The Battle for My Rack

This morning some friends and I participated in a 5K walk for breast cancer.

I mean, not so we'd get breast cancer.

So we'd cure it.

Not that us walking would cure cancer.

Well, it might.

Because I'm not going to lie, we walked in a completely awesome way.

Ferrills.

Here we are at the starting line:

Back left to right:  Maren Johnson, girl whose name I don't know, Me, Shannon

Front left to right:  Emma, Carolyn, Meg

Top left:  Meg does Zumba to warm up for the race.  Please pay special attention to the old dude over her right shoulder.  He was gettin' down.  He. Was. Awesome.

Top right:  This is how Shannon felt about her very first time to have a race number.

Bottom left:  Really, is there a better time to pull out the sexy pose?  I think not.

Bottom right:  Meg lurves pushing Carolyn in the stroller so I can make new race friends.

And speaking of making new race friends, here I am doing just that:

It might look like I'm trying to take a picture of my nose hairs, but I totally wasn't.  See those ladies in the background that are kind of fuzzy?  This picture is of them.  No, really, it is.

And then there was this new friend:

She was not only impressed with my sweet pretend-running form, she obviously thought I was awesome.  Either that or she was memorizing my race number so she could report that I was totally running during the walkers-only portion of the race.

Here are the girls practicing their mid-race intimidation (a la Charlie's Angels):

And guess what?

Even though we were having so much fun, we actually made it all the way to mile 2 without cheating or taking shortcuts.  Maren shows us how good two miles looks:

Oh, and we made it to mile 3, too (even though somewhere between miles 2 and 3, we were passed by an old lady being pushed in a wheelchair who was pushing a stroller...you would think we could have at least kept up with them):

No offense, but does anyone think Shannon looks like a biker chic in the picture on the left?  All she needs is a leather vest and a cigarette.

This is me crossing the finish line:

This is us in all our post-race glory:

Yes, my face is always that red.

During the race, we saw this sweet building:

And after the race, we saw this guy, who was a palm reader:

Does anyone else think he looks like one of those pirates on Swiss Family Robinson?

I totally would have let him read my palm, but I was too busy trying to keep Carolyn from climbing in the fountain.

All in all, it was a great time.

And if you want to read a good story about a breast cancer survivor, read this book by my friend, Steph Doyle.  She was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 27.  It's never to early to practice constant breast-checking vigilance.