Mission for Mercy 5K

The oral surgery group that our office refers most patients to had a run/walk with proceeds designed to help provide funds to help individuals needing access to dental care in this state.  The Mission for Mercy is designed to help individuals with a variety of dental related treatments.  All work is done by volunteers and money raised from this activity and other fundraisers helps provide money to help this cause.  It was a great function as I was able to involve most of my staff in this activity.  A couple of my coworkers had never been part of a run/walk event before.  Pictured below from left to right are Eryn, my hygienist, Dawn, my patient care coordinator, Sharon, my assistant, Missy, my other patient care coordinator, Sarah, my other assistant, and myself.  We're all sporting our new Arrowhead Family Dental water bottles which conveniently match the shirts for the event.  

I posed with several staff members by the lake during the walk.  It was a pleasure to be able to participate in an event like this with so many of my coworkers and I walked the event with my staff.  I had a lot of fun.  Eryn took fourth place overall and was the first female in the run.  Congratulations to her for putting Rice Lake on the map and representing our office well.

Boyceville Cucumber Run 5K

Last year I brought home the pickle trophy at the Cucumber Fest run.  This year I had some supporters to come and cheer me on.  There was no kids' race today for Kaia to participate in.

Kaia found her special Spongebob blanket to sit on.

And they're off!

I am seen here rounding one of the final corners of the race.

I quickly approach the finish line.

After the race, I took my daughter out to cheer on the other runners.  We saw a police car, and the policeman told Kaia she could look inside if she wanted to.

Kaia, book in hand, walks with me to go to the refreshment table.

There were all sorts of refreshments.  Bagels, bananas, oranges, water, and of course, pickles.

The refreshment people had all sorts of supplies sitting out in the coolers.  Yet another race where the knives used to cut the fruit up are left out in the open.  I never can quite understand why so many races do this.  It's pretty dangerous in my opinion.

I finished the 5K course in 19:11, which was 5th place out of 42 runners.  No pickle trophy was earned today, but I decided instead to treat myself to a nice postrace pickle.

Spooner Jack Pine Savage Days Savage Mud Run

This year Spooner did it again by hosting a stellar race which just exploded in popularity.  The 2nd annual Savage Dash 5K mud run was held.  Angela was out of town this weekend, so I had no one to come and view my run.  She was about 7 months pregnant and therefore would not be running the event anyway, but she opted to go visit some family instead of coming to watch this race. . . where are her priorities?  The race was held under nearly the same conditions as last year.  There were waves of about 25 people per wave.  With nearly 500 runners at the race, I think there were about 20 waves of runners.  The challenges were also mostly the same with a few changes.  The one thing they left out which was a disappointment was the field of cars to jump over.  Last year they had about a half dozen cars you had to jump on top of as one of the obstacles.  Someone must have gotten hurt at this challenge last year, as this challenge was left out of this year's race.  In its place was a cool obstacle where you climbed a plywood wall using 2 x 4's which you used to pull yourself up and then went back down to the ground by using a fire pole like what you would see at a fire station.  I thought this was a great obstacle, but I heard that one lady broke her leg on this.  The long slip and slide down the hill and the mud pit were also still there.  Most of the obstacles remained the same, but the popularity of the event cased it to grow in popularity.  Having not done a mud run all year long, this promised to be another run that would be challenging.  I decided to try to go out aggressively and decided to try to run in the first wave to see if I could run against another fellow competitor, Nick Adams, whom I raced head to head against last year.  Nick is an avid mud run participant and last year I finished just seconds behind him.  I knew that if I ran in the same wave as him, he would push me hard toward a high finish. 

Facebook provided some pictures on their Jack Pine Savage Days website and Pine View Photography in Spooner caught this shot of me hurdling a hay bale.  A neighbor of mine saw me at the end considerably cleaner this year than the last year.  The results of the race were somewhat skewed.  I was reported to have finished about 10th out of 478 runners (last year I placed second out of 167 runners), but in the results I knew someone who had beat me (Nick Adams) but was listed behind me in the overall results.  I also knew someone who had finished about 5 minutes slower than me in the 5K race, but was listed ahead of me in the overall results.  This was after talking to just a couple people who I knew.  There were perhaps several other people who may have been out of place in the results who may never know this.  I didn't finish with any hardware in this race, but still had a blast.  Also, I wouldn't say that my post race picture was worthy of a Christmas Card photo like last year's was.  I would expect that the race will continue to grow in popularity next year.  Hopefully my wife will be able to participate as well in the event as she had a great time last year.

To check out a nice video of the event that was put out by the Spooner Advocate, you can visit the website below and watch the first few seconds of the video to see me hurdle the hay bales at the start of the race.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVPfGDAcvHU