Why I Love My Local Running Store...

The Moore tornado on May 20th hit not too far from where I lived from 6th grade until I graduated from high school. My junior high was damaged and neighborhoods that my friends lived in when we were in school took direct hits.

I was excited to help my favorite local running store OK Runner distribute shoes and apparel to people affected by the storms. The shoes were donated by individuals and running stores across the country. The clothes were donated by Brooks and Moving Comfort. I love Brooks. I have been running in their shoes since my first 5k and I have been proud to be a Brook Fanatic for the last few years.

I have never seen so many boxes of running apparel in my life.

There was box after box of shirts, shorts and jackets that we handed out.

I never thought I would love Brooks more than I already did, but I was blown away by this amazing company and their generosity.

On Friday I took these clowns with me. Carson, Hailey and Camy helped all afternoon handing out clothes. They had a great time and worked very hard.

Trey, Jerry, Tim, Rochelle, Tiffany and me.

Rochelle and I went back on Saturday and helped fit people in shoes and help load up all the remaining shoes.

Tim and Gus, they spent two days away from their Norman and Edmond stores to help show Moore a little love.

It is exactly this sort of thing that makes me love my local running store. It's a local small business that organized this huge event, not the big chain athletic stores. It's the small businesses that are going to be there for their community when it counts.

Need new running shoes? I recommend you go talk to the people at your local running store, they are there because they love running and I bet they will take care of you too.

 

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Another Corporate Challenge...

This weekend was the 25th annual OU Medicine Corporate Challenge.

We were participating for the fourth time this year, and it was a tough year. We won our division last year, but this year I doubt we did a very good job of defending our title.

The weekend just started off all wrong. Friday afternoon most of the Oklahoma City metro closed down at about 4 pm because of the severe weather that had been predicted. The Friday night events for the Corporate Challenge were cancelled. I headed home a little after 3 pm, and found out a little while later that Camy's softball game was cancelled.

A little later, there was a little of this.

Zoey, Carson, Zach and Camy

Sid and Mimi (my sister's mother-in-law and her mom) were on their way to Edmond with my niece and nephew Zoey and Zach for a BBQ that we had planned on going to after the softball game. By the time they made it to Norman it was too late, the tornado that started on the west side of OKC in El Reno made conditions too dangerous for them to drive to Edmond. They originally stopped at The Riverwind Casino and we got ahold of them and offered our house and the empty space in our storm shelter.

They headed over and we had some pizza, some time in the storm shelter, and not long after no electricity. It's always fun to have unexpected guests, just wish we had been able to offer them some air conditioning and the ability to open and close the fridge whenever we wanted.

The power finally came back on a little after 7 Saturday morning. I ended up missing the women's mile that I had plans to walk at 8 o'clock Saturday morning. I did get up in time to see the 55 meter dash.

Kim, Jarred, Matt, Leighanne and Dennis

Afterwards, I headed home and Josh and the girls went back up in time for volleyball. I thought I was going to have to play, but we decided to go with the six players that did show up.

Jacob, Casey, Jeana, Louis, Chanda and Jarred

I did do the one mile walk this morning that Camy and Carson were walking as part of the Kid's 10K. We watched the tug-of-war this afternoon, and then this happened.

I traded shoes with Camy and made a couple of changes to our dodgeball team. Yes, that is one orange and one lime green sock. I honestly don't ever remember playing dodgeball as a kid, so I studied up on the rules. Seriously, there are alot of rules for dodgeball.

Let me say that we won our division in dodgeball last year. Since I was playing I am not at all surprised at today's outcome. The rules had changed a bit from last year, so it was the best of three games, and each game was 1 minute. It was also single elimination, so you had one shot to move on. While I survived our first game, we lost two in a row and were done.

Stephen, me, Casey, Tiffany, Jennifer and Jarred

No shame here. I think we got an unlucky draw, the team we played was pretty tough. On the bright side we did make it home by 5:30. Even though I wasn't out there the wholetime for three days, driving back and forth and the time we did spend out there was pretty tiring.

It is not easy participating in an event like this and not being able to run. I am glad that I don't have any scheduled events for the forseeable future. With a little over a week of no running to go, and I plan on getting some crosstraining and yoga in this week. It's either that or I am going to have to repeat "step away from the rice krispy treats" to myself over and over again.

 

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What the Heck is Going On?

It has been hard to do any blogging lately. I like to talk about food, baking, running and other goings on in my life, and frankly the running has been spectacularly bad, there hasn't been much in the way of interesting foods or baking, and life has been pretty mundane.

I have been in a food funk for a while, and while I keep looking for interesting recipes on Pinterest, I have not been interested in actually cooking any of them. Lots of simple things like sandwiches going on around here. I did eat a whole seedless watermelon in less than a week. I can't figure out why my crazy family won't eat watermelon, but I'm kind of glad they don't want to.

