Friday, August 14, 2009

Hot Dam 2009

Last weekend I had my 16 year old niece visiting me. I am sure that she thought the weekend would be full of girly shopping and getting manicures and relaxing. Silly girl! I woke her up at 6:45 on Saturday morning to run a 2 miles race I had signed us both up for. My niece is adorable and skinny, but athletic? We would see.

We met up with a few of my friends and were amazed at the number of people there. I was pretty sure that the number had doubled since last year which was great for the running club that sponsored it. My friends and I started off very slowly because, well, we are slow. My niece looked our pace in utter horror and took off. I was impressed with her gazelle like stride, but was also wondering how long she could keep it up. I kept up a decent pace for me and just went on with my plan to just keep moving.

One cool thing about these two mile runs is that there are more and more children doing them. One little boy in particular was running close to me and he had me cracking up because everytime I would get close to him, he would sprint ahead and then walk. This went on for most of the first mile and then I finally passed him. I could hear him muttering something several times but had no idea what it was. He ended up close to my friends and was doing the same sprint and walk thing and was determined not to let two more girls pass him. I asked my friend if she heard was he was muttering and she said that he was chanting "This sucks. This really sucks" the whole time. I laughed pretty hard at that. We have all thought that so many times!

Even though my niece was not able to keep up her leggy run for long, she was still able to beat me by several minutes. She did admit that she nearly threw up and was fairly bitter and dramatic about the whole thing in the way only a teenager can pull off. The whinning tapered off until that evening when after sitting still at the movies for a few hours....she stood up. I felt much better about her beating me that night and the whole next day as she hobbled around. I also got an angry text when she got home saying, "My house has STAIRS!!!". Guess her quads were a little tight. :)

Even with the whinning, I know she was proud of herself because she carefully packed her race number away and wanted the pictures so she could frame it when she got home. Pretty cute!! Maybe one of these days I can talk her into another one, although I think I might have a better chance of talking her into a bike ride.

Talk about back of the packers! We started out in the very back of the race in order to not get run over by the speedsters!

I love this picture with my niece's hair flying in the wind! It makes her look like she is just flying on the course!

I am so not impressed by this picture. I HATE the glasses but my eyes have started to revolt against the contacts. I look like I am very confused here. I am only posting it because it did not seem fair to post my niece's picture and not mine.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

very cool that you got her out there!!

Wes said...

I think one of my nieces would, um... kill me if I signed them up for a race without telling them :-) Niiiiiicccce!!

In race pics, you get what you get eh? Some are good, some are bad. I like the ones where I look constipated! Ha!!

Rachel said...

Good job! I think it's great that more and more young people find a passion for fitness. Alec (my boyfriend's 7 year old) has a kid's triathlon (his 3rd one this year) on Saturday!

Anonymous said...

So cool that you 2 ran a race together....you might now feel like a role model then but, I bet she went home and told her friends how cool it was that her aunt runs!