May 5th 2012 marked the date for the much anticipated 5K marathon that my kids had been working all year for. Tristan joined the running club again last fall in anticipation of this 5K which is his very most favorite activity all year. Lindsay recently found a ride from her current school to Tristan’s school on running club days and has re-joined her old running club and has been getting on the treadmill as often as her time will allow as well in order to train for this race. Both were very excited to run again.
To start this story I have to tell you that this year there was “free parking” advertised as we received our packets of information… but the parking would leave us with a little bit of a hike into the starting line which we decided would be useful exercise to all of us as well as useful to the wallet. We had the time so why not? At 9 a.m., an hour before starting time we climbed out of the car into what looked like a pretty abandoned area and figured we had a couple of miles to walk. The area looked a little creepy and pretty deserted with one exception; ARTWORK. It was like discovering a treasure trove of outdoor art that we’d never knew was there and it was really cool.
The parking was beyond this area on the left with lots of bridges overhead and old half torn down structures left standing. On the right Lindsay is skipping over some old railroad tracks to some greek style paintings of pillars and people on an old half ripped down bridge which must be fairly ancient since it would have held nothing like what we drive today and the bridges currently in use are very old as it is. I’m picturing horses…
Kaitlyn aids in the warm-up session as we get ourselves together and we begin to admire this interesting parking area.
A couple of quick pics of our runners once their bibs are on over by one of the paintings and we’re off on our urban hike to meet up with the rest of the team by the paddlewheel on the river.
Nathan and Kaitlyn were excited to see some of the river boats. And yes, it was an overcast and drizzly morning.
Tristan gets his picture taken with some of the team next to his best friend Zak and eventually some more of our runners straggled in including our own Lindsay and so we took another team picture before stretching and saying goodbye.
The team left to find their starting line and we walked to try and get a look at them starting the race. On our hike back to the starting line we paused to take Kaitlyn’s picture in front of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
We waited for the starting gun to go off and Nathan and Kaitlyn got comfortable spreading their raincoats out on a very wet sidewalk.
And they’re off!
Here are the first runners… And here comes Tristan! (center above).
And there they go… I missed Lindsay somewhere in that crowd but she’s there. And we started to hike back toward the finish to get a look at them coming in.
We paused for a few pictures but in doing so given the mile and a half we had to cover to the finish we ended up missing Tristan coming in! Boo! Hoo!
Haley and Kaitlyn walked together nearly the whole time and Haley kept her entertained with stories of her recent trip to New York.
Here comes Lindsay toward the finish line. She loves running. We were too late to see Tristan.
We met up with our runners and congratulated them. They were sweaty and tired but they did a great job.
Tristan ran in the Male 1-9 yr. division in a race totaling 3,627 runners
He came in Overall #158, Division placement 2 of 103, Gender placement 127 of 1,384. His time was 24:43 giving him a mile pace of 7:59.
Lindsay ran in the Female 12-14 division also totaling 3,627 runners.
She came in Overall #530, Division placement 21 of 89, Gender placement 163 of 2,268. Her time was 28:50 giving her a mile pace of 9:18.
These medals are really nice… both the front and the back.
Then we had a couple of miles to hike back to the car and on the way we met up with a snail which my kids thought was really cool. I guess he found his way out of the river and across the street.
And the day started to clear up and shine a little brighter as we left the city behind us and got back to our very artistic parking lot; a regular outdoor museum!
This artwork was done with tiny colored tiles. The birds above this wall were all made with stone and shells.
These were some of our favorites, close up.
We enjoyed this free hidden outdoor urban art museum.
A couple more close up shots. These tiled sculptures were really big.
These were Tristan’s favorites.
And Lindsay really liked this one. Viewing the artwork turned out to be as much of an interesting event to all of us as the race was. What a fun morning down town. What a great race!
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