Sprout's has had the best seedless watermelon. I forgot to get over there to get another one today and I am very sad that I will be without more of this yumminess tomorrow.

Penny thinks that every time I have the green bowl it's full of watermelon.

As for baking, while we haven't been buying Oreos lately, and I have not been depriving my family of all things sugar related, it has been a little uneventful on the baking front. Not that I would call rice krispy treats baking exactly.

I did make these last night.

Chocolate chip brownie bars. These are really good. I used a bigger mix for the brownies than the recipe called for so they are pretty thick, but that just means more chocolate, right?

As far as running goes, it has been pretty horrific. I will talk about it more tomorrow, but it has been really, really bad all month.

For the holiday I decided to get in a spin class. My favorite teacher was teaching today and Rochelle, Kelly, Anne and I decided the best way to celebrate the holiday was to go torture ourselves and kick out booties for a little over an hour.

It's all smiles before we got started.

I think I lost about ten pounds in sweat by the end of the class. Notice how dark Ro looks next to me. I like to stay out of the sun as much as possible so Ro will look even more tan when I stand next to her in pictures.

As for life, I finally got out to go help with some of the clean up going on in Moore. I have driven through the devastation all last week on I-35, but today we actually drove down 4th Street and got to see the damage up close. It really is unimaginable. It made my heart hurt to drive through and see neighborhoods completely decimated. I just don't think that you can compare it to anything really. 200 mile an hour winds packs a punch that you just have to see in person to believe.

We helped a friend of a friend get the remains of his house cleaned up and ready for the city to come by and pick up the debris. It was overcast and windy out, we were covered in a layer of fiberglass by the time we got home.

I was so proud of Camy, she came with us and worked very hard, without complaint. This was a house a little ways down from the one we were working at. I was amazed at the number of volunteers out. There was a constant stream of people coming by offering water and differet kinds of food for everyone working. I am sure that in the same circumstances it would be like this anywhere, but it made me very proud of the state I have called home since 1985.

So that's the short version of what's been going on. The longer explination about running will come tomorrow.

 

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Tornados and WIAW...

I feel like this past week has flown by. I can't believe it's already Wednesday again and time for another WIAW post.

In all honesty, I did not manage to get any pictures of food on my phone this week. We did go out for pizza Friday night at one of our favorite restaurants here in Norman.

Pizza by the slice an mozarella sticks, it's a win win situation for every picky person in my family. Sadly, I don't think my pizza helped to fuel my horrific Saturday morning run. There has not been that much walking in ten miles since the Cowtown Marathon in February. My tweeked right quad muscle has demanded rest and compression so I haven't laced up my beloved Brooks Ravennas since then.

There was also pizza on Sunday night, because what else should you eat during a tornado watch party? The crazy weather started on Sunday afternoon. The girls and I went to the Warren Theater in Moore and saw the new Star Trek movie. When we got out of the theater at a little after four the clouds had rolled in and the wind had picked up. The Brown's had arrived by the time we got home and we were glued to the tv watching the storms roll in.

We got some good sized hail.

Our storm shelter is in the garage. It is in the garage underneath my car. Because of this, when the bad weather rolls in my car gets rolled out of the safety of the garage. I got some minor hail damage on my car.

We answered the question "how many people can you fit in your storm shelter".

That would be four kids, four adults, one French bulldog, and one very nervous Boston Terrier. It was a tight squeeze.

It was a pretty scary looking storm as it rolled through. The girls had a friend that had some damage near her house from the resulting tornado.

Round two happened on Monday afternoon. By now you have heard about the tornado in Moore, OK, and you have probably seen pictures of the destruction. Moore is just north of Norman. I went to school there from sixth grade until I graduated from Moore High School. We have friends and family that live there. The movie theater the girls were at on Sunday afternoon is the one that suffered damage from the tornado, and my daily commute takes me along the interstate where cars were damaged.

My old junior high was damaged. I used to ride my bike to babysit in the summer to one of the neighborhoods that suffered significant damage. Thankfully everyone we know in the area is safe, sadly the same cannot be said for their homes.

Scenes from my commute this morning.

This used to be a neighborhood right off I-35, not it's just a path of destruction.

This used to be a bowling alley, and a credit union and a few other buildings that also took a direct hit from yeserdays monster tornado.

It has been a very sad day. But in case you haven't heard, Oklahomans are strong. They pick themselves up, help their neighbors up, dust themselves off and rebuild. This is not the first devastating tornado to hit Moore, and chances are it won't be the last.

For now they could use your help.

To donate $10 to the Redcross text REDCROSS to 90999, or to donate $10 to the OKC Foodbank, text FOOD to 32333.

 

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