we had to wake him up. Funny how they never can get on the same sleep schedule, whether it be early mornings, late mornings or sleeping through the night. Teia hasn't slept through the night since a few nights last week when Kai decided he would wake up each night that she slept through! I just keep continuing with my mantra "I will sleep again, I will sleep again." One day it will be true.

Here we are during our very brief warm up. We discovered that 45 minutes is not enough time to nurse a baby (especially one who prefers a leisurely meal to a rushed one), go pee, register for a race, go pee, pin on a race number, play with a preschooler, warm up, and go pee again. But we did make it to the start line before the gun went off.

The race was in Marblehead, Mass. This pretty photo does not convey the howling winds we had to deal with running across the causeway. We picked this race mostly for its scenic potential. Unfortunately for me, I forgot how much racing hurts and I really didn't get to appreciate it. Greg on the other hand debuted in his first ever "jog stroller, run slower than 5:30 minute pace" race and got to enjoy the view in between stopping to wipe runny noses and making sure the wind didn't blow the top off the Chariot.

We think the kids enjoyed their first race. They both looked a little overwhelmed sitting in the Chariot at the start line. I think they wondered where the heck all these people came from! Kai had never seen so many runners before in one place. We decided to stop a little ways out from the finish line so Runner could actually run in his first race. He was a pretty happy little man, running along toward the finish. But he didn't take too kindly to being whisked up and out of the way by Daddy before he could run "by myself" through the finisher's shoot (Greg thought he might get in someone's way - you know how those mid-packers are about losing a second or two ;-) But this was a particularly cool race. They had finishers' medals for all of the kids and no sooner had Runner crossed the finish line that one of the volunteers draped one around his neck and the tears were immediately forgotten. In fact, Runner was so taken with his first running medal that he actually wore it for several hours afterwards. He even got to wear two medals seeing as Teia is a bit too small to wear hers.

You can see here that Runner's medals were much more interesting than Mommy who kept shouting "Look at the camera!"

Afterwards we stopped at a ubiquitous Massachusetts homemade ice cream stand (despite the chilly wind) and ordered our usual, Kiddie Size. You can see by this photo that one Kiddie Size would probably have fed all three of us! We really needed to run alot farther than 5K to justify these treats.