Owen's Turkey Trot Debut

Turkey Trot was a blast! This morning we headed out to Cumberland Village Heritage Museum so that Owen could pick up his timing chip and get ready for the 1k race. The weather was perfect, very sunny, not too cold. We set off at 8:15am for a 9:30 start, and by the time we arrived a little before nine the stream of cars getting into the main parking lot was very long. I couldn't believe the number of people coming to this event, and the fact that the marathon course was right along the main road with the pylons sitting about halfway into our lane. It was a bit harrowing driving half on the other side of the road as cars were speeding towards us, that's for sure.

We parked in the alternate parking lot (accross the road in somebody's field) since we figured that we'd be the first out, and it wasn't a very long walk to the starting line and tents anyway. After this, we picked up Owen's timing chip and made our way to the starting line for the Turkey Trot. I snapped a picture of Owen in front of the banner, with a new friend he made in the background:


Although a little apprehensive at first, Owen managed to find the courage to pat the horse and was very pleased to have done so. He spent the next half hour feeding it grass and hay:


Then it was time to line up at the start. The 10-12 kids went first, with the younger ones starting two minutes afterwards. There was some tension and confusion among the kids and parents, but everything was pretty cool. Here's Owen getting ready to run and listening to the instructions:


And they're off!!!


I ran across the field to catch Owen coming around the loop and to cheer him on (that's my shadow on the left, once again demonstrating that my camera skills are amateur at best):


And then I ran back across to the finishing area to do the same. Here's Owen running past me to the finish line:


And here's the little guy with his medal at the end:

I am very proud of him having run his first real "bibbed" race and all, and hope that he remembers this as a positive experience for the rest of his life. He's already confirmed that he wants to participate in this next year, and maybe his Dad will do one of the other distances too.

Update: I just checked the sportstats.ca website to see if Owen's results had been posted, and they finally made it on there! Now I am even more impressed with my little guy!!! (If that's possible.) His time for the 1k was 4:48!!! And he finished 22nd out of 108 boy participants and 30th overall out of 223! As far as 7 year-old boys go, and the way they were categorizing the kids in this race you just had to turn seven by the end of the year to be in that age group, Owen finished 3rd! He'll be 7 at the end of this month, so in my mind he's still 6... Amazing.