Shoreline

Wow! Busy weekend for the Impalas - I've barely started to recover! To kick off the weekend of racing, we had an excellent showing at Shoreline scoring 5 Impalas in the top 15 all under 19 minutes!


(who's miss flexible on the bottom right?)


KK and MD2 led the Impala's with a 4,5 finish




and Karen - winner of the "might double" - started off her weekend of racing weekend with a great 19:26 finish at Shoreline and then ran a stellar half marathon on Sunday at the Nike 26.2!




And you gotta love our Seniors representing in a race full of twenty somethin's Melinda and Eve represent with a 3rd senior and 2nd supa'senior finish.

And let's not leave Tony out! But looking at the sky, I'm left with only 2 possible explanations for the sunglasses: MIB or Matrix (read: Will Smith or Keanu). Your call.



Thanks Lora for the pics!

Hey Sister!

Did you know ... ?

- While women represented only about a quarter of marathon finishers in 1995, today they compose 40 percent of the field. And in shorter road races, including untimed fun runs, women outnumbered men last year.

- Women are a burgeoning presence on the marathon scene. More than 169,000 finished marathons in the United States in 2004, according to USA Track & Field's Road Running Information Center.

- The first Nike Women's Marathon was so popular that its organizers increased the number of entries this year to more than 15,000, from 9,000, and the event still was filled months in advance.

This and more in this great article on the women's running in they NYTimes

Good read with your morning java ;)

Thanks Cheryl for passing along!

Passin' up the bacon for a little Ginger

Ginger in motion - does she have to make it look so easy?

US Marathon Champs!

That's right ladies, the Impalas are the US Marathon Team Champions for BOTH the Open and Master's Divisions. Our margin of victory over Team Moving Comfort Montana was only 1:57 (8:30:10 vs. 8:32:07). Just goes to show once again that every second counts!
Congratulations to the open team of Megan Daly, Betsy Keever, and Ginger Reiner and the masters team of Lisbet Sunshine, Lorna Thomson, and Janet Smith.

And [drum roll, puh-leese] a very special congratulations to Irene Herman who is the 2005 national champion for her age division!

Keep on Keepin' on ...

That's how my great-grandmother, GiGi, signs every card she sends me - "Keep on Keepin on, GiGi". Hey, it's worked for her for the past 92 years . . . Of course, she's never run a marathon . . . then again she was a senior citizen by the time they let women run marathons in this country - but that's an entirely different post . . .

In the past two weeks many of us have experienced first hand the non-discriminating unkindness that only the marathon can bring. And while the sting of PMSS - post marathon stress syndrome - can easily take us down an anti-climatic road, we are reminded that these are the parts that make us stronger - first mentally, then physically - and as Deena Kastor's race this weekend demonstrates it happens to even the very best of them.

"If it doesn't kill ya, it only makes you stronger" - I don't know who first said it, but the last time I heard it was in college at practice from Lauren Fleshman long before she was US goddess of the 5K. And in the years between that comment at practice and her 15:02, my guess is that she's walked that fine line many times much like Deena K., Lorna, Megan, Waz, and many more of us have recently. Now, we may not all have sub-2:20's in our future or $200K marathon pay days, but you better believe we've got more PRs and victories in the road ahead.

Keep on Keepin on, ladies.

On your left

Just a friendly reminder. It's getting busy out there at Kezar.