Race day arrives!

 

Into every life a little rain must fall, and onto every runner, as well. Our streak of perfect weather runs ended today, alas!

 

The day hadn't even dawned when we got up and had still not arrived when we made it to the race site.

 

 

As usual, there was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait involved. On the race coordinator's part, it was very well done, and line-ups were minimal. It's always just a long lag between breakfast, parking, arrival, bag-check, and start times. But imagine our surprise and happiness when we headed to the start line to see some friends and family from Sanikiluaq waiting there to cheer on the students! Well done! The kids were so very happy! Many thanks to Nikki who answered some last-minute posts on where the start line was!

 

The rain hit as we began the run, but fortunately ended at the halfway mark. All seven of the runners competed, all seven finished, and all seven earned their own special medallion or SMO: Shiny Metal Object, in runner's lingo!

 

 

Left-to-right: Brad Wutke, 5K; Noah Emikotailak, 10K; Joewillie Iqaluq, 5K; coach Terri Skinner, 10K; Joe Kudluarok, 5K; Maggie Megan Kowcharlie, 5K; and Ashley Appaqaq, 10K. Way to go, runners! Celebrate your achievement!

 

And a huge thumbs-up and thanks to Subway, who provided the runners with juice, coffee, milk, subs, bagels, fruit, yogurt and cookies! Perfect way to refuel after all that hard work. And then off to the football game. The players entered the field to the boom of fireworks and fireballs, which thrilled the students to no end.

 

 

 And even better, ours was the lucky row to win free Booster Juice smoothies! There we all were, up on the Jumbotron for all the world to see as we were televised live to the nation! One way or another, these kids are making national TV!

 

 

And the smoothies were delicious, albeit very cold in an outdoor stadium in October, LOL!

 

The evening ended quietly with dinner at the hotel, a swim, and an early bedtime due to us being completely worn out. A great day for all of the students who have put so much effort into fundraising and training. I'm proud of all of them!

 

That's it for today!