Winter Wonderland of Lights Run/Walk

Tonight we ran the Winter Wonderland of Lights Run/Walk as a family.  We had such a fun time!


The run had three distance options - 2, 4 or 6 miles around the racetrack which was decorated with christmas lights the entire way.


The gods smiled upon us and we had PERFECT weather - no rain and clear skies.  It was a little cold, but not too bad at all.


We got to the racetrack about an hour before the race was to start because we still had to pick up our packets and I didn't know how crowded it would be.  We had no issues getting our stuff and everything was really easy.  We did hear some people complaining that their kids weren't showing up as registered - but I did everything online a few weeks ago, and all our registrations were there.

We did a little stretching:

And a little walking around waiting for it to get dark (race started at 5pm).

And finally, it was race time!  The race was one loop on the track if you were doing 2 miles.  Brian was running with our son, and I was going to "run" with our daughter.  She's only 4, so I figured it would be a very leisurely run/walk with lots of stops for pictures.  I was right!

My pictures of the lights themselves turned out pretty crappy - I had my camera on the wrong setting and was trying to change it holding hands with my daughter and jogging, so I got a lot of pics like this:

ooooh, psychadelic!

And a few that kind of show the lights, but are still totally blurry:

I did get some cuties of my little runner girl:

And Brian snapped this photo of us heading towards the finish line at the end:

And here we are after we met up at the finish:

My daughter's eyes look white!  Must have been all the lights.

We had a great time at this run.  Some people looked like they were there to actually RACE it, and I'm sure for them it was kind of a nightmare because they allowed kids/strollers/scooters/dogs/etc on the track, and there was no organization at the start as to whether you were running or walking - so I'm sure the whole first lap was spent weaving if you were trying to go fast at all.  But for what we were looking for, a family fun run, it was great.  My son did awesome - he ran the 2 miles in 23 minutes!   He very quickly told me that 1) he beat his dad, 2) he had a great time and, 3) he wanted to run it again next year.  I think we have found a new tradition to kick off the Christmas season!