Butte to Butte

Last year when the girls and I cheered Jim on as he ran the Butte to Butte 10k, we talked about how we could do the walk together this year. They were really enthusiastic about it and so I took the opportunity to convince them they still wanted to and get on that. Actually, Ellie had said that she wanted to run a 5k with her dad so he figured they would do that one... a day or two before when we finally signed up Ellie had decided to walk with Aeryn, Tate, and Me. We did it, but don't be fooled, this is no "race report." The word "race" is hardly applicable to our experience.

Don't we all look thrilled to be starting? I know that I for one don't usually look like this (or else my mirror is lying to me) and the girls usually have more easily discerned expressions.

Because we were walking with a stroller, we started out at the back. I didn't want to be in the way, and let's face it, we were supposed to start there anyway. The girls were so very excited. Honestly, I don't know if they were excited to actually do the 5k or if they were just thrilled to have their own race bibs on. Things started out really well and I figured this would be my view for the first mile or so.

By the time we got to the first mile though, the girls had slowed to a snails pace, if the snail were in fact taking a quite leisurely stroll and thinking very seriously of taking a nap.

I started taking random pictures to try and motivate them. "Run to that tree and then do something crazy." "Stop there and pretend you're having fun." "Show me your goofiest face!" That worked for a half mile or so.

Then it was "Here - you take the pictures!"

Which, again, worked for a half mile or so.

After that, they decided they were over it. Almost the full second half was spent just trudging along. There were a couple walkers with dogs at the back of the pack with us (we were quite literally at the very back) which kept Aeryn moving. Ellie was content being at the very back and seemed tired of walking, a very surprising thing since her natural sense of competition usually pushes her along and makes sure she doesn't let Aeryn easily pass her at anything.

When we got to the finish, we hadn't actually arrived at the finish. We'd been talking with the nice dog walkers and just trudging along and never actually saw the route head over toward the finish. We had walked a quarter mile past the finish before we realized that no, it wasn't going to do a sudden and weird loop around to get to the big arch. We turned around and by the time we finished had walked an extra half mile or so. The girls cut across the lawn and ducked into the street so they could cross the finish and stop their timers but Tate and I had to go farther out of the way in order to get the stroller into the street. As he and I came through the finish we were doing so with the early 10k finishers and were announced as the "first stroller to finish!" Are you kidding? There was not one drop of sweat on my body, we were walking slowly at that point, and I wasn't even using a jog stroller. I'm going to assume the announcer was just being kind and not drawing attention to the fact that we finished DEAD LAST and were pathetically slow at that.

Moments later we found Jim and the girls got chocolate milk. Tate was perfectly happy the whole time, as he usually is. I found this to be a memorable experience, but not one I would consider to be an aerobic event by any measure.