race day!

chris and jack both participated in races last saturday. 

chris ran his first half marathon!!!

he started training for a marathon a couple months ago and decided running a half at the Hogeye Marathon in Springdale would be a good experience. he has been working so hard with his training and diet and we are super proud of all he has accomplished in such a short amount of time!

the kids and i set up camp around mile 5 to cheer him on.

they were very shy at first and didn't like to shout or clap as the runners went by, but i think i made up for their lack of noise with my loud cheering and clapping!
many of the runners said "i love the signs, thank you!". one lady said "i love glitter!" because the signs were very sparkly in the sun. and two different men said "I'm not your daddy" to ellie which made her very embarrassed.

it was pretty fun when daddy came into view!

ellie even managed to get a high-5!

once chris passed us, we spent an hour in the car trying to navigate our way to the finish line. it was no simple thing with all of the roads blocked off and not being familiar with the area. but we made it!

and we even had time to grab a few balloons to help chris spot us in the crowds if needed.

we were soooo excited watching chris' little dot on our phone tracker as it inched closer and closer to the finish line. and then, he made it!!!

his final time was 1 hour 44 min and 17 seconds!

he was # 36 out of 554 racers and number 7 for his age group. pretty amazing for just starting! chris was hoping for somewhere closer to 1:40, but there was a stretch of hills between miles 8-10 that were pretty brutal.

a local massage school was offering free massages and stretching afterwards... yes please!

the kids about died watching chris getting a rub down. especially when they massaged his glutes :)

tyson chicken was the main sponsor of the race, seeing as they are headquartered here, so naturally there was a giant chicken at the finish line and owen had to give it a hug, punch it in the belly a time or two and then squeeze its bum. who can blame him?

the kids loved all the free stuff that was being handed out: food, sunglasses, hog snouts, chapstick, chocolate milks, everything you can think of. for whatever reason they went particularly nuts for the muffins.

saturday night we were watching the news and they did a little snippet on the marathon. guess who made a 2 second appearance?! :) the kids thought that was super cool.

chris felt really good after the race. he did have some minor toe bleeding, but nothing painful. two of his toenails were already black, but he added two more on race day.

his muscles were a little tight on sunday night, but really he felt pretty good.

we had to rush through lunch and a quick stop at Andy's frozen custard ( of course) to get back in time for jack to race his car in the district pinewood derby! we actually thought his car was disqualified because chris had moved the wheels a little farther back (which was allowed for our first race, but not for district which we didn't know beforehand) and we didn't have time to make the necessary modifications. but the computers at the district race were having problems and that gave us an extra hour or so to get back from springdale, make the modifications, drive to the race, and cross our fingers that the Holey Rolla would burn some rubber!

he won each of his four heats and placed 3rd overall!!!

chris had to snag a picture of this tattoo because its quite impressive, even for fort smith standards. they really, really love tattoos around here and i think the motto must be "the more the merrier".