A Christmas Story!

For December I decided to do something I have never done before. I decided to run a Virtual Race. You may be asking what is a Virtual Race? A Virtual Race is a race that you can basically run anywhere you are and sometimes at whatever time you want. The distances vary and the length of time you have to complete them varies as well. The fees are small compared to regular races and they generally go to charity. It seems like many of the Virtual Races offer medals and to be honest it was the medal that convinced me to do this Virtual Race: A Christmas Story 30th Anniversary 5k/10k Run. 

I worked with a friend named Melissa to create an event for Pip Running and our friends. We had a group of 9 or so people running between both distances and Melissa already had a pre-run route that started from her house, through Downtown Renton, past Boeing along the Cedar River Trail then back up to Melissa's house where we had a wonderful pot luck brunch and running clothes swap. 

As I said before the fees for Virtual Runs are generally pretty cheap but this race was not. The starting price was around $55 and then jumped up to near $75 with shipping. Yikes! That was a hard race entry to swallow because I, of course, waited too long on the early bird pricing and paid the $$$ pricing. I set up the event though what else could I do. Of course we did not expect everyone to pay that high fee so Melissa made medals for all the runners. I know many people scoff at race medals and they don't run for them but I ran for this one and got a super unique bonus medal in the deal.

Both of them are hanging proudly on my medal rack.  They are both a Major Award after all.

Half Marathoners!

They did it!

I haven't talked much about it or them but this Fall I had my first half marathon training group. The group was started to train for the Seattle Half Marathon which was happening on December 1st and let me tell you I love/d these guys!

Training started in September for these guys while I was training for the Portland Marathon in October. The mutual training worked well for my running schedule and once the marathon was done in early October I was able to something I call "car coaching". Car Coaching is where I am able to meet my group at several points along the route and be there water stop, moral support and if necessary ride back to the start. Once their miles started getting longer this also gave my husband and I a great chance to get runs in together. Mike would run half the route with the guys (while I car coached) then I would run the 2nd half while my husband did water stops.

I have been very fortunate to have some really great clients and it is really hard to express how much I enjoyed training this group and how proud and happy for them I was when they finished their half marathon. This was a first for several of them and I trained them on a lot of hills.  To see some of them come so far from having to walk/run 5 flat miles in the beginning to being able to run the full 13.1 hilly miles just made me so proud. We felt like a family that day and I have to admit it was a little bit like the morning after Christmas when it was done.

More training groups have been planned and I can't wait to feel this way again!