If you haven’t noticed all the immaculate physiques that have taken over our island this past week like a pack of athletic pirates, you must be living under a rock. Tomorrow is the annual St. Croix IronMan Triathlon, one of the qualifying races for the Ironman in Hawaii. A pretty cool event to watch (if you have no interest in being a crazy person and pushing your body to impossible limits) or participate in (if you are a crazy person and have EVERY interest in pushing your body to impossible limits).
The week has been filled with fun events for the athletes and residents, like practice runs, swims & bikes, Jump Up, Carb Fest and The Children Run, which took place last night. The Children Run takes place every year right before the Tri-Jump Up and is organized by VI Pace Runners.
SC kicked butt. This was her first race EVER and she was so excited, but you’ll see later that she really had no idea what to expect. She’s 4.
She started by eating a great breakfast, went to school and upon being picked up, informed me she ate all her lunch and took a super long nap to get ready for the race; and did I remember to bring her sneakers and headband? (yes, and DAMMIT! no, I forgot her lucky headband)
Race started at Times Square in Christiansted, so if anyone needed a last-minute dime bag of crack or $5 hooker, we were in the right place. 600 meters to the Fort, straight shoot. A couple of pro-athletes, Mirinda Carfrae and Catriona Morrison, got the kids stretching before the start:
The Fisherman took SJ down the road to get a different perspective:
naturally, some of the parents had to “encourage” the younger ones (thanks Em!):
SC fizzled out about three-quarters of the way through:
Then her buddy Lightening McCole passed her up (can you blame him? his mom is one of the crazys, but mark my word- she’ll place):
and it lit a fire under her you know what:
She crossed the finish line in just over 3 minutes (really? it seemed a lot longer!)
And in true spirit of competing and doing your best, every participant was honored with a medal and certificate:
She was soooooooooo proud and so were we.
We stopped by our fav Roach Coach (Nichole’s) to get our traditional Jump Up meal of pates, johnny cakes, conch in butter, mac-n-cheese, rice-n-beans, skipped the Jump Up craziness to head home for dinner & showers.
We discussed the race again at the dinner table; she learned what the word PACE means, and we re-iterated again how proud we were of her on her first race.
While snuggling in bed after our bedtime stories, SC informed me that she wished the fort was closer so she didn’t have to run so far. She then place her prize-medal under her pillow where she keeps everything in the world that is true to her heart.
And that’s what it’s all about.
*crappy iphone photos because our camera did not have its memory card in it to which The Fisherman was thankful I was the one to discover this, not him, because he would have kept shooting and I would of B%$ched him out for not having any photos of our daughter’s first race.
**check back for more Crazy Athletes as we will attend a practice swim in the harbor this morning to heckle some athletes, I mean cheer them on.
***Rumor has it there are 20+ caped MGWs runnin’ like mutha’s for the annual Women’s Race in June. I am most positive you won’t want to miss this spectacle.
I am not much of a “run out and buy the latest music” type of person. In fact, I mostly listen to NPR down here, and the local reggae station, which SC seems to be taking a liking to lately as well. We noticed when we first moved down here that the radio stations were kind of stuck in the 70′s and 80′s with their music. At first it was kind of fun….at first.
My favorite was the play list I created to run The Women’s Race. An annual fundraiser for the 
