Happy Friday! I am temporarily back to blog as my substitute bloggers have plans tonight. I say temporarily because I'm still recovering from an amazing, fun, crazy, hectic week that was Hot Chocolate race week aka mini-family reunion. I am exhausted in a good way as my week(end) continues with CCD class prep. My hope is next week, with the approach of Thanksgiving, I can finally slow down to make Advent plans and bring some hushed rhythm to my home before the frenzy that accompanies the holidays.
So let's talk about Hot Chocolate, shall we? As some of you know, I finally got a group together to take advantage of a fairly generous discount and a special goodies bag. Last year, I saw some friends from church who ran the race so I brought up the idea of group registration. The minimum is fifteen people, runners or walkers. Between family and close friends that join me each year, I already had at least eight. Another seven would not be an impossibility. By late summer I had enough people committed to sign up for a group. It was pretty straight forward. As group admin I had control over who to approve. Imagine my surprise when I saw my brother's name for registration approval! No one had mentioned to me he was even planning to fly in from Canada. I was so excited. My brother is amazing. He brings passion to everything he does, be it work, play, or his faith. He seems very flashy on the outside (like I said, passionate) but it is the perfect match of how he lives his life. My kids are in total awe of him as he can match their energy, wit, and humor.
To add to all the new things this year, my 12-year-old asked if he can join the group as well. How can I say "no" to that? He ran some training runs with me but eventually we decided that since it is his first year, his goal should just be to have fun and not go for a pr. I think that helped take away all the pressure of pace and time goals. Now he is hooked. I think he is motivated to run vs. run walk next year. As for our cross-country runners, their goal was also just to have fun and finish together as a group. There was no pr goals, just friends having a fun time running together. Despite the no-pr goal they all still finished the 5k in about 30 minutes. With all this talk of having a fun time, I may have convinced my daughter (who prefers sprints over distance) to join us next year. I told her she can walk with our youngest.
I've already committed to lead our group again next year. We have already been approved so I have a lot of time to recruit more people, as necessary. The goal is to reach our fifth legacy year and maybe ten before our old bones betray us.
For the gift of this week, with my family who came to town, the friends who supported my crazy idea to form a group, and the legs that did not fail me, I am truly thankful.
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| Let's do this! |
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| first Hot Chocolate for these two and also the first year for 5k medals |
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| running brothers |
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| I want to wear this medal everyday |
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| the chocolate was not bad |
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| the fam |
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