New Year's Eve has never meant much to us since we are not the partying type....but a few years ago we found the Tanglewood 5.5k at Midnight! As most of you know how special this place is to me, to actually have somewhere to go and celebrate with a nice brisk run in the dark with the lights shining is the best way for us to ring in the New Year! Brooks and I have run this race a few times in the past and we held off last year due to the fact that I was newly pregnant and not taking any chances, but I knew that it would be our plans this year.....
Bryson has been running a little here and there with Brooks and some with me...so we asked him and he said he wanted to try. We were not sure that he would actually still be awake when the race started since his bed is usually 7:30, but we forced him to take a long afternoon nap that day. My mom came up to watch Britan because we didn't want to leave her behind on her 1st New Year's, but I also knew it would be tooooo cold to push her, so her and mom were our sideline cheerleaders. I usually wouldn't be the person that has their baby out after hours, but special occasions call for special circumstances......
We got to Tanglewood around 11 and put our bibs and timing chips on.. The weather was GREAT compared to the last time we did it and it was 18 degrees and I couldn't feel my toes through the whole run, by the end of this one I was sweating. We lined up about midway through the crowd of 1200 and waited impatiently to see the ball drop on the big screen and then we were off......
Bryson did GREAT the 1st 1 mile and then I had to start bribing him with the water stop up ahead. There were only a few times he said he couldn't do it, but we pushed on and ran some more. We stopped over by the lake where the dragon (puff) is in the water for a picture break. AND then we climbed the MONSTER hill to make it to the barn. Once at the barn (about 2.5 miles in) I had to come up with some sort of strategy because he started fading, so we ended up seeing the magical powers of our Christmas Elf, Buster watching us run....that coaxed him a little ways further when Brooks came to run with us to the end........
Once we turned past the train the finish line was soooo close, this is the part that I always get sick. I am not sure why, but my nerves get the best of as I approach the finish...this time my partner held my hand, as he had done the whole run and we crossed at 44:35!!! I have to say I was VERY, VERY proud my 5 year old!!!!!!
Our cheerleaders were there waiting on us!!! We snapped some pictures and headed home! It was a very fun and exhilarating night! The Derting's will be back at it next weekend when we do our annual Winter Run in NMB. Bryson says he is ready, so hopefully we can shave a few minutes off of our time!!!
Hope your New Year has been GREAT so far and that you are settling into 2012! We are very excited to see what this year has in store for us!
Much Love, Alysha
