a budding runner

Last night Nate ran his first race of the year - the June Bug Jog. Although he was very nervous at the start (he kept asking me to run with him), he did a great job! I had decided to get the video camera out for the very first time in over a year, so I recorded the whole race (all 2 minutes or so). Therefore I don't have a lot of pictures. And I am pretty sure the video is too big for the blog.

Here is Nate getting ready for the race, just after we put on his race bib. He was pretty proud that he was Number 1. Of course, all the kids were #1. ;)


As we waited for the race we walked out to a deck overlooking the river. Nate proudly informed me that this was the "father of the rivers," the "Mighty Mississippi." Later after the race we came back out here to show Gramma the river.



The race was really cute - all the "under 5" kids ran together down the bike path to an orange cone, and were supposed to turn around and run back. We had a minor confusion at the orange cone...but Nate got turned around and made it back just fine. He was hilarious as he ran past Gramma and swung his arms to show off... As they completed the race each kid got a medal and a goody bag (a reusable WalMart shopping bag - yay for me!) full of prizes.

After the race the kids collected around the race director for door prizes. In the race packet was a coupon for a free scoop of ice cream. As the race director announced that to the kids, Nate turns to me (about 15 feet away) and screams, "Mommy, we get free ice cream! YAY!" (He also won a set of spinning tops, but the ice cream was the big hit). We left immediately to go get ice cream, missing the post-race party.



All in all, it was a great event, and they did a great job for the kids. The race wasn't too big, there were probably 25 kids in Nate's race and another group in the "over 5" category. I wish I could have run the 5K that came up afterward, but this boy needed to get home. Plus, I couldn't exactly leave him alone while I ran!