And the race is on!

The race tonight was awesome in a word. It was so great to be racing again - totally pumps you up and fills you with adrenaline like nothing else, and this only for a 5km event. Isabelle was dressed to kill in her "maillot jaune", courtesy of Lance Armstrong and the Discovery team, (well her father, really), and her black yoga pants....No need whatsoever to be concerned about her in a crowd of 7000 runners, she was totally in her element. Yelled and clapped her hands the whole way. Her parents on the other hand spent the first 1.5 km's swearing at just about everyone in our path. If you are GOING TO WALK the entire thing, or you run at a really slow pace, THEN PLEASE DO NOT position yourself at the front of the pack, you only serve to get in everyone else's way. AGH! We eventually swerved around about a thousand people and made it into the clear. The first km took us 6.5 minutes though and so we were well off our pace. Put the petal to the metal and made it in just over 26 minutes. Ah well, it was SO MUCH FUN in any case, and it was so great to see her loving every minute of it. Gilles was so happy to be out and about among runners and everyone was pumped to see a little one making noises at them the entire way. She got many laughs. We got our photo taken by the professional photogs at the end, so will have actual race photos to post at a later date. Ended up placing at about the 900th mark overall, I was 23rd in my age category and Gilles about 40th. I think it should say "and with stroller" at the end of the caption!


We then scrambled home to watch the 10km racers as they take the road at the end of our street, and our house couldn't be in a better location - Isabelle had a nice little nap en route! Saw lots of friends and she spent her time clapping at them all, something like 8000 in this race alone. Craziness. She seems to thrive on crowds, and loved to see everyone clapping - one of her new tricks performed by thousands of people watching. I imagine she thought it was wild. Our friend Randy was leading a blind racer and got so caught up in our shouts of encouragement that he led him directly into the guy running in front of them. Oops!

We stopped by Ron and Menna's first and got our big basket of chocolate - treats to be had by all after a hard race. Look forward to digging in this evening!