This Mother's Day morning, bright and early, we went out to the Boulder Reservoir so that I could enjoy my mom's day present: a race entry for the Mother's Day Title 9+K (6.1 mi).Last night was strike for the last show of the BETC season, so I was stumbling a bit this morning since I didn't get in until after 11 last night. Still, after a good cup of Matt's coffee we were dressed and ready to hit the road, and we left early enough to miss the race congestion. Here we are near the entry to the Res, before any of the day's events really got rolling. The event areas behind us were still being set up, and they had a ton of things for little kids to do, from hula hooping to arts and crafts to a jumpy castle, while older kids and moms ran the main race. The race was limited to moms and kids under 18, so there were a lot of dads hanging out while the women stretched and waited in line at the porta-potties. Which they needed twice the number of (hello, it's a women's race!).
And here is my fabulous cheering squad. You will note that the kids are also wearing race tags. A big feature of the Title9K is the RagaMuffin Fun Run for all kids under 8. The theory was that the 2-3 year olds would run in one wave, the 4-5 year olds in the next, and the 6-8 year olds in the last wave. Tuck thus has a tag that indicates he is a "Rumbling Red," and Miranda is a "Yahoo Yellow." They got to pick their own numbers. Tuck chose the same number I was assigned--42, for all you Hitchhiker's Guide fans!--and M chose 10, hands down the most popular number.
Here's Tuck at the starting line; I'm in yellow right behind him, and the first heat was actually all kinds of parents coaxing roughly 100 2-3 year olds to try to run forward in a straight line when someone gave the "go!" sign. Herding cats? Piece of cake. Herding confused toddlers who want to stay with their mommies and get scared out of their small minds by the starting noise? Um, a bit more challenging. Roughly 1/3 of the kids bailed in the three minutes between line-up and the starting horn, deciding they'd rather be with Dad, or in their jogging strollers. Another 1/3 burst into tears at the start of the race.
This included Tucker, as evidenced by the shot at left. The agony of defeat? No, just the agony of a complete lack of clarity about what the hell was going on. Why was everyone shouting and running and yelling and blowing horns and who WERE all these people who were not his mommy? Where was dad? Where was Miranda? Where was justice?Luckily, justice was only about 50 yards away, and it was a quick scoop up off the pavement and to parental safety. The tears soon gave way to smiles as our little finisher proclaimed,
"I scared. I scared of race. But Mama chased me all done no more running now. Big kid time."
And so the second wave began, with slightly more success as the four and five year old runners seemed to grok the idea of rapid forward motion without their parents holding their hands and scaring the crap out of them with cameras in their faces all the time. The third wave was for kids Miranda's age, but there was a pretty significant problem right at the start: the kids began to run on an unofficial "Go!"
This was a problem because the volunteers in charge of establishing and holding the finish line had not yet taken their places after the second wave. But the runners were off...and none of them had any idea how far 50 yards was supposed to be. So they kept running through the crowd. And running. And got about 300 yards before they were finally all flagged down by the race organizers who finally caught up with them, sort of. This is a great action shot of M on the run, in the black-and-blue shirt in the middle.My own race went well, thanks, and I finished at a quite respectable pace of about 8:29/ mile, 79th overall out of 1744 women. (Lots of walkers.) A woman in my age group won the race overall; as you might imagine the 35-39 group was just about the largest age group of runners in the field. And this time I beat the fastest 70-year-old and the fastest woman pushing a jogging stroller, although there was a 60-year-old finisher ahead of me. But the real prize was hearing my family cheering me on just before the finish line, and getting big hugs and "Good running!" from them at the end. And Tuck actually behaving himself at 11 a.m. church, and a post-race post-Mass lunch at the Southern Sun...Mother's Day was basically made of awesome this year. I am very blessed.
