Mara on a Marathon

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We found out about it around 4am this past Sunday morning, reading a casual email note from a friend. She forgot to include details like timing and exact location, but mommy spent the next hour trying to figure those out.

Tip: Best way to find similar baby/toddler-friendly outdoors events in the Bay Area: strollerhikes.com

It was the Jenny's Light 5k/10k/stroller/kids Run.
It was to happen at the absolutely gorgeous Vasona Lake Park, a few minutes drive from our house. 
It was a good way to get some fresh air, exercise, plus watch tons of parents and kids give their best.
And it was awesome!!

We got there late and managed to get the second-to-last registration. Yay! Really, they let one man sign up after us and then refused a couple with their child right as I was filling the form :-(

As a positive note, we got a sweet number: 345

The race was starting in 2 minutes, and Mara was all ready to participate. Well, most likely she was confused why we're surrounded by so many people. Daddy was proudly wearing his NyanDroid shirt and had forgotten running shoes so he had to "run" in his flippy-floppies. Mommy was carrying the water, food, diaper bag and the thick jackets that we had brought - the morning had shown 49F but the race got some for gleefully nice warm weather.
There were all sorts of people, young and old, athletic or couch potatoes, singles and families with kids. One lady looked about 5-6mo pregnant and was running hard core. Some walked, some were obvious runners, a very nice crowd of people to make absolutely anyone feel welcome.
Mara fell asleep on daddy around mile 2 and slept for about 40% of the 5k, but then woke and curiously continued to check out the people, the trees, the sky, the fearless birds all around.
We got to the finish line in a little under an hour, with an awake, curious baby.
They cheered and congratulated Mara by name as she was crossing the line :-)

Here's the results board for Jenny's Light 5k she was 177 in females, 259 in all. Due to their system's limitation we weren't able to register her as a 5mo, so she is officially 99 :-) because we did not want to affect the category score of any other people.

Victory is so sweet! Mara could eat victory for brunch! literally.

Also sweet: bagels with cream cheese!
Nope, we are totally not doing solids yet. No, sir-ee! We're not even 5 months yet.
Why, what have you heard?

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