Our Silent Mile

This morning, the Spring, Summer, and 10K Teams all came together to listen to team patient honorees tell their stories, and to do the first mile in silence in honor of all those suffering from cancer. We heard stories from Rob, Kristi, Katie, Nicki, Paul, and myself about surviving cancer, and could have heard from many more. One person who is not there is Ed, one of our amazing and inspirational teammates. As I reported earlier, Ed has cancer again and is in the hospital after some pretty major surgery to replace a huge chunk of his left foot, but not the two toes that he lost. He is such a positive guy, and he will be out again doing triathlons - I just know this!

Here is Kristi telling her inspirational story of surviving Hodgkin lymphoma while pregnant. She is a multiple times marathoner / half marathoner.

Some of the team applauding Kristi as she finished speaking

I am not going to repeat all the stories, because many of them are noted here from our Silent Mile last August. After we all spoke, we posed for a big all team (marathon, cycle, and triathlon) photo for Ed.

Here is the group of us -

Go Ed! Get well and get back out there!

Cate made a big "card" for Ed and his wife Leslie, which we all signed after training. Here is a zoom-in of the poster, which was in the front of the team picture above.

After this point, we started running, biking, and walking the first mile in silence. It was odd to here the sound of feet clicking along the pavement while no one spoke. The purpose of this is to honor those with cancer, and the memories of those who has passed on from these terrible diseases.

Here is some of the team running along through West Creek.

And here I am, slowing down to get a photo of me in all my athletic splendor! Call me Wrong-Way Art, as I missed a key turn and ended up doing over six miles instead of the five that I planned. For some reason, my legs felt like lead today for at least half my mileage.

Cate made mission posters and put them out for the first mile of training for us to reflect on.

Here come two cyclists, zipping along with seemingly no effort. Looks like fun, but so complicated. They have these wierd shoes that kind of clip on to their peddles. Running sure uses less equipment!

The day was nice - cold enough to start but with little wind. The snow is gradually melting, but there were parts of the road that were totally icy and hazardous to run on. And you can see that we still have frozen ponds, rare here most winters in Central Virginia.