Run for the Toad - 2010 edition

On Saturday, Chad once again took part in The Run For The Toad at Pinehurst Conservation Area. He's done this once before, last year, on a day when we had much better weather. This year was cold and raining: not a good mix. Chad left the house at the crack of dawn and the kids and I followed behind not long afterwards. The rain made for some slow driving conditions but we made it there in time to see the race start and catch a glimpse of Chad before he disappeared into the woods.This race has a tent city set up on the premises to take care of the hordes of runners and onlookers, and I'd baited the kids to get out of the car and into the rain and down to the starting line to see their dad off by promising them a trip to the Tim Horton's tent as soon as the race was underway. Then I had to make good on that promise. We spent the first part of the race blissfully drinking hot chocolate and eating chocolate doughnuts under the shelter of the food tent. We stretched that little activity out for as long as possible, but eventually we evicted ourselves. Our next stop was at the children's tent where colouring materials were available, and the kids busied themselves with a few crafts to pass some more time. By this point the lead runners were done their first lap and I figured Chad would soon be making his way out of the trees. I asked the kids if they wanted to come outside to wait for him with me and with a quick glance at the sky and the rain pouring from it, they both said no. So I set off on my own (still within eyesight of them) and was able to catch Chad on his way past. That's a picture of it at the top. As he was running by, Liam was coming out of the tent to tell me something, so Chad is waving at Liam as he sees him coming through the crowd.After the colouring had run its course, we wandered down to the beach. We were already in rain gear and couldn't get much wetter so I saw no harm in letting the kids splash around a bit. Plus, it helped to kill some time. The race was a 25km cross-country run on very hilly terrain, so as you can imagine, it was a fairly lengthy event. By this point I was starting to hear some complaints from the kids about the wet and cold, and it was nearly time for us to leave anyway. (We had driven separately from Chad as we had another place to be by a certain time and knew we'd have to miss the end of the race as a result.) Luckily, the course crosses through the road we had to take back to the car with 3km left in the race, and we waited there to see Chad one more time before leaving.

With that, we wound through the maze of park roads until we found our car, jumped in, cranked up the heat, defrosted our extremities, and set off for our second destination of the day... more on that to come.