Race for the Cure

I ran the race with Tammy and girls this morning in downtown Toledo with 17,500 of our closest friends. It was a great morning for the race, cool and clear. There were 17,500 registered runners and walkers. Started out about a 9:00 min/mile pace with Tammy and Lindsey. Chelsea took off from the start once we got across the timing mat. I wanted to hang with Tammy to help pace her to a PR and not over-do myself and end up regretting it by stressing my leg too much. Lindsey ended up leaving us about 3/4 mile into the race too. Went out a little too hard for Tammy at 9:11 first mile, she was able to maintain and, in fact, speed up a bit the next mile, which was 8:59 and phenomenal for her! She struggled a bit in the final mile of the race. I tried to get her to walk through a water stop, get a good drink, and catch her breath, but she wouldn't listen. We ended up walking a little bit later for just 20 or 30 seconds because she was having a pain in her right side. I was trying to pull her along and encourage her as best I could without pushing her too hard. We ended up the last mile at 9:23 and finished the race in 28:55 by my Garmin (running GPS), which was a PR (personal record) for her by almost a minute and about a 9:10 min/mile average pace! Her prior PR was a 29:49! WOOT! The girls smoked us both. The almost as neat thing as pacing Tammy to a huge PR is, I felt as though I could have busted one in this race as well. Patience, Grasshopper... patience. And... we got over $200.00 in donations for the cause! Thanks to all who contributed to our team!

We got some of the post race food and took a stroll around the inside of 5/3 Field and got some goodies to bring home. It was so cool being able to run a race with my whole family. Very cool. I'll post all our official results when they have them up on the internet.

Back to Columbus this afternoon to assist with the high volume of claims they had from the severe winds from the remnants of Hurricane Ike on September 14. I should be back either Thursday night or Friday afternoon and, that should wrap up that tour of duty.