Kansas City

A couple of weeks ago, my family and I, along with my parents, headed up to Kansas City. The trip was sort of two-fold. It was the weekend before MLB's All Star Game held there, which means my baseball fan of a husband wanted to go to FanFest and enjoy the baseball atmosphere. He convinced me to go because there was a 5K race attached to all the festivities benefitting several cancer organizations, a cause important to us after Grammy's breast cancer.

We took off early Thursday morning, stopping in Wichita Kansas to visit a museum the kids had seen on our trip there this spring. They were very excited to show Nana and Poppy everything there. We had lunch before making it the rest of the way to KC.

Friday morning, Dad and I got up for a short run to shake out the travel from our legs and see a little bit of the city. We were actually in a hotel right in the middle of downtown KC, very close to the start of the race, so it was a good way to see what the course would be like. Let me tell you, I had no idea that KC was so hilly! Yikes! We did a slow two miles, picking up another runner when we started, and then walked another to scout out a place for breakfast for the rest of the crew. We found a diner not too far away...but when we went to walk to it with everyone else, we actually found another one even closer...and loved it! In fact, we ate there the next day too.

That afternoon, we went to FanFest where we had a lot of fun doing all things baseball. Unfortunately, Ryan had some tummy troubles, so Nana and I took him back to the hotel early. Luckily, it wasn't far away. And luckily, he felt better later and we were able to go to an outdoor concert down the street and watch a video about All Star week in KC projected on the side of a building.

On Saturday, we went to a huge Farmers' Market. It was amazing to see all the booths, stands and shops there. They had all sorts of produce, handmade items, and multi-cultural places to eat.

Then Sunday finally arrived. We all geared up to run...Dad and I for the 5K and everyone else for the 1 mile. It was only a short walk to the start line, but we quickly realized how many people were going to be a part of this. We heard that over 8,000 runners were there! We worked our way up at the start line. Our goal was to finish in 30 minutes or less so we could join Nana, Chad and the kids before the 1-mile started. We didn't, however, take into account that they would make tons of announcements before the starting gun or that we wouldn't actually cross the start line for several minutes.

We ran the first mile in 8:50, probably my fastest mile ever. Then we ran mile 2 in 8:56, still fast for me. The third mile just almost got us as it was mostly uphill. Luckily, the last .2 were downhill, so we finished in 28:54! I did it! I ran a sub-30 5K! And then we found the rest of the crew and took off. However, the one-mile had started at 8 and not 30 minutes after the 5K start, so we missed the actual start. The kids really didn't care how far they ran, so we joined up with the race a block over. They loved running through the fire hydrants the city had going. It was a lot of fun to be running all together :)

I can't tell you how good that race felt!