Joseph's First Race

Saturday morning was Joseph's first running race, and he had a great time! The 12th annual Georgia's Chicken Run, held at Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead, is definitely geared toward the 10 and under crowd, and there were tons of preschool aged kids ready to run.

We arrived at 7:30 to check in, and collect Joseph's race t-shirt, goody bag and race number. Joe has a strict policy against wearing the race t-shirt until you've completed the race, so we left Joseph in his bright orange shirt for the morning. Which also worked well since so many kids were wearing their yellow race shirts (that also would have been rather big on him!) so it made it a lot easier to keep track of him.

He was excited to see Georgia the chicken, but not really sure what to make of her up close.

A few vendors set up booths, and one let the kids pick little plastic animals. Joseph had a lot of fun deciding whether he wanted a goldfish or a snake. Luckily, with no prompting from me, he chose the fish.

While waiting for the races to begin, we spent some time wandering around the farm. In the days leading up to the race, Joseph had been talking about getting to see all of the animals, but he wanted to start out riding the pedal carts. He's big enough now that his feet can reach the pedals, but he still isn't strong enough to push them himself. Luckily, Nana helped him out!

After quickly checking out the horses, we wandered over to the baby goats.They must have been fed just before we got there, because they were generally quite gentle and not trying to eat everything in sight.

After visiting the cows and playing for a bit on a playground, it was time for the national anthem and the chicken dance. I tried to teach Joseph how to do the dance on Friday, so it was still fresh in his head. Nana and Daddy danced alongside him, and he was finally waking up enough that he was having fun. He had been a little grumpy for the first hour of the morning, probably because we had to wake him up earlier than usual.

We opted to line Joseph up with the 3 year old boys, thinking that there wouldn't be "runners" in the 2 and under baby walk group. We probably should have left him in the baby group, though, as their course was half as long as the regular course, and definitely had a few other kids running who were about his size and age.

Regardless, Joe and Joseph lined up and were off once the race started. It was a 1/8 mile loop around the apple orchard, and Joe said that within the first hundred feet or so, a bunch of kids either started crying or gave up when they realized they didn't know where they were going and were without their parents. The race organizers didn't do a great job of outlining where the course was, but it was handy that they let the parents run with the kids. I don't think Joseph would have stood a chance of doing the whole course by himself without Joe!

Here's the video from the race - Joe's wearing a bright blue shirt, and you can seem glimpses of Joseph through the crowd. It gets easier to see him in the second half of the video!

Joseph was definitely one of the last kids to complete the race, but he did awesome - he never stopped running, and always had a big grin on his face. It made filming him a bit easier as the crowd thinned out, and I think being able to chance the bigger boys kept him going.

Running up the last few feet, he really concentrated hard on making it to the finish line... check out that tongue! :)

So proud of our little guy after he finished! No tears, and he proudly wore his finisher's medal for the rest of the morning. I had grabbed a juice box from the fridge right before we left home, and it was a good thing because he was seriously tired and thirsty after his run and only wanted juice to drink.

He didn't quite get the concept of looking at Joe through the Chicken Run sign, but I'm sure we'll be back next year and can use this as a comparison of how much bigger he's gotten.

I'm so glad we decided to sign Joseph up for the race, and that he seemed to have a good time. We were so proud of the little guy and can't wait to help him "compete" in more running events in the future!