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.