All Downhill From Here

The Forzani’s Mother’s Day race in Calgary is my raceversary (7 years!).?This 10k was my first running goal in my adult-onset fitness quest. Every year since then (except for last year), my family has been accustomed to me getting up early on Mother’s Day and sneaking out before they can muster breakfast in bed.

This year I took Little Runner along with me for her very first 5k (she’s done 1 milers up until now). We hadn’t done much training together, so I planned on walking much of it. It’s a HUGE race (14,000 people), with lots of walkers and runners of all ages, sizes and speeds.

We?took the C-train downtown to meet?Dawn and her girls?in the starting line?crowd. They were easy to find, with all their pink clothes.?We also met up with?Ronald McDonald and I snapped a shot of LR with him.

We started waaaaaay at the back of the runners, just in front of the walkers. It took quite awhile to get across the start line, but once we did, we started running. We were later told that it took 25 minutes for everyone to get across the start line. There must have been 5k racers finishing before some walkers even started!

After the first km Little Runner noticed that Ronald McDonald was actually running the race, not just hanging around the start like the other mascots. We decided that one of our goals would be to stay ahead of him, and it was very motivating to her. Several times I had to tell her to quit looking back and or he would catch up.

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There was a lot of entertainment en route this year. The nice weather probably encouraged more musicians to come out.

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?There were drummers, a brass jazz trio, a fantastic soul singer with a western back-up band, a cuban dance group, a mexican songstress, a fiddler with accompaniment, a marimba, and a bagpipe band.

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We lost a little time at the water stop when Little Runner?got caught up in crushing paper cups.?Once she remembered she was in a race, however, she took off like a shot. I sprinted after her and remarked “Wow! What did they put in that water!”

We made up time in the second half by spotting?pink t-shirts?ahead of us and catching up to them. We caught up to one little pink-fleeced girl several times. We ran out of pink shirts in the last 300 meters, but LR decided that touching pylons as we ran by helped keep her going.

We cheered on 10kers over in the next lane as they zipped by and I saw Karin Gerlach zipping past.?

One of the Calgary Roadrunners, Alan Lam, was cheering on runners at the last corner and we snapped our cameras at each other. Little Runner was very excited when she saw the finish and I snapped this photo in the previous post before running in behind her.

After snagging some snacks?we found Dawn et al and Little Runner went around hugging a bunch of mascots. I made sure I stopped by the Jackrabbit beer sample table. Penguin buddy Nancy found us and we hung out for awhile and reminisced about previous Mother’s Day races.

After the mascot, toddler and preschooler races the awards?and door?prizes were announced and we headed back to the train.?We got home at around noon, heated up a little lunch and put our feet up for a bit.