After Ellen was a few months, some friends from church invited me to join their running group. When they told me they met early Saturday mornings (sometimes as early as 6am) I wasn’t too thrilled, but figured I would try it at least once to be polite. Well, after my trial run I was addicted and now look forward to getting up early every Saturday. It reminds me of the Cross-Country Days, except we all have kids.

Last weekend we (plus one of the gal’s sons) ran the Colorado Ragnar. We didn’t win, but we did set a record of a different kind. We were the first team ever to get Disqualified. Pretty impressive, huh? Unfortunately, I don’t have a crazy story for you. One of our team members just forgot to ask for the day off work and we couldn’t find anyone else. For awhile, three of us (I was one of them) were going to pick up an extra leg, but the Ragnar Team kindly let us just skip those legs under the condition that we were no longer eligible to win. Sadly we had to surrender our chance at victory (ha), but I’m glad I didn’t have to run an extra six miles. (I’m not in that great of shape.)

We ran, we laughed, we even slept a little bit. I felt that all of us being moms helped us handle the infrequent and limited sleep better than the team of co-eds I ran with three years ago.

Noel fought a good fight on the home front and watched the kids all by himself for 24 hours. He did a great job and didn’t complain once. (Although when I called to check on everyone he did say, “Please don’t die, I can’t do this by myself.” 🙂 ) In the morning he even packed everyone up to come and watch my final leg.

I appreciated how glad they all were to see me when I crossed the finish line. Of course, no one was more excited to see me than Ellen, who apparently had not been left with as much milk as she would have liked. A guy that was waiting to start his leg asked me if I got a handicap for breastfeeding. A valid question, I thought 🙂

All in all, it was nice to prove that I’ve  still got it in me.