The Event

My husband and I are blessed to be on the board for a local non-profit organization. 

Long story short, the goal is to put shoes on kids.  We did it for one Title One school for the 2010-2011 school year, 340 shoes.  For 2011-2012 school year, we want to hit all 21 Title One elementary schools.... which is 5,700 students, and $150,000. 

So, needless to say, we have a lot of fundraising to do!


This past week, our church celebrated their 75 anniversary, and as part of the week long celebration, they did a 5k to benefit OneSolePurpose.  Being on the board apparently means you're on the 5k committee! Trav helped out with the course, and I was put in charge of registrations. 

We decided to do a 10k/5k/1mile fun run.  We wanted to get enough sponsors to pay for the race and shirts, so that 100% of the registrations went toward shoes.  Each pair of shoes cost $26.00, so we had a $26.00 registrations fee, $13.00 for the 1 mile fun run. 

We were told that on a first year event, 100 runners would be considered successful.  We thought with the church's support (and the members running), we could hit 150.  Awesome right!  As a pipe dream, we put the number 200 out in the distance, thinking that would be really cool. 

We started this whole thing about 8 weeks ago.  We did online registration as well as paper forms.  Awesome... we could put them in the running stores, on bulletin boards, hand them out at prior weeks races... but that meant that we had to hand enter them.  Oh wait, I meant me, that meant I had to hand enter them. 

As the event got closer, we had more PR (free radio spots, twitter and facebook push, newspaper article).  That brought the registrations up too.

As we walked into the last week, we were near 350 participants.  Remember, they told us 100 would be considered a 'good' turnout for a first time race.  I took it on, thinking that I'd be dealing with, at most, 200 registrations.

I took off Monday before the race, and worked on entering registrations, adjusting data, assigning bib numbers... that night we had a 'stuffing party' and stuffed 350 goodie bags. 

I wasn't planning on working at all last week, but on Tuesday, I subbed for a teacher who I know well, and was sick.  That night Trav and I worked together on entering the assigned bib numbers to the people in our online database (I had done it on my excel worksheet). 

Wednesday, the teacher was still sick, so I was back.  About 10am that morning I found out that the 4 hours of work we had done the night before shouldn't have been done. The timing company didn't know that we had our own bibs, and I didn't know they assigned the numbers.  There wasn't anyone 'at fault' there was just a bunch of miscommunication... but in the end, I felt so overwhelmed partly because all the work I had waisted doing that, and partly because I was further behind then I thought.  We got things worked out, but the stress was mounting. 

We had packet pick up Thursday and Friday all day.  We did some more stuffing, organizing, entering of new registrations that were coming in still... 

At this point, as far as xanax goes, I'm in full consumption mode.  I took my max dosage Wednesday - Friday.  What.a.blessing! 

Because of all the mix up between the timing company and me earlier in the week, the point of 'organization' that I wanted to be at Thursday before we opened packet pickup didn't happen until about 1:00pm that day.  Talk about feeling overwhelmed!

Granted- every day for the 10 days before the race was a midnight or later night for me.  Trav goes to bed early for work, so I would quietly crawl into bed, kiss his shoulder, and go to sleep.  We spent hardly any time together, and if we did, I had the laptop in my lap, entering data, editing data, answering emails that came in about the event... it was never ending!  Oh, and I was still getting up early in the morning.  If you know me, you know that I don't do well with very little sleep, and very little sleep was the definition of my last week!

Saturday morning started about 5:00am, with us being at the race site at 5:45am.  It was cold.  Really cold.  We got everything set up, and had planned for it to be more of a carnival type thing with doughnuts, bouncy houses and stuff for the families of the runners.  It was to cold to do almost anything.  At 8:00am, the 10k and 5k'ers left the property.  Our course was very hilly, and we did our best to warn/prepare everyone!  The 1 mile fun run started just after that.   (ok- bragging point- my step daughter was the first girl to finish it! She ran the whole way!)

Seeing all the runners take off, after all the work, and stress, and sleepless (little sleep?) nights, was truly amazing.  All I could think was "we did it". 

We had really cool tech shirts for everyone, and check out the overall winners trophies!  Last year, the shoes were Converse, it seemed only appropriate!

The three of us before the race

Racers getting ready to go!

Here he comes... his first 10k!

I cried when he came across the finish line. 

He walked the 1 mile and raised extra funds. 

He was the oldest participant we had, and had the biggest smile on his face.

Long story summed up. 

 It was an exhausting week. 

 It was busy, and stressful, and overwhelming at times.

But it was successful. 

We had 545 participants. 

We raised enough money to buy shoes for two schools.

Amazing.

We were blessed.

By God, by the volunteers, by the generous participants.

It was good.

I'm still tired.