What a weekend

First of all, congratulations to all Grandma's marathon or half marathon runners. From the sounds of it, the weather gods cooperated this year. Ever the diligent reporter, I'm hoping that there are some marathon stories for the newsletter out there. Here's a link to the lodging situation in Duluth for the marathon weekend. Precisely the reason I've never run Grandma's. Thank you Mike Schmitt for the link.

Went down to my garden on Friday to water and weed. (Potatoes and peas pictured again. Colorado potato beetles are doing their thing with my potato plants, namely DEVOURING THEM! I've already spent many hours picking them off the plants. Yuck. The really tiny ones, or the bright orange eggs which they lay underneath leaves, I just squish with my fingers. Double yuck.) On the way down, spotted some runners running down Fox Valley Drive. Origin: Unknown.

I had a wedding this weekend, so made my way over to church on Friday evening for the rehearsal. I get to church and I see some people in matching biking jerseys carrying their bikes into church. Hmmm... What's with this? I decided to investigate after the rehearsal. I went downstairs and I see bikes. Lots of bikes.

And shoes. And helmets. And water bottles. And wet clothes hanging on the railings.

It turns out they're a group of 20 students riding 4000 miles to raise $ for cancer. I knew that the Illini were from University of Illinois, and they're from the Champaign-Urbana campus. Their journey is taking them 72 days from New York to San Diego. They're staying mainly in churches and try to get food donated when they stop. They were hoping to connect with Mayo, hence the stop in Rochester rather than the Twin Cities. But that fell through at the last minute. But they enjoyed their stay in Rochester. Their website Illini 4000 indicates that stopping here was one of the best decisions thus far on their trip as we really live up to our "Minnesota nice" reputation. :-) When I got home, I of course made a batch of cookies for them. I delivered them the next morning before leaving for Zumbrota, along with our Explore Minnesota Bikways maps as they hadn't plotted their route to their next stop, Owatonna, at that point. I suggested north out of Byron on 5, west on 16, north on 56, west on 19/20 past Rice Lake then into Owatonna. I called Paul Christian to give him the scoop in case the P-B wanted to do a story. I stopped by this morning on my run as they were getting ready to depart ...

and that was indeed the route they were taking. They use a dry erase board for route directions each day. Great group of kids. Very friendly. They were looking for directions to a movie theater on Friday night. Well, that's easy. Just get over to 63 and drive a few miles south. The theaters are off to the east at the 48th St exit. Well, they have to get around everywhere by bike so THAT wasn't going to work very well, riding bikes down Broadway/63 in the evening. Other plans had to be made. They were also in search of a birthday cake as one of the riders was celebrating a birthday that day. I directed them to HyVee or Cub Foods. I'm really rambling here ... but it was great to meet up with them. Very worthy cause. If you feel inclined to donate (they're raised $58,000 thus far), you can do that on their website.

Saturday was the 10K up in Zumbrota. Fun race. I thought that just a bit of the 10K would be on the trails, but actually most of it was on (dirt) trail. But it was shaded in the woods so that helped keep it cool. Much larger crowd than was expected--about 300 runners between the two races. Congrats to Marie Boyd who won the 10K for the women and I believe she was third overall behind Travis Beniak and Andrew Petz. Several RTC members brought home age group medals. Congrats to all for running well. I'd do that one again. I just wish I was running faster.

I was at church all day Saturday so decided to just stay and attend church services on Saturday evening, leaving today free for a morning run and momentarily I'll be off to volunteer at the Mac Attack. Lovely, lovely morning. Ran out to Quarry Hill and ran the east side trails and then the west side trails. Took 63 photos. But photobucket isn't cooperating today and I'm unable to make slideshows. I'll post when it's cooperating once again. Just over 14 miles of running pleasure.

Well, I better get ready to go. I hope this post is somewhat coherent.

Cheers.