No strollers allowed? No problem!

Recently, the wife and I convinced (through HEAVY bribery) our 7 year old daughter to run an official 5k.  How was this possible?  We signed her up for a race that gives you a bowl full of chocolate and sugary fixins to dip in it!

The Hot Chocolate series provides you with hot chocolate, melted chocolate, and a whole assortment of dipping items after the race.  We showed our daughter pictures of the bowl, and told her how delicious it was, and she was sold!  So, we signed her up!

When it came time to train, we elected to put our 3 year old son in a jogging stroller for each training run.  In 2014, we saw people running with kids in strollers, so we figured we would just do that, even though the rules say that no strollers are allowed.  Our plan was to just show up with the stroller and go to the back of the group.

As a backup plan, we decided to bring and ERGO baby carrier.  It's this strap/backpack type thing that is amazing for younger/infant kids.  

No, this is not us.  We are WAY more photogenic than these boring people!

We figured we would head over to the start line and once we saw some other strollers, I would go back to the car and get ours.  Well, we never saw any strollers before the race started.  That meant that I would be carrying our 3 year old for the entire 5k.  This could be interesting!

Fortunately for me, we ran at my daughters pace, and took some walk breaks.  By the end of the race, though, I was glad we were done!  It was a lot of fun, but carrying a small human in front of you for a 5k, without training that way, could have been a recipe for disaster!  But we finished!  (I know, I know, women carry humans in the belly for 9 months, and plenty of pregnant women do 5k's.  Have you ever tried to run with heavy backpack on?  It bounces around like crazy!  Well, that's essentially what my son was doing, except on the front.  I basically had to bear hug him while we ran, and then let him breathe while we walked...ha!)

We crossed the line at 57:01, which is not our actual time since we started in the 4th corral (I think), but whatever.  Regardless, we ran a 5k as a family and had a great time!  And, of course, we enjoyed eating the chocolate afterword...