Zoo Race

Fun yet tough race on Saturday.

The course started in the Zoo parking lot and weaved to the far east entrance and then ran down the switch back ramp, followed the trail through the grizzly bear exhibit, followed the northern trail and around the farm then headed back past the Moose, Tiger and then across the wooden bridge back to cafeteria and then back up the switch back ramp. Lots of tight turns and never really running a straight line as you can tell by the winning time. If it was an easier course the winning times would be around sub 17 minutes.

I pushed Riley in the stroller and we started in the middle of the pack (324 runners) and moved our way up through the first 1/2 mile before getting into the zoo. I ran next to a girl (less than 4 feet tall) for almost 1.5 miles. She was 8 years old but ran fast. She dropped off by the time we hit the farm. It was weird not being able to see runners ahead of you with all the turns throughout the course. I did see about 7 other running strollers at the start and finish. At the finish, Riley and I sprinted against 3 other runners including a young boy (9 years). Since this was a chip timed race, we actually finished ahead of them since we started behind them and caught up. Our first mile was 7:40, second mile - 7:20, third mile - 7:10, last 0.1 mile: 42 seconds (just a guess). We finished in 19th place but 6th place in age group but with an average mile of 7:23.

I would definitely do it again especially since it had great food (powerbars, yogurt, potato chips, baseball cards, and much more).

Vicki will post pictures of the house this weekend. We did meet one neighbors yesterday, she said there were plenty of young kids in the neighborhood. Our closing date is October 10th.