finishing a 5K

Thanks for all your words of support and encouragement, and especially the good weather vibes you were clearly beaming our way! The bad weather held off and we enjoyed perfect weather this morning. Not too hot, not too cold, not too windy, not too sunny. We couldn't have ordered a better day.

We ended up having over 200 runners in the two races (1 mile fun run and 5K), which is nothing short of amazing for the first year of a race.

Even more importantly, we had almost 50 volunteers helping us with all the various tasks on race day. It is an enormous amount of work, and all those extra hands made the difference between running smoothly and complete chaos. Some of the volunteers were church members, but many were teenagers giving up their Saturday morning to help. OK, so they get community service credit, but still, those are pretty good hearts.

Here I am, in my constant position today with clipboard and bullhorn, which I never did figure out how to work properly (the bullhorn, that is, not the clipboard):

My father was the official course photographer. He wasn't the only participant. Secondo, Terzo, my mother-in-law and my mother were all in the 5K itself. My mother medaled in her age category, in her first 5K ever!

This is the best shot of my saintly husband, who never stopped working on this project for the last 6 months. He graciously agreed to ride the lead bike in front of the runners. He biked and drove that course about 10 times over today as he picked up and dropped off course volunteers, the water station supplies, more course volunteers...

But the best picture of all (sorry honey) is all the food collected from such generous runners today.

Our local food pantry is run solely by area churches, and it is experiencing unprecedented demand. The shelves were bare. This should make a dent, at least for a week or two. (ETA: We weighed the food: 411 pounds!)

All of the race proceeds are going to purchase anti-malarial nets in Africa. Our goal was 250 nets, but I think we raised enough to buy over 1,000. We are the little churches that could!

And now I am going to bed.