Knit One RUN, Purl Two Too!

Today was the 20th Anniversary Key Bank Vermont City Marathon. Kyarns had a relay team last year, and it's become an annual thing. We wanted some fun shirts that would set us apart from the rest... and this is what I came up with:We had four women and one man, so I had to make a men's version as well:

We got a LOT of comments on the shirts as we were walking around the waterfront today, both from people who knew the shop, and from people who just thought they were funny. A few people even asked if we had any for sale. Hmmm, let me think about that.

We started off the marathon weekend with a bib pickup for the people on our team. We met at my house on Saturday evening, for a quick meal and a logistics meeting. We wanted to calculate the approximate time that it will take each of us to get to the handoff, so that we'd know when we had to be at each exchange zone. Of course, you have to remember that most people end up running faster during a race than they think they will. And that's what happened for us this year.

Our team was Warren (our Cascade sales rep), Barb, Michele, Alice (my good friend and running buddy), and me... running in that order. We asked Warren to join the team several months ago, and he agreed, thinking it would be fun, and a great way to get back into shape. He was working hard on the getting in shape part - until he had a couple of house rennovation incidents... involving scaffolding, rusty nails, knees, infections, etc. So he didn't get to start his real training until about a week or two before today. He arrived in town on Friday, with a lot of enthusiasm for his 3.1 mile leg of the race. Unfortunately, he must have been SO excited to get here, that he completely forgot his running shoes. A trip to Dick's and $90 later, he was ready for the race.

So we figured out when and where we'd meet and where family members should be to cheer us on. We also had a "call" system in place - so that when runner #1 tagged off to runner #2, we would call runner #3 to her know the time... so she could have a more accurate estimate of when to be ready. And it all worked really well.

It was the MOST gorgeous day. Perfect weather, great crowds, lots of fun. We were only EIGHT SECONDS behind our time from last year (DARN!) but we had such a blast. It was really a great "team" activity! It's so fun to be there working together to reach a common goal, and supporting each member along the way. We all ran better than we thought we would, and we're already looking forward to next year!