our team of seventeen

Yesterday was our six mile group run, and just in time--by the time evening hit, snow was sticking to the ground! The seven-miler next week could be interesting.

I would definitely like to take a moment to sing the praises of our awesome Boston Partners team this year. This is Boston Partners' last year as an official charity of the Boston Marathon(R) (the BAA gives featured charities three years each), and I'm so proud to be the team's coordinator. We have many familiar faces on this year's team; I'm only one of four current full-time staff members who are running. We also have two former staff members, a few of our volunteers, and even two folks who ran for us last year. All of our teammates are motivated to run and raise funds for our organization, and we are so appreciative for all of their efforts so far.

Each official charity is given fifteen numbers for the Boston Marathon, but in addition to our fifteen charity runners, Boston Partners is very proud to have two qualified runners also on our team. (This is the first year that's happened!) These wonderful women don't actually have to join a charity team in order to run the Boston Marathon--their qualifying times from previous marathons earned them that privilege already. Nonetheless, they agreed to join our team and raise money for our organization anyway simply out of the kindness of their hearts. We are so happy to have them as part of our team... even if both of them finish all of the team runs about twenty minutes before I do! =)

Training continues this week with the last 2 mile run for quite a while--the "short" runs of the week will be at least 3 miles after that. Wish us luck!