Ity Bity Ditch The City

What a blast! This morning we all trekked over to Conyers for the Ity Bity Ditch The City Race (and the non-kid version as well). I found this trail race "with a twist" a few months back and discovered they had a kids' leg to it as well. Done and done! You had to be at least 5 years old to participate, which luckily Eli was as of about 10 days before the race. I think this is the 4th race Eli has done, but the first 'adventure' one.

We got the kids up early and drove an hour away for the 830AM start time. Three other families joined us for the kids' race, which meant Eli had some friends to run with. Parents were allowed to run with the kids, but not participate in their obstacles. I got to run with Eli and Lehr snapped as many pictures as he could. The race consisted of a mile of grass running, hay barrel jumping, trail running (the real deal!), slip-n-sliding, wall climbing (with help), potato sacking, tube crawling, and tire running. So so so much fun. Eli did great, only stopping to walk once or twice. He did great on all of the obstacles (except the potato sacking..he wasn't into that today). My favorite part was at the finish line. As the kids crossed, a volunteer handed them a medal and congratulated them. Eli held his hand out for the medal, but never stopped running. A real pro....

The adult race started once the kids were done, so I joined my friends at the start line. Our race ended with the same obstacles the kids' race had, but we had a 3 1/2 mile trail run before that point. This meant all of the kids (at least ours) got to do the obstacles for 20 min or so while they waited for us. Lehr said they had a blast. Then, once our race was done, we all headed back to the slip-n-slide and seriously spent over an hour there, sliding down the big black tarp. Eli ended up in a pair of shorts and no shirt and Maddux got down to underwear and a shirt. (Not really her fault. She just hit a growth spurt in height which has thinned her out a bit. Shorts and pants that fit her fine a month ago now fall off of her hips.) For something we signed up for without much insight, we had a really fun, fun family day. Click here for the full set of pictures Lehr took.