Our group runs or walks two events together each season. The first is a half marathon (13.1) miles in September. After that event we meet together at the 'family reunion' area under the letter U (for USAFit/Philly in case you weren't following). Since the finish times between our fastest and slowest finishers in the half marathon is less than an hour, it's easy to meet up after. Also the weather is usually pretty nice.
For the full marathon in November though things are drastically different. Our finish times can be anywhere from 2-4 hours apart and the weather is much colder and folks are MUCH more tired after so meeting up is not always feasible. Having said that, I must tell you that a bunch of us did manage to see each other post race this past November.
Anyway, because it is difficult to meet up in November we have a post season party where we can all get together, show off our medals and chat about the event. Our spouses and significant others are also invited so it gives us a chance to introduce our familes too. This year's party was last night.
In past year's it was held a local bar which was noisy and expensive. This year I suggested a pot luck event and Sammy (that's a girl by the way) offered her house as the location. We had a LOT of fun. It was still noisy but it was all our noise so it was ok. One thing we did was ask everyone to bring all the medals they had earned in 2010. I didn't realize it until I was getting ready to go to the party but I earend 6 medals this year. Wow! Of course three of them were from the Goofy race; one for the full, one for the half and one for being goofy. Then I had one from the Hershey Half Marathon, one for the Philly distance run and one for the full marathon. We gathered everyone together and took a picture. I will insert at the end of this post.
I won't bore you with details of the party (except on in the next paragraph). I just have to say that I had so much fun. I really enjoy these folks. It was great getting to meet their families too. One of our group members, Anne, wrote a song about our season sung to the tune of Jingle Bells. It was very well done!
The running group surprised me with a Garmin running watch. They all chipped in for it. They so totally did not have to do that. They said it was a thank you for an awesome season. They had so much fun. I was very surprised. I have never run with a running watch before. I'm not sure I would have ever purchased one for myself. I often tease my group about being too attached to them. So the gift was genuine thank you and the choice of gift was somewhat of an inside joke. I took it out of it's box today and started to read the manual. It is pretty awesome what it will measure.. and somewhat intidmidating. But I can see that it could be useful in helping me measure my progress.
Here is the promised picture. This is about 90% of the group. Not everyone made it to the party.
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