{"id":6316,"date":"2021-03-15T19:18:35","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T00:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/?p=6316"},"modified":"2021-03-16T09:22:31","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T14:22:31","slug":"volunteering-the-ms50trailrun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/?p=6316","title":{"rendered":"Volunteering: The #MS50TrailRun"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of you know MFH (My Favorite Husband) and I were registered and planning to run the MS50 Trail Run.\u00a0 The event was held a week ago and neither one of us ran!\u00a0 This was a huge change in our March plans.\u00a0 We were both looking forward to visiting home, running some fun miles in the woods in Mississippi and meeting up with friends.<\/p>\n

Training was going well! I had been back to running post my fall surgery last year for about a month and MFH had been training strong for his 20k distance.<\/p>\n

You know how life does its little thing and changes everything all kittywompus?<\/p>\n

Y’all know I broke my foot and that was the end of my 50k plans for March.\u00a0 After I had to give up my spot for the 50k, I was super proud of MFH for keeping up his training!\u00a0 He was crushing his long runs!!!\u00a0 I knew he would totally smash his race.<\/p>\n

His new job?\u00a0 It’s not amazingly generous with vacation time.\u00a0 We discovered come race day he’d have a whopping 11.5 hours vacation time to last him to summer.\u00a0 Between emergencies and our new grandbaby, we talked and made the difficult decision that those hours needed to be saved.\u00a0 He decided not to run.<\/p>\n

We were both sad about this but knew it was the right thing to do.\u00a0 Then we we thought, maybe I should fly down to volunteer!\u00a0 Awesome idea, right!?!\u00a0 Long story short:\u00a0 With the help\/generosity of some of my amazing Mississippi friends with transportation around the state, the trip south to volunteer at the race became a reality.\u00a0 YAY!<\/p>\n

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This sweet friend and beautiful lady picked me up from the airport late Thursday from the airport. It was so awesome to catch up with her over dinner before having her drop me off at the hotel!\u00a0 You know with some friends, when you see them again you can just pick up where you left off?\u00a0 She’s one of those.\u00a0 Some friendships are just that great!<\/p>\n

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Friday, another very generous friend took a day off work so we could make it down to Laurel in time for our group dinner that evening.\u00a0 She also took her lunch hour on Monday to drive me back to the airport so I could catch my flight!<\/p>\n

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The pre race dinner Friday evening was at the local Buffalo Wild Wings.\u00a0 The food was acceptable.\u00a0 The service was very lacking!\u00a0 I’ll just let you read whatever you want into that and you’d probably be right.<\/p>\n

Everybody knows about my monthly plank challenges.\u00a0 Those who have gone to a group dinner with me before know about the group plank challenge photo of the day.\u00a0 We caught a few people off guard with our group planking pic but everybody was a good sport and it really was fun!\u00a0 If definitely got the attention of the people eating dinner!<\/p>\n

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The next morning was a very early o’clock wake up call.\u00a0 I think we needed to head to the trails by 4:15am.\u00a0 Early o’clock!<\/p>\n

We made it to the trailhead with a few minutes to spare and definitely in time to cheer for the 50M runners as they headed off into the woods as the sun rose.\u00a0 It was a very pretty morning!!!<\/p>\n

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The trails were pretty dry this year so people were tearing it up!\u00a0 It was fun getting them what they needed and sending them back for another loop.<\/p>\n

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The race has a 12 hour time limit and three different distances.\u00a0 The 50M started off the earliest at 6:00am.\u00a0 The 50k runners headed off 15 minutes later at 6:15am.\u00a0 The 20k runners got to sleep in as their gun time wasn’t until 8:00am.<\/p>\n

I had friends running all three distances!<\/p>\n

I was assigned to work the first aid station close to the Start\/Finish.\u00a0 The first few hours I wasn’t busy and people blew by me at the start of the race.\u00a0 A few hours later people were stopping by for some gummy bears or a glass of cola, maybe something salty…whatever they needed, I had it!\u00a0 The longer the race went on, the busier the aid station became.\u00a0 It was so much fun!!!<\/p>\n

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Seeing my friends smash new goals and new distances…seeing them running so hard for the finish and knowing they were thinking they couldn’t take another step and then the second they crossed the finish, all the agony on their faces melted away!!! I was so happy for them…so proud of them!!!\u00a0 It was incredible!<\/p>\n

Goals were smashed that day!<\/p>\n

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Here’s just a few goals that were smashed:<\/p>\n

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What a day and what a trip!!!<\/p>\n

A trip that wouldn’t be complete without getting to go golf ball hunting the next day, the day before I few home.<\/p>\n

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What a fabulous trip!!!\u00a0 I can’t thank y’all enough for letting me come home! I flew back to Iowa with some wonderful and precious memories.\u00a0 I was a sad panda to have to leave but I really missed MFH a whole bunch and it was time to go home.<\/p>\n

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#IRun4Aiden<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of you know MFH (My Favorite Husband) and I were registered and planning to run the MS50 Trail Run.\u00a0 The event was held a week ago and neither one of us ran!\u00a0 This was a huge change in our March plans.\u00a0 We were both looking forward to visiting home, running some fun miles in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21,29,27,22,6,8,3,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6316"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6337,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6316\/revisions\/6337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/TM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}