Racing with a Stroller (Our City2Surf Recap)

We ran our first family fun run this past weekend – Sydney’s City2Surf 14km! It is one of the largest fun runs in the world, with breathtaking views, energetic entertainment, and 65,485 finishers. Despite our hesitations on tackling almost nine miles for our first stroller race, we prepared as much as possible.

Running with a baby was something I always planned on doing, until I had a baby. Running alone requires, at most, my phone and my keys. Running with a baby requires, well, everything.  We need a stroller, snacks, bottles, toys diapers, wipes, changing mat, spare clothes, spare toys…etc. It can be hard just to get out the door some mornings, let alone pack and time it right for a successful run around Centennial park.

With all this in mind, I tried to pack our stroller and diaper bag strategically for the race, we didn’t want to be pushing extra weight up Heartbreak Hill, anymore than we wanted to push a screaming baby 14km. CZ may be a wonderful bub, but all babies have their breaking points. We ended up getting lucky, and Cecilia took an unprecedentedly long morning nap during the majority of the race. With that said, here is what we brought, and a little about what we will bring next time:

1. Spare change of clothes – plus boots in case she decided to run with us for a bit

2. Diaper Essentials – wipes, hand santizers, and homemade single use diaper cream dispensers (Nappy Hack: Sandwich bags with a teaspoon of diaper cream tied into a knot make for mess free roadside changes. A small hole in the pouch makes it a squeeze out nicely, and the loose plastic at the top keeps your hands clean during application.)

3. Emergency Baby Carrier – sometimes no amount of snackage or toys will do the trick and CZ wants out of the stroller. We brought along the easily folded K’tan wrap just in case, because carrying a baby for 14 km is no fun.

4. Muslin wrap – works as a sun shade, light blanket, emergency towel, picnic blanket, and a million other uses which makes it a staple in our diaper bag

5. Snacks, Bottle, Lunch – Between transit time and the race, the event spanned CZ’s morning bottle, morning tea, and lunch time. In retrospect, I should have brought more snacks for the transport to and from the race. I forgot how long the bus ride from Bondi Beach to Bondi Junction is when you are smushed in with 85 other runners. She chowed down during the bus ride, and I doubt we would have had enough food, if she had not slept through the race.

6. Old favorite toy – elephant with a bell that can be shaken, chewed, thrown – but not out of the pram because we chain it down with plastic rings (from Coles)

7. Brand new fun toy – Cecilia is alway eyeing other babies’ toys when we are out, so I bought her a crunchy, jiggling, overstimulating, “teething dog”. She saved her enthusiasm for it until two days later though, which did not help us as much for race day

Race Thoughts:

The multicolored dots down the road is the sea of people in front of us

Lovely harbor views along the course

While we did not train for this race as much as I would have liked, I still felt like the mandatory pram “Back of the Pack” starting group held us back a bit. The vast majority of people in this start group were walking, so we had to jog through the somewhat dense crowds at times. We actually didn’t even bother trying to navigate the masses until around 3km, when the crowds thinned out a little. On one hand, it helped the race go by so quickly because we were constantly weaving through gaps and looking for our next maneuver, but we also had a few close calls with people stopping abruptly in front of us, or moving into our path. It was encouraging to see other stroller runners facing the same challenges, and we tried to tag along behind other pram pushers when the gaps were large enough. At one point when John took a turn pushing, we were in a line of four dads running with prams through the crowds. It was quite a sight!

Dad Pram Train – You can barely see the third dad pushing a lime green stroller up front, and there is actually a fourth hidden in there as well.

We are planning on racing with the stroller for the 9km Bridge Run in September, and are still deciding on our strategy. If we race it with John’s coworkers, we will keep it social, with them, but otherwise, we may try to sneak our way up to start with our pace group or at the front of the last wave.

Regardless of how fast we go, we are happy being able to get outside and enjoy racing as a family. I know this is a short lived period that comes with it’s own set of complications, but we are trying to embrace the now. John and I really love races, and we hope that Cecilia will want to be a more active race participant in the future.  John wants to start a pool on when she will run her first mini race, but I think we should at least wait until she starts walking.

A very inactive race participant this time