135 Red Nose Runner

Last June my colleague Rich Mauthe and I both ended up scheduling surgeries for July. Mine was on my foot.

 His was single bypass.  A long time marathoner, he asked if I wanted to run the Christmas City Classic in December. "By that time," he said, "I should be up to it." I said, "Sure." He said it would be  our "coming out party." But this was no quick 5k run. This was 5 miles. 2 miles longer than a 5k. 2 miles longer than any of my training runs in the past month. I was so excited he wanted to run with me, at my slow, gal-umping pace. He was happy to pace with someone slow to not over do it after being on a bypass pump for 50 minutes 5 months ago. We started at the back of the pack. We stayed at the back of the pack. Our only goal was to finish and we did. He picked up his pace the last half mile. As much as he wanted to have a triumphal finish together he needed to get back to his church for a funeral. My number one fan,husband Rich, saw me off, met me at end and took some pictures of the highlights. I crossed the finish line with a time of 1:02:26. 

One of the features of this race was everyone was encouraged to dress up in red and green and there were prizes for the best costumes. Husband Rich told me about this runner before the race started. "There's someone with a red nose," he said. I commented that I had a red nose since it was 27 degrees and snowing lightly. He said, "This one's blinking."

 Here are pictures Rich took of me at the race.

Crossing the finish line.

Breakfast after the race

I finished!