Austin has a fun little thing at Christmas time called the Trail of Lights, where a bunch of different companies or vendors put up Christmas light displays and people just walk through it all. We went to it last year and decided to run in the Trail of Lights 5k this year as a family.
It was on Saturday, December 9th and it was 78 degrees – plenty warm. It was so stinkin’ crowded that we didn’t even cross the start line until a good 15 minutes into the race. We decided to position ourselves near the back since we were pushing the girls in the Burley (stroller). We would get stuck behind huge crowds of walkers and have no choice but to walk, so as soon as there was any opening, we would sprint through it. Scott was pushing the Burley and I thought he did awesome, but I’m sure everyone else just thought he was a maniac. He was jumping up onto curbs with the girls and swerving through crowds.
We met up with some of our neighbors, Sandra and Doug, and Andy and Ann and had no hope of sticking together because of the crowd, but it was still a ton of fun.
We went through one tunnel that was lit up with stars and Audrey and Kate just started belting out, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star…” That helped part the crowds a bit and guy behind us with a double jog stroller, said, “I’m sticking behind you. Your kids are singing.” The lights were really cool. Audrey and Kate especially loved the Belle and Ariel displays. Unfortunately we don’t have pictures of that because it was in the middle of the race.
During the race, Audrey kept asking if she could run yet because she wore her running shoes, so finally at 3 miles, we got her out to run the last .2. It was up hill and she was ready to get back in the burley about 5 seconds after getting out, but it was so crowded, I just made her keep running with us. Big mistake. I must have pushed her too hard, because the rest of the night she was sick. Poor girl. Kate, on the other hand got out after the race and kept telling me to run with her. We had to park about a half mile away and she ran/walked all the way to the car. Quite the little trooper.
