Erik, Kristin and family had an exciting weekend. Here, in his own words Erik shares:

A while back it seemed like a good idea to have the family sign up for the
La Jolla Marathon, ½ Marathon and 5k charity run. I volunteered to do the 5k with the kids and graciously allowed Kristin to participate in the much more challenging ½ marathon. We went down Saturday to pick up our shirts and registration packets and stayed the night with some friends of our who had also signed up.

We had to wake up at 4am (ugh) in order to allow time enough to get drive from Carlsbad to La Jolla (for those of you who don’t know La Jolla streets were not designed to handle the 11,000 runners entering town all at once and finding available parking spots). 

Once parked we waited until 6:30 to get onto a bus to take Kristin to the start and the kids and me to mile marker 10 where we would start our 5k. We decided that the boys were going to run separately at their own pace while I stayed with Lindsey. At 7:30 the gun went for both the 5K and the half marathon. At first the run was easy as it was all downhill for the first mile then things suddenly turned for the worse as what goes down must go up (ugh again). Despite the numerous hills Ryan blew through the course in 27 minutes and change, Nate and Travis finished 3 minutes later. I had a hard time keeping up with Lindsey and frequently asked her to stop and let me take her picture but we finished at a respectable 50 minutes.

Kristin who has been fighting a cold all week and had a solid 4 hours sleep before the race did an amazing job finishing the half marathon in 2 hours and 31 minutes. A great time considering she had a nasty fall at mile 12 which made for a nice road rash on her shoulder and seriously ugly knot and bruise on her elbow that will be a nice souvenir of her weekend in La Jolla that she can cherish for many weeks.

The kids did a great job on the race and had plenty of energy to burn afterwards and went to the sidelines to cheer on Kristin and the rest of the racers as they neared the finish line. For our first race as a family everyone had a good time and had better attitudes despite the early wake up call and the waiting around. I look forward to future races (possibly closer to home to avoid the 4am wake up call) with the kids as they push Kristin and I to hit the gym so we can have a chance of keeping up with them.

But on the way home . . .

Erik told me that when the kids arrived home, they were raring to go again and played like there was no tomorrow, (or race earlier that day for that matter!)