Lace-Up, 2011 Style

What a great day it was!! The weather gods were smiling on us, we had a great group of volunteers and everything was falling into place very nicely. I started my day by loading up 33 boxes of apples/caramel and pita chips/hummus in my trunk ...

and 400 cheese sticks and soup for 400 in the back seat and headed for Mayo H.S. at 7 bells.

Shortly after I arrived, Brian Woods arrived as well.

He'd hit the pavement at 5:00 AM in order to get in 27 miles before the beginning of the half marathon. His goal? To get in 40 miles for the day. He's training for Larry Pederson's Zumbro Bottoms 100-miler. He was looking good!! Soon the runners and walkers were arriving ....

including Judy and a couple Chatty Chicks in their pink tutus ...

and my friends from St. Cloud.

Mike and his winnigs :-)

I'd done lots of baking the week before the event and Kristin and crew laid out all the nicely packaged baked goods for the silent auction. I ended up purchasing this USATF top for $10. You can't even get a sports bra at Target for $10.

I also bought my friend Mary's cherry pie.

I'd contemplated running one of the races as I'd run the half each of the first years and hated to now be a non-participant. But I'd run 21.50 on Saturday and knew the half marathon would be r-e-a-l-l-y slow if I chose that event. But I thought that the 5K would probably be a disappointment as I didn't have any speed in my legs. Finally at 9:55 AM I decided to run the 5K and just run it for fun, not time, but do as well as I could for the day. I knew that a P.R. was definitely not in the cards.

First I went out and watched the start of the half marathon.

Official starter? My friend Betsy, who was our speaker last year and is now in her second year of being a survivor. She looks great.

I love her now-curly locks. :-) There's a little story with the starter's gun. I loaded it up while we were in the cafeteria. John was fiddling with it at the starting line for the 5K and had the megaphone in the other hand. So I went over to give him a hand ... and the gun "accidentally" went off in my hand. The runners who'd toed the line quickly took off but came to a screeching halt when John yelled, "Wait! Wait!" I felt so stupid. But I think all was soon forgotten and within seconds we were off to a legal start. The course took us through the finish line and over to the bike path toward downtown. It was 50 degrees on the school sign and felt plenty warm heading north with the wind. After the turnaround, we had a strong headwind but I also appreciated the cooling effect of the wind. It appeared that the course was going to be long, so at 3.1 miles I checked at my Garmin and it said 22:46. Ughhh. At the finish line (3.22 miles) I guess the clock read 23:33. I forgot to stop my Garmin. Oh well. It was just for fun, right? After grabbing a bottle of water and a bread nugget, it was back out on the course to take photos of my running buddies and the Team R.E.D. water stop.

Women's winner and Rick Hlebain

Shane O'Leary

Paul Melby

Mike Schmitt

PR Millie, Trevor and Andy

Team R.E.D.

Back in the cafeteria, there was food and fluids available for the runners before hearing a very moving talk from Laura and Angie's sister Melissa, Dr. Pruthi from Mayo Clinic and the awards presentation.

Joe and Ann Moyer



Ron Giles



We had a record 510 participants registered for the 2 mile walk, 5K and half marathon. Thank you everyone that participated or helped out in any way. We appreciate each and every one of you.

After cleaning up the cafeteria and heading home, I put in another 2.5 miles so that I had 10 running miles for the day. Then I was off to Oxbow Park for a beatiful, hilly snowshoe trek through the woods.

After hitting the shower, I got a call from Sara Holmes who's selling Girl Scout Cookies. So I bopped over there for a few boxes. She's so cute. :-) Who doesn't like Girl Scout Cookies??

A good day. A VERY good day.