Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Martinis all around

A friend of ours, Brent, organizes this race called The Martini Mile. It raises money for Ozanam. We really like to help support our friends' fundraising efforts, so last year, Cory ran in it. Unfortunately, it happened to fall on a day when we had a million things going on, so I couldn't do it.

This year, we both wanted to run it, so we created a team. But then we figured out that it was the same day as Molly's dance recital. Plus, Cory majorly sprained his ankle less than a week before the race. No way could we do the race and recital, so we recruited other people to run instead of us on our team. We were planning to try to get down there to cheer our team on, but wouldn't have to count on making it for the start.


But, then we got the news that two of our team members dropped out. So, we had no choice but to attempt to do both (Cory's sprained ankle and all). Molly's dance recital was in Lawrence at 1pm, and the race was down at Martini corner at 4pm. According to the Garmin, it was a 48 minute drive. It was going to be close!

We managed to book it from the recital to the race, and we even made it with time to spare. I did have to change clothes while we were driving down I-70, but I'm talented like that. So, it was all good. (Don't worry, Cory was driving, and I made sure to only change when no other cars were beside us!) I wasn't at all sure how the race was going to go. It was hot and it was 4 o'clock. I'm strictly a morning runner, so running any time after 9am is a completely foreign concept to me.

We had a four-member relay team, with each team member running one mile. Our team consisted of Chris, Anne, Cory and me. Chris started the race, then Cory (gimping on the ankle), next Anne, then me pulling up the rear. As everyone came in, they kept talking about the big hills. I thought, "man, I do hills all the time, I'm sure it's nothing." Yeah, well, I don't sprint hills, and I definitely don't run them in full sun at 4pm. Plus, my hills are not mountains of brick road. These hills were brutal.

Chris handing off to Cory.


Cory handing off to Anne.

Anne handing off to me.

Finished. Not feeling all that great.

Our team!

My time was not my fastest for a mile, and it took me forever to recover, but then we got the most pleasant surprise: Our team got 3rd Place in the Coed division. We even won awesome martini glasses. If only I could figure out a way to hang it on my medal hanger ...

3rd Place Coed Division Winners with our awesome martini glasses.

We didn't get a chance to hang out and enjoy martinis in our new glasses because we had all the kids with us. So, instead we hopped over to Crown Center to have dinner at the Crayola restaurant and explore the dinosaur exhibit. The kids seemed to enjoy that better than the race. I can't imagine why.


Next year, we're getting babysitters so we can enjoy every aspect of the race. (Maybe we can actually drink some martinis from our winning martini glasses!)

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