Gills GO GO GO GO

Here are the three racers the morning of the Edwardsville Rte 66 10K. Karen scraped ice off her windshield that morning of 10/10/09.



Diane, age 41
Karen, age 53 (that's what Gary said!)
Gary, age 42

It's Gary Gar and the Spunky Bunch!

And the last sighting of the world's worst sweat pants that ended up in the Walgreen's Dumpster at the start of the race. Yippee! Diane's wish come true. Bye-bye, you bad gray things from 1990, including big oil spot stain and elastic bottomed legs. Bye-bye!




And then SURPRISE! Ross shows up. He came to watch his mom cross the finish line! What a sweet son!

Not sure who actually is in this picture that we might know, but this is the finish line at the Edwardsville Library, some 6.2 miles from the starting line.

The race involved old cobble/brick streets, modern city streets, and paved trail through the Watershed (wetlands) area and woods, some hills but mostly flat.

Here's the cheering section at the finish, minus Grandma who is behind the camera. That's who we have to thank for the fine photos. Thank you! And thanks for getting all these kiddos up and out into the cold morning when I know they didn't make it easy.

And the first of the Gills to cross the line was Gary. He placed second in his age group and met his personal goal, bettering his time from last year. I admit I have no memory for numbers so I will guesstimate his time was 47 minutes. I think that is about right. Pesky details!

And then came this character crossing the line. Who? Ross, is that you? You were only here to watch!

Not spontaneously pop into the race at the last minute with no preparation. And totally beat the two girls who'd diligently trained for 5 weeks! With an awesome time of, again sorta somewhere, around 1 hour!

Then here comes Karen crossing the line. Karen, who I was referring to as Racehorse that day.
She was kickin' it! Her time was, like, 1:03.

And here comes clean-up girl a couple of minutes later, definitely later than her goal, but at least still running. The legs just didn't have the mojo that day for some reason, despite some new rockin' tunes on the iPod, including Miserlou by Dick Dale and Turning Japanese by The Vapors.

Hey, we did it!! This looks like it could be a before picture, we look so unaffected.

Well, but then there's this that I call an action shot. Ross losing his lunch? Before breakfast even?

Gary was the sole contender for the Open Eyes award.

Ok, take 2. Better this time!

The family involvement was superb even though we were missing some key members this go 'round. But I doubt if we are done with this race thing. Let's do it again!