my FIRST "REAL" RACE!!!! The 2008 Jingle Bell Run, Downtown Raleigh

like my reindeer antlers? :)

this is my friend Erin. she and I sing together at church. she mentioned this race a couple months ago and i jumped at the opportunity! i got us some reindeer antlers so we could be festive for our run. we were the least "festive" there. it was great fun seeing what other "festive" people were wearing! we decided this will be an annual thing for us. it was a GREAT family event and I loved seeing all the parents running with their kids or pushing jogging strollers! so much fun!!! i'm glad this was my first "REAL" race!

so fun to have someone to run WITH me!

here we are, waiting to get lined up! i call this race "real" because I had a bib number and a timing chip to wear on my shoe. very fun!

here we are getting all lined up. I'd love to know how many participants there were. it's hard to know because not everyone did the competitive sign up...where you have the bib/timing chip...some ran/walked just to support the cause. Anthony's thinking 500 or a little more. I'm never good at guesstimates! :) See SANTA in the picture??? He was cheering us on and passing out candy canes to the people on the sidelines. The boys LOVED that! Such a fun time!

see me, off to the right...and we're off!

Anthony and the kids were waiting for us at about 1 1/2 miles. I was so excited to see them!

here we come, Erin is in green and I'm in black (you can click on these pictures to make them larger). See our antlers?? :) OH! and everyone in the race was wearing bells on their shoes. they came in your packet. it was fun hearing us jingle all the way! :)

there we go

see the boys! they were so cute. i had them bundled up really good, it was in the low 40's. after we passed by them we still had another 1 1/2 miles to go. after some time had gone by, I guess Harrison figured it had been long enough and wanted to know if I had quit. hee hee :)


passing the time until Mommy made it to the finish line. Addison was with them but Anthony didn't get a picture of her :( She was in her stroller all bundled up!

this guy was juggling the entire run. he was ahead of us so Anthony used him to gauge when he thought we would be coming by.

we're almost done!

crossing over the finish line!

the AFTER picture! i think we look pretty good, don't you?? :)

We did it! Finished at about 33:12. Don't know the official time yet, I'm basing that off the clock as I came through. They didn't have the results printed off and we needed to get going. Addison was ready to be fed and we had two birthday parties to get ready for! BIG DAY! :) I should be able to get the results online later today.

It was a hard run for me personally. I've been very sick all week with a yucky, yucky, cold! I was very out of breath the entire time and just had to push myself really hard. A little disappointing because this race should have been fairly easy for me. Oh well. Like Katy says, "you never know what to expect on race day!" I'm just glad I was able to do it and I finished in my desired time frame. So while it was hard for me, it didn't seem to slow me down too much!!!!

So glad you did this with me Erin! Looking forward to next year! We'll have to recruit some other runners to join us and work on our festive attire ahead of time! Maybe Leah and Harrison can join us for the fun run!!! :) Ready for a 10K next???