Once upon a time, I was a runner, one of those people who ran for the fun of it and signed up for races with my friends on the weekends. Although I never raced more than my town’s annual 10 Miler, it was still a part of my identity.
And then I had two kids in two years and lived in Italy for three years (which is a lovely place to live but a hard place to jog!), and I lost my running routine. When we moved to Coronado last year, I knew this was my chance to get back into it. Coronado is relatively flat, has perfect weather, and offers wide paths along the bay and the ocean… how could I not?
Yet despite living in such a runner’s dream world, I found it very hard to get outside and run. I told myself I would, but when my alarm rang in the morning, I turned it off. Then I told myself I needed new shoes, and then treated myself to my first piece of Lululemon running gear, and then bought a better headband — but none of it did me much good.
Finally, in May I signed up for the Crown City Classic 4th of July 5K. Now I had to train. This would be my first race after two kids! I was going to make this happen.
At first I planned to run this race on my own, but when I found out that jogging strollers were allowed, my husband agreed to run with our two kids in the jogging stroller, too. A family run on the 4th of July! How patriotic!
Having my husband as a pacesetter and motivator really helped me to get out there and train. We spent many evenings in June jogging around Coronado with our kids in the stroller, stopping at playgrounds to let our kids play, and then running home as the sun sank low in the sky.
Finally, the 4th of July came. We all arrived at Tidelands Park and felt the adrenaline in the air. Low cloud cover didn’t affect the spirits of the nearly 1,100 festive runners gathered in the grassy field. My daughter delightedly pointed out women in red, white, and blue tutus and an especially enthusiastic couple in American flag bathing suits and body paint. A band played at the start of the course, and a cheerful announcer counted down the final minutes. We lined up at the back of the pack of runners, excited to race for the first time together.
And then we were off!
Well, sort of. We were behind all the racers, so it took a couple minutes for a thousand runners to begin ahead of us. At the starting line, we broke into a jog under a giant American flag held up over our heads.
The course went along the bay, under the Coronado Bridge, and down Glorietta Blvd by the golf course. It was a narrow course that doubles back on itself, which made it difficult to run quickly at the back of the pack, but also interesting because we could see all the faster racers coming back after we’d only just started running!
As we looped around and started running along the bay again, heading for the finish line, my husband said, “This is it!” and I realized I was about to accomplish a huge goal. I’d told myself I wanted to do this, to run again, to finish a race, and finally we’d made it happen. We’d trained together, and now we were racing together as a family, along with hundreds of other Americans on the 239th birthday of our country in one of the most wonderful towns in the world. We rounded the final turn and heard the band playing, the cameras clicking, the families cheering.
And we smiled wide as we raced down the final stretch and over the finish line together.
First three photos used with permission of Crown City Classic.
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“Coronado Living” is a weekly column written by one of eCoronado.com’s staff writers, Becca Garber. She writes about choosing simplicity and practicing hospitality with her family at home in Coronado. You can read more of her writing on her blog.
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Becca Garber
Staff Writer
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