2006 Susan G. Komen NW Ohio Race for the Cure

Today we got up bright and early and headed downtown for the 13th annual Susan G. Komen NW Ohio Race for the Cure. A large crowd was expected, so we arrived early to get a parking spot nearby. Becky and the kids walked (Ok, Aaron got to ride in the stroller) a 1 mile course while I ran in the timed 5K (3.1 miles) event. I have been planning for this since early March and have been training on a treadmill in the basement. It was important for me to run the whole race and I was able to do so, just not very fast. I finished in 46:18 (9.27 min/km)which was 75th out of 76 in my age group and 1601st out of 1643 timed runners. This year was about finishing, though I definitely have some room to improve as far as speed goes. The winner of the race finished in about 1/3 my time.

The atmosphere was electric and awe-inspiring. This is the largest participatory event in NW Ohio and I believe it as we had over 17,000 people here today. After the Race we went into the downtown baseball stadium where Alex got to run around the warning track with other kids his age. The picture with a large pink FINISH banner in the middle of the photo has Alex right in the center of it. His finish was also televised live on our local CBS affiliate. After that there were some speeches and stories about some amazing women who had gone through breast cancer's crucible, culminating in a large pink ribbon made on the field by all of the survivors in their pink shirts. It's hard to tell but that's the picture second from the bottom. Over all the local affilliate raised $86,156 for breast cancer education and research. We'll defintiely be back next year.