Canada Day Kids' Run, Yaletown Grand Prix

             

You gotta love a statutory holiday.  Happy Birthday Canada!  141 years old today (not sure how that number was arrived at and haven't bothered to check on Wikipedia).

We Joneses decided to mark the auspicious occasion of Canada's 141st with a family day.  In the absence of any strong opinions from the others, I steered us toward a sport-filled day - since these are the type I enjoy the most.

We began with the HBC Run for Canada - Kids Run at Coal Harbour.  Mattias had so much fun in Golden Ears that he was eager to race again...  and Aia made her race debut this morning.  We met up with Mark Vaughan and his kids, Kayley and Taylor, to do the event together.

Aia, Kayley and Mattias relaxing pre-race

This event was really great!  It was a fundraiser for the Olympic and Paralympic Teams going to Beijing and there were TONS of olympic athletes out as well as the ever popular Quatchi, Sumi and Miga (the mascots).  The athletes all wore gold shirts with their names and their sports on them - made it easy to chat with them and get the kids interested.

The kids with Quatchi, Sumi and Miga

Pre-race stretch

More pre-race hanging out...

The race was 1km and Mattias was pumped - I needed to temper his expectations (to win) a bit as there were many older kids in the race.  Anyway, Sacha and I observed him putting on a wicked burst at about the 600m mark and passing a handful of older kids....  it was so awesome!  He is having a lot of fun with running and racing - so I am going to keep lining them up for him.

Aia's debut was dramatic.  She decided to run last minute and was slightly unprepared (wearing a dress, and her cute (but not running) shoes.)  Given that the race was only 1km, and it is completely fine to walk, we decided to register her and go for it.  Anyway, she had a small "wipeout" in the first 300 metres which caused her to have to dig especially deep for 700 metres to finish.  I distracted her with tales of my own race disasters (which she seemed to enjoy), but she was gutting it out with some difficulty.  I asked her many times if she wanted to stop and she said "No!" every time.  The last hundred metres or so were completed in my arms - no matter, she was awesome!

This race was so cool, Mattias ran a lot of it with Annamay Pierse (2008 Olympic Team - Swimming).  How cool is that?!

Mattias and Annamay Pierse

There were also great t-shirts and awesome medals - and these things go a LONG way with kids.  All in all, a great event and one that we will try to do with the kids every year.

After the run we headed over to Yaletown where we spent some quality time at the playground, Mattias and Aia played with their good buddy Finlay, while Sacha and I hung out with Mel, Fin's mom.

Then it was on to the Yaletown Grand Prix - as I have mentioned before I LOVE watching bike races.  This was a criterium in the streets of Yaletown.  We watched several races and left on a high-note when my friend Allan Prazsky took home all three cash primes AND the win in a dominating performance in the Masters Race.  Mattias' comment was, "Wow!  Allan Pracksky is a good biker!"  and that is very true....  Congrats Allan!

As if that wasn't enough, we were forced by a major traffic "incident" to remain over town for several hours which we spent picnicking at a park in Kits....  By then the kids were completely wiped out and we headed for home.  

Awesome Canada Day!  Looking forward to Canada's 142nd b-day....  

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