What a day. My daughter woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and was pretty much complaining non-stop. She is usually the picture of a perfect child, but when she doesn't get enough sleep she gets in this whining phase that can last a few hours.

This was a VERY small race with less than 150 people. ...So the gun goes off and we take off at a nice easy jog (me, wife, daughter). Immediately I can tell this is not going to be good because she is doing the "forced labored breathing thing" right from the get go. I lasted about 7 minutes and the wife sent me off to actually run the rest of the race (she could see my blood pressure rising. If there is one thing I can't stand its whining). So I take off and finish this thing in a respectable ~26 minutes. Considering I had gone less than a half mile in the first 7 min, I put my pace somewhere just under 7 (which I consider pretty good for me considering the monster hill).

So after I finished I immediately set back out to find my offspring and see if the situation had improved. She was just coming to the bottom of the hill and had fortunately morphed back into the child I know and love- laughing, giggling, and singing. She and my wife were run/walking the course and I met back up with them right at mile 2. So we all finished the last mile together, pretty much having a great time. She came in with a total time of 44 min.

So...we're hanging around for the raffle to see if we win anything and they announce the winners starting with girls, 14 and under. 1st place- you guessed it, my daughter :). She won a blue ribbon and a little gift bag of stuff. She also got to pick out a free prize (she picked a yoga CD). You couldn't get the smile off her face with a belt sander for the next 2 hours. It gets better. I took 3rd place in the Male, 30-34 division. Had I actually ran from the start I would have won. Whoda thunk? I guess that hill knocked out a lot of people.

After the race the wife and I went to a local park and ran another 4.5 around a lake (have to log that under yesterday). To top things off, my daughter's soccer team won a pretty impressive victory this afternoon. She'll sleep well tonight :)

Get the kid to bed earlier!