the Oldest Six Complete Their Races

  Here we all are, ready to leave for our big day.

Here’s Mark right before mile 2.  We began together, but soon his long legs were itching to see what they could do.  His goal was to finish in under 30 minutes, and he succeeded beautifully.  His last race was about 20 years ago.  My father waited with the oldest four children and took the picture.

  This is me, a bit later. Okay, a lot later.  The kids were kind enough to let me know daddy was waaay ahead of me. This was my first 5K since high school, and my goal was to finish, and to finish in under 35 minutes.  I did both.  But at about 2 1/2 miles, I was thinking how completely crazy I am to be training for a half-marathon. 

The kids right before their 1K. 

View Full Album

Miscellaneous running shots of the kids.  Mark ran most of the way with Grace.  She ran it in 6:25. That’s under an 11-minute mile pace! And she’s 4! We don’t know about the boys, because they didn’t know to look at their time as they went under the finish, and I was busy taking pictures. Grace and the little girl in white and pink were without a doubt the two cutest little runners at the park today.

Grandma stayed with the three little girls and painted the Twinkles’ nails.  It was a really fun day for everyone, and this is definitely not the end of our races.  Mark is particularly suited for running, and he is excited about his whole family running together.  He’s the one who used his gift cards to buy the kids new running clothes, and he’s the one who saw the picture of four kids in matching outfits from a previous race and said that we’d do that next year.  How wonderful that we found something that we both love and the kids can join us in at an early age.