a run for the record books.

A Neufeld feat this weekend. All of us competed in a race. Thank you to everyone who donated to the Run for H20, with your support Natallie raised $825 for families in Guatemala! She did great at the 50m Toddler Dash, she ran straight towards the finish line and had so much fun she ran back and forth from start to finish about a dozen times. Next year, we'll be signing her up for the 1km Kids Run for sure.

warm up run and of course every running princess needs a tiara

carbo-loading before the race

Simon entertaining the kids with big bubbles before the race

can you spot Natallie on the left side?

running the 50m again

and again!

They even let Noah register for the Toddler Dash and we put a race bib on him and let him 'worm' his way across the field. He was distracted by crowd of people taking pictures of him and veered of course and never crossed the finish line. Rookie. Need to teach him to focus on the goal.

More than just a chubby face, let me race!

race bib on and ready to rocket

Go Noah Go!

Distracted and disqualified

Never finished the 50m dash but love him anyways

                                                 * **

Saturday night I barely got any sleep because I was so anxious about running the Scotia half marathon on Sunday morning. It has been exactly 2 years ago when I last ran this race and Natallie was 11 months old. Fast forward two years and now 9 months post-baby #2, I started thinking that it was kind of ridiculous to think I could do this. But I dismissed my negative self-talk and starting thinking of how hard I did try to train for this, all the nights that after putting the kids down when I just wanted to collapse on the couch (or at least fold laundry while watching TV), I laced up my runners and went for a run or the mornings after being up at 2am and 4am that I did get out there and practice.

And this time I had convinced Simon to do it. Simon says he hates running but somehow the lure of a shiny medal to hang up was enough to get him to say yes to 21.1km at 7:30am on a Sunday morning.

The juxtaposition between jittery nerves and excitement helped ward off how insane it was that our alarm went off at 5:15am and we were at UBC by 6:30am.

looking as chipper as we can for getting up waaaay too early

All that practice pushing a 20lbs baby in a 25 lb jogging stroller up Royal Oak (i.e., the steepest hill in Burnaby) paid off! To my absolute amazement, I was able to finish the race faster than I did it two years ago. My time to beat was 1:52:50 and this year I finished the 21.1km in 1:51:19.  At the 10km mark I was at 50 minutes, that's faster than I've ever done the 10km Sun Run before. 

got our medals!

Simon went into beast mode too. He stomped 10km in 47 minutes and finished the race in an impressive 1:49:01. Proud of you superdad!

so proud of this guy

 A weekend of runs for the record books.
 Natallie's and Noah's first race. Check!
Simon's first half-marathon. Check!
A new personal best half-marathon time. Check!

And now you'll have to excuse me because my legs don't work anymore.