Let's go back in time to 2004. I'm in the Navy deployed on a ship and Mrs. Diesel is back in Virginia Beach with two kids under the age of 3. She sends me an email saying she and her friends have been doing their morning walks and stuff and she wants to do this Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon in Virginia Beach later in the year. She asked if I wanted to do it too. So, I naturally said yes, and sent her what I expected to do timewise so they could put me in the right group.
Fast forward a few months. I'm back home and we're a few weeks from the race. Mrs. Diesel informs me she has a hurt foot/ankle/knee/hip/something and she won't be doing the race. Whatever. I had few buddies I convinced to do it, so I had a few people to run with anyway.
Night before the race and we go to pick up our race packets and I notice my bib and race number were way off from everyone else. Turns out Mrs. Diesel made a typo on my race entry and basically put me in the top 100 of a race with over 20k runners in it. No problem they reassured me, you can always go backwards into slower time groups.
So, we get to race day, and Mrs. Diesel drops me off and goes to the finish line with the two youngin's in the stroller. Of course a whole bunch of people are asking me about my bib color and number and why it's so different. I think I just started making up stories. Anywho. Race starts and they are releasing runners in packs of 100 or 200 each minute to spread out the crowd. So, it's about 30-40 minutes after the gun goes off before we even start. But, we go off and since it is called the Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon, at every mile marker there is a live band playing music. To capture all this I had my fanny pack with a disposable camera and my handy dandy flip phone (this is 2004 after all). I'm about 3 to 4 miles in to the race when I get a call from Mrs. Diesel. I'm thinking she's going to let me know she sees me and get ready to wave or something like that. Nope. Not a chance. Her call was to let me know she's at the finish line and has been watching runners go by but hasn't seen me. So, I explained the whole thing of staggered starts and let her know I was still a solid 75-90 minutes from finishing. She calmly lets me know the kids are bored and she's not waiting around any longer and she was heading home.
So, there's that precedent if you need to ditch your daughter and BF to get to the Rent.