The Most Wonderful Day of the Year

It seemed as though everyone had a merry little Christmas, and with no races over the weekend I awarded the Purple Drink Athlete of the Week to Patty Stott, whose amazing performance at Celtic Solstice I forgot to mention in last week's digest. As we found out last year there is basically one race in America on Christmas Day - the Joyful 5k in Minnesota (Ed won it last year). So even this week will be light.

I was excited to see how everyone was celebrating, and once again opened the #TWSSChristmas for photo submissions. There were some great pics of runs and various winter wonderlands, and we'll determine the winner by YOUR votes! I put all of the photos into a Google+ album, so all you have to do is click on the link below and look through the album. Voting is simple: on each picture is a little +1 button, and the picture with the most +1's will be declared the winner. I'm not sure what kind of window I'm going to give yet because I know many of you may not see this for a few days and then it's New Year's, so I'll give it a week maybe.

TWSS Christmas 2012

Your Mom Reads the Blog

And I'm not even kidding. 

What a GREAT showing of Winter Track Warriors last night, although, with mild weather conditions, it really wasn't too bad.  Too people, Cheese and RM, even went shirtless.  Many, many wet butts though.

This little post will contain a few tidbits of information.  First and foremost, by virtue of racing on Christmas Day, notching a win, and setting a Course Record at the Biggest Christmas Day 5k in the US, Ed Aramayo was our Purple Drink Athlete of the Week.  Ed won the Joyful 5k (untimed) in Minnesota in 16:30.  The race could potentially be the only race run on Christmas Day anywhere.  I guess you could say Ed was really "Joyful and Triumphant" - get it?  That's a little O Come All Ye Faithful humor for you.

But the fun part of the day was watching the tweets come in with the hashtag #TWSSChristmas.  It was a great way to keep us all connected over the weekend and see where everyone was, and what they were doing.  As mentioned in the email, THIS week's PDAW is going to be awarded to the popular vote winner for the photo submission contest.  The voting will be open until Saturday, and it will be the last PDAW of 2011.  January 1 races will count towards the first full week of 2012. 

Of course, I have received no votes yet, so I may have to take my 4 or 5 favorites and put them in a poll and see if that works better for voting.  Otherwise I'll just have to do it myself.  Sigh.

There will be a New Year's Day "Hangover" Run, this Sunday starting from Gilman.  We have tentatively awarded a start time of 11am, so unless there is a compelling reason to adjust that time, we will stick to it with probably a 90 minute run (with optional 2 hour as Dusty/myself are going 2).  This will enable anyone who watches NFL to get back in time for games.  Apres run we will likely patronize a food establishment of some kind. 

We haven't finalized plans for NYE Run, but will likely start in the more downishtown vicinity, afternoon, maybe an hour run or so.  Chill.

Here is the link to the TWSS Christmas Photo Album, cast your votes!

TWSS Christmas 2011

On the Eve of Christmas

Ed has apparently found the only race in America being held on Christmas Day, and it is the country's (and perhaps the world's) largest Christmas Day 5k: the Joyful 5k in St. Paul, MN.  BUT, Ed has won enough accolades this year, and so we (and by we, I mean Brennan) came up with a great way to decide this week's PDAW.

We want YOU to submit a pic of yourself, your family, whatever, preferably via Twitpic, but of course not everyone is on Twitter, so email or text message will be accepted as well (to me, by end of day Sunday).  Brennan's suggestion was to show where people are running, what kind of conditions - perhaps you had to run in the snow, or you're on a beach, or on a run with some high school friends.  Maybe it's a picture of you and your child's first Christmas, or you and your family, or you dressed as Santa.  It's your choice!

CREATIVITY is what we're looking for!  If you're on Twitter include the hashtag #TWSSChristmas (you don't even have to include @BMoreRunning!) so it shows up below!

NOTE: As of 12/28 I have disabled the script so if you want to search for it, you have to do it ON Twitter.