Out and Back

It was an "out and back" trip to the cities today. First off, an hour on the Stairmaster. I was awake just after 5:00 so figured I might as well get up and work up a bit of a sweat anyway. Then it was up to Edina for the MDRA annual race director's conference. I met up with some fellow race director's from the St. Cloud River Runners:

Jacki, Tim, (me) and Sharon. Lots of information was shared and we all enjoyed looking through our goodie bags. Lots of promo materials, socks, a wicking shirt (too big so I'll give it away), mints, can wrap, bottle opener key chain, pens, a couple of stick sanitizers (not sure what those are yet), and something that I can't figure out that's on a string--either a pen or a penlight ... "stuff". I did win a door prize--I'm not sure what the official name is, but it's a pleather (plastic leather) notebook thing that holds a tablet of paper. Sharon won 2 hours of free marketing advice. And marketing was just the reason she came. : ) I picked up a Women Run the Cities wicking T. They had boxes of them.

We heard presentations on charity runners, race walking/walking, promotional items, "greening" your race, and social networking. Social networking (Facebook) is what I'm going to look into first. And then "greening" some aspects of my race (Fetzer 20K--April 10--subtle plug!).

After the conference I met my oldest son Eric who lives in Minneapolis for lunch at Panera. We had a nice (but short) lunch together.

BBQ chicken salad and country turkey sandwich (You Pick Two). Eric had french onion soup and a roast beef sandwich. Thank you to the nice gal at the next table who kindly took our photo. We started chatting. She has a son at NDSU and a daughter going off to school next year, possibly Wellesley or U of Vermont.

Then it was off to pick up a sweatshirt I'd ordered and then a quick stop at Marathon Sports.

It was hopping in there. I had a 25% off coupon that expires tomorrow (30% off if you bring in old shoes). I took a quick look-see through the 50% off rack, about 2 minutes on the full-priced clothes and decided I didn't need anything so off I went. I needed to be home by 5:00 to pick up and deliver food for the Lenz/Rowekamp family (silent auction meal from last year's LUABC) and try to make 5:30 church (was 7 minutes late, which was pretty good considering).

Then home to scrounge up something for supper and make another batch of cookies. These couple weeks are pretty cookie-intensive.

Tomorrow ... morning long run then off to St. Cloud for the River Runners annual banquet in the late afternoon which should be fun. I think I have close to 70 door prizes for giving away. : )

Well, that's all I know for today. Looking forward to some warmer temps next week. I'm tired of running in sub-zero weather.

Toodles.