The race is ON!

About a month and a half ago a cyber friend of mine pointed me to a pretty awesome website--Mark's Daily Apple.  It's one of those "diet" things, except different.  I'll go more into that later, but for now I will tell you that I've been going Primal, as they call it, for nearly six weeks and I have not felt this good for a long time. 

One of my very favorite things about this "program" (I will refer to it as a program grudgingly since I don't have a better word for it--maybe lifestyle) is that it is so comprehensive.  And it's easy.  No 2 hours of exercise a day or going hungry because you used up all your points or whatever.  I like it and it makes sense to me. 

And he encourages people to take naps.  I'm totally on board with that.

Anyway, I have the food thing pretty well and I decided that I need to figure out the exercise.  One of the exercise recommendations is to sprint once in a while--like once every 7-10 days. 

Today I decided that since it was so nice out, we were going to give it a shot.  And I got Grace on board pretty easily.  Recently she has been setting up family races, so I kinda jumped off of that.

I figured that if we all did one staggered start, everyone would have a pretty good chance.  So Grace and I drew a course and made a chart so she could track who took what place in each of the five races.  We figured out that the lowest score wins.  (Nothing like a little math/science lesson on this harvest break.)

Then we needed starting blocks.  So she went out to the wood pile and got five blocks. 

I gave her a Sharpie.  She went to work.  And it absolutely made me smile when I saw what she came up with.  Her dad had much of the same reaction.

Then we got the course all set up.  Basically we staggered the start so we thought everyone would have a decent chance of winning at least once.  Grace would say "GO!" and we'd all run around the pole and back to the starting line--which was really pretty imaginary, but worked for our purposes.

Calla dressed for success.  A cape and tie-dye socks completed her outfit of a champion.

My starting block.  And the chart, even though it's upside down.

I think they are ready.

ON YOUR MARKS!!

We put dad at the neighbor's house.  He's really fast.  Even with a 24lb baby on his hip.

GET SET! 

. . . . GO!!!!!

I really was running, but I got some pictures of the kids running, too.  Personally, this on is my absolute favorite picture, cape and tie-dye socks and all.  This is Calla to the core.

Violet is quite the runner, too.  Those shoes are her "ballet" shoes.  She loves them.

Mr. C got in on the action even though his diaper was pretty heavy.  I am that mom.

HERE COMES DAD!!  I took this picture and then took off running the other direction.

I beat him on this heat.  Even though I didn't go all around the pole, I did touch it.  He called me a cheater. 

Tallying the scores.  Apparently a cape helps with the math here.

And the winners!!

Fifth and sixth place goes to . . .

Tied for second and third are . . .

And the winner, sporting a cape and tie-dye socks is, CALLA!!!!!! 

Just and FYI, this kid really is fast.  Even without her tie-dye socks and her cape.  She's a runner.  And she's good at it.

 I love this crew.  And their daddy.

By Primal standards, this wasn't much of a workout.  We only did five heats and we probably could have been more intense.  But it was a good, fun start.  But, on the flip side, we didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Went to bed late and then up with kids several times and then Mr. C was up at a stupid dark hour for a couple hours, and by the time daddy got home, mom was pretty tense.  Not at him, just tense.  But this totally saved our evening.  We got out in the front yard and ran around like the crazy people on the other side of the tracks, because now we are on the other side of the tracks, and I believe I have pretty much established that we are crazy.  We laughed and joked and had a great time.  It saved our evening and we all felt better.  Every single one of us. 

Going Primal.  Having fun.  Saving the evening, with a cape and tie-dye socks.  Because we can.