Huffin' for Stuffin'

In the sea of 4,000 runners and walkers, the best team name we saw at the Berbee Derby 5K this morning was the title of this post - Huffin for Stuffin. If you're going to get up early on Thanksgiving and subject yourself to the cold you might as well make it fun right? And fun it was. This day was a family first. My sister and her husband were running the 5K so they asked me if I wanted to walk since I'm still not able to run. I then asked my mom, who's never done anything athletic before, if she wanted to join me, and to my surprise she said yes. Then my dad posted on this blog that he also wanted to join so I signed him up as well. And this morning the five of us braved the chilly, slightly snowy Wisconsin weather to cover 3.1 miles together.


I've been running for 10 years. I've completed five marathons, countless running races, several bike events, six triathlons and one Ironman. After all that it's hard to have an experience that is truly new, but today definitely fit the bill. First of all I haven't walked more than a mile or two since my injury so it was nice to be in a race, and beyond that, I was sharing the experience with my mom and dad, who both had never done anything like it before. We had such a great time despite numb fingers and cold faces. My sister and her husband waited near the finish and joined us for the final walk, but allowed us our own moment to cross the line together, hand in hand and so proud of what we'd done together. I really hope this was just the first of many great similar experiences we can share together.

I haven't spent a Thanksgiving in the United States for several years so it was another first for us to be together on this day. We had a great time and I'm hoping that the slightly active start justified a bit of the indulgence.