Off to Springfield......

Sunday is the Bass Pro Shop Marathon. This should be fun. I have done no long runs for quite a while now, just a lot of 10-milers and under and faster paces....we shall see how it goes. The medal looks like a big improvement over last year though, so that should help me during the late miles....I have yet to earn a fish medal....I have a 2 pigs and a mouse, but no fish.

San Fran Weekend Pictures....

My last TNT event was last weekend. It was the Nike San Francisco Nike Women's Marathon. After arriving, we headed to the expo and ran into an old friend that had run with us last year, then moved to LA, and now preparing to run it again.....
Saturday, I went for a 10+ mile run from the hotel down along the beach and over the Golden Gate Bridge and back, much of it covered the actual marathon course.....





Race Day
Early Starters

The 7 am starters.....

On the course.....

35 people and everyone finished their race.....

The medals....

Pumpkin Run

We did the Pumpkin Run on Saturday morning. If you are in the KC area, this is one of those runs you have to experience. It was started 10 years ago to honor the memory of Jared Coones, who battled leukemia for many years. Unfortunately, Jared's mother, Jayne, died of breast cancer before last year's race. In 2007, a lightning storm and heavy rains forced the cancellation of the race.....so this Saturday morning arrived and the weather was perfect. We arrived early, met my TNT members who were participating and then headed for the starting line. They had a pink (for Jayne) and red (Jared) balloon release before the start and a few minutes later, we were off. I cruised the race and came in at about 26:30 according to my Garmin and then headed back up the road to cheer everyone in to the finish. There were over 1500 kids in this race (very few of which could run in a straight line!) and it was fun to watch them out there having a great time. Many of them went through training from each of their elementary schools just for this event and you could tell most of them were having a blast ( a few looked like they may have skipped the training portion of the program and were not as nice of a time, but once the finish line was in sight, that all changed).
We stayed for the awards presentation to watch some special awards given to some of our TNT people (congrats to Zach and Leesa) and then helped clean up. After helping with packet pick up the night before, the whole event flew by...it seemed like a flash. It was a huge success....just under 3000 runners. It is a wonderful event to honor two wonderful people.

Stair and hallway project is officially done......

I put in solid oak floors, stairs moldings, railings and pine doors and stained them with a Walnut stain. We replaced everything....lights, outlets, even the smoke detector. I installed the crown molding tonight and that was the last detail. We painted the walls and removed the nasty popcorn crap off the ceiling and painted it also.




The tile risers are my favorite detail......

Goofy Challenge

I am signing up for the Goofy Challenge through Marathon tours.

I entered the marathon, but had ruled out the Goofy Challenge because it was full......I had forgotten about the travel packages that have reserved spots so I am mailing out my app to them tomorrow and getting ready to start running back to back Saturdays and Sundays. I just figured I needed to get this done in January because in '10, we want to do the Bermuda Triangle Challenge!