Crossing the line!

In the fastest "marathon" in Ottawa's history I bet...LOL....it was all over in 10 minutes! The Kids Marathon saw 1200 kids run the final 1.195km of their 42.195 KM marathon. In the weeks leading up to the marathon, each kid had to run 41 KM. The final stretch was run on the marathon course this morning, with the finish line being the same as the actual marathoners, who crossed less than an hour later.

Jones placed 25th in her age division in straight time, 20th when you go by the chip time. In a field of 95, she's pretty proud! I'm proudest of all in the fact that she even did it. Over the course of the preparation for the race, her enthusiasm waned several times, up to and including while we were in a monster line to pick up her run kit the day before. Hey, 41 km at 8 years old....daunting task. But this morning, she was up at 6:45, ready to go! She was *very* excited about participating and very proud of all of her hard work. She can't wait to show her medal to her gym teacher tomorrow at school, who has been very encouraging and helpful in the quest to rack up those preliminary 41 kms.

And the scrappy connection? My friend Grace, fellow scrapbooker, was the one who told me about this event. Her granddaughter also ran today, with Jones. Because a lot of Ottawa schools were running kids in the event, we paired our girls up and dressed them alike in order to be able to spot them more readily. Did we ever make a good colour choice! In the sea of event-sponsored blue t-shirts, our hot pink girls stood out like sore thumbs, which was precisely our intention...we were able to spot them within seconds throughout the entire race!