Mermaid Run and Mini-Mermaid Running Club

Everything about preparing for a race is different when you consider you are racing with 6 and 7 year old's. Let's just say the night before resulted in a huge colossal melt down. As a Team Captain I was going to have to pick up my teams race packets prior to race morning. My options were Sunnyvale on Thursday or San Francisco on Friday. I opted for SF thinking that Friday was a holiday and I should be able to get over and back across the bridge without to much trouble. That was my first mistake. It was raining Friday and as I hit traffic at every place I could to get to the bridge it became apparent that drinking that large bottle of water before I left was a bad idea. I pretty much thought I was going to die around Treasure Island. I figured I was going to have to try and find a bathroom somewhere right off the bridge because there was no way I would make it down to the Presidio. I've only been in this much pain a couple of times in my life and I must have looked like a crazed animal. I eventually found parking along the Embarcadero and ran into the nearest restaurant I could find. After I got back to my car I realized in my crazed state I had misplaced my directions, awesome! Thankfully I had a vague idea from last year on how to get to Sports Basement and made it there around 3:20pm. I pretty much grabbed my packets and ran so I could try to get back across the bridge. For whatever reason my navigation took me through downtown SF to get to the bridge where it was pretty much gridlocked. Doesn't anybody in SF celebrate Veteran's Day????? I won't go into the gory details but lets just say that by the time I was trying to cross my last intersection to get onto the bridge the tears started flowing. It was 4 hours and 15 minutes round trip to get our bibs. I wasn't even able to pull it together that evening and I just had to hope that after a night of sleep I could start fresh and not be so stressed out.

Thanks to my husband who drove us and took photos all day long taking some of the pressure off of me to just enjoy the run with our girls. We got their at 7am, got great parking and waited for our other Mini-Mermaids. Overall everything went just as planned, one our mermaids overslept and so we had to start without her. Sydney was a little nervous at first just about being in such a huge crowd. I promised her that once we started running it would open up and not be super crowded. Once we were off Sydney and I quickly separated from our group as we ran. I held Syd's hand through 90% of the race, this worked well as it kept her running at slower pace. She was so excited about running by the Golden Gate Bridge, she kept saying it over and over again. If you know Sydney, you know she is very competitive. She asked if I had seen any of our teammates pass us and I told her no. She seemed good with that. Along the course I tried to snap photos of her running.

 

After snapping a photo of her a very nice woman offered to take a photo of us. She stopped and took time out of her run to take this great photos of us! 

 

During our training I had tried to give the girls an idea of how long the course would be by relating it to laps on our field at school. Sydney kept asking me how many laps we had left. She was starting to slow down but every time I asked her if she was ready to run again, she always was. At one point my friends Mary Sue and Myla passed us, and she seemed bothered by this. We played some leapfrog with them until finally she looked at me and said she needed to walk more and wasn't going to be able to pass them. We were getting close to the finish line but since you couldn't see it from the course, I don't think she believed me. Around the .25 mile to go mark Kylie jumped in and started running with us. 

A very proud moment for me getting to run with both of my girls. Once Sydney finally saw the finish chute she really stepped it up, I stayed at Kylie's pace and we finished about 10 seconds behind Sydney. Sydney's time was 41:49 a PR for her first ever 5k! 

This truly was such an amazing day, being able to run with her and watch her do something she wasn't sure she could do was awesome. Knowing now that I can run with her longer distances is so exciting. Watching Kylie constantly keep up with girls twice her age left me in constant amazement of her abilities. And on top of all of that getting to know these girls at a deeper level and being able to help them accomplish finishing their first 5k was just so special. I didn't complete my first 5k until I was in my 30's and to think they did it ages 6 and 7 is just so cool!

Many thanks to the folks at the Mini-Mermaid Running Club and Mermaid Series for making this possible for so many girls here in California.