We’ve never run a race this short, but it looked like fun & is right downtown, so we signed up. We’d been prepping Thing One & Thing Two to run it on their own since the 3K distance seemed perfect for them. On race day, we arrived early & choose a meet up spot just past the finish line. It makes both boys feel better to know they’ll be able to find us just as soon as they finish.
The start was a bit nutty, as most local races are. People with small children, strollers, dogs, and those planning to walk seem to all want to crowd up to the very front of the start along with the high school track stars who are barely wearing any clothes. DH was just behind the track star kids, Thing One & Thing Two were just a few rows behind and I started just a bit behind them. We warned Thing Two to not try to keep up with DH.
I caught both boys by a half-mile in and ended up pacing them to the finish. I suspect Thing Two might have been a tiny bit faster on his own, I ended up sending him ahead as we got close to the finish.
Family finish times:
DH 12:00 (4th in his age group)
me 16:53
Thing Two 16:40
Thing One 17:34
The boys ended up being 5th & 9th in the boys 0-9 age group. There was a bit of weirdness with a 3 year old boy finishing 2nd place with a time of 13:20. We weren’t sure if it was a dog, a child in a stroller (which we’ve seen happen a few times before – parents, if you get your kid a race bib but push them in a stroller, please pull the timing chip off! Also, it’s not cool to stop your stroller at the 3 mile marker of a 5K and let your kid get out to run the final .1 of a 5K to get an age group win.) Turns out it was a grown man running under a fake name, so a bit of WTF? from us, but it’s not like he kept our kids from an age group win that day. I do feel sorry for the 4th place boy, though.
