What an intense week!  The race started on Monday night at midnight, and I would have expected it would have taken a couple of weeks at least for someone to get 30 miles, but by Thursday morning it was already over.  I know the suspense is killing you, so I’ll ease it for you.  Here is the winner!

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At first glance, I know you’re all thinking “Oh my gosh, I’ve seen that guy before, it’s the man of steel… unfair, nobody else ever had a chance.”  But if you’ll stop and take a closer look, you’ll actually see that it’s just me.  About 21 years ago.  Hey, I should have put that as one of my 8 facts a few posts ago.  I went through about 3 or 4 of those shirts when I was that age because I kept wearing them out.  I wore one every day for a year probably (belt included).  I got in trouble once for wearing it to my kindergarten class.  Interestingly enough, the day I snuck to school with my shirt under my regular shirt, some other kid came in and rips open his shirt to reveal his Superman costume.  So then I run up to him rip open mine and show that I’m Superman as well.  Then one or two other kids see this, and quickly run over and rip open their shirts and we’ve got 4 Supermen running around all day.  One of the other kids had a cape.  I wasn’t able to sneak in my cape.  I thought “next time… I will have a cape…  oh yes…  next time.” 

What was I talking about?  Oh yes, the race.  Everyone who sent words of encouragement, thank you so much!  It really helped out, and something else that really helped out was some of the other people that were racing and kept pushing me to go further long past when I would have stopped on my own.  One of the biggest thanks goes out to Jasmine Star from Orange County, CA, who ALSO woke up on Thursday morning with the intention to win.  She ran 10 miles and hit 30 probably not even an hour after I did!!  Another thanks goes out to Shannon Sewell from Vancouver, WA.  She continually pushed the bar and kept me going also.  In fact, it was when she passed the 20 mile mark on Wednesday night that I realized that I had to go ahead and hit 30 as soon as possible because someone else (probably Jasmine, I thought) would be crazy enough just like me to do it.  Also, a big thanks to Fred Egan from Dallas, TX for coming up with the idea of the race to begin with.  Aside from feeling slightly sick today, and having bruised feet, overall I feel better than I have in a long time.  Perhaps we can somehow keep this going on a regular basis…  maybe not quite so intense!

Now we come to the part where I ask for help from YOU**!  If all goes according to plan, it seems as though I have some iTunes gift certificates coming my way.  We hardly ever listen to the radio anymore, so I couldn’t tell you anything new that’s any good.  So help me spend this money!  How about some suggestions as to what new/old/whatever music we should check out?  Leave some comments below…  And thanks again, everyone!

**YOU:  If you are reading this right now, by “you” I actually do mean YOU.

We had a great time with Brianne & Dan on Saturday.  This was our first wedding at the Historic Carnton Plantation, and there were all sorts of great locations on site.  The sun was blindingly bright Saturday morning, and it looked like the sky was going to be completely cloudless. But luckily by the time we started couple photos, the cloud ninjas had brought us some magic to work with. Here’s one of the resulting images:

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And this was too funny to pass up putting on the blog–It looks like we have some faithful blog readers in the bridal party. We told the girls to give us their sassy looks. Brianne said “Let’s do Mel & Sean faces” and everyone immediately broke out in this. Nice!

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Some great images coming from this wedding. The ceremony started right before the sun started going down. The light was perfect and I think we quite possibly got the best ceremony shots, ever.  Stay tuned!

I’m off to run, now so I can make sure to own everybody who’s racing.

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Yes, it’s true. I’ve joined the race.

What is this, you ask? Several photographers from around the country are racing, Nike+ style, starting tomorrow. First to 30 miles wins. The winner gets iTunes gift certificates and a blog link from all the losers. I’m not much of a runner, but it sounded like a great idea to me and I’m pretty excited about it (Not to mention that it was a great excuse to pick up one of the sweet new iPod nano’s!)

I’ve temporarily added a graph to the very bottom right of the blog so you can see the rankings live as they are updated at the end of each persons individual runs. I’ll also be updating (and probably talking trash) via Twitter, which you’ll see at the bottom center of the blog.

When I say I’m not much of a runner, I mean that I never run. Ever. So I’m going to need lots of support comments to keep me going–leave some encouragement below and help me win this race!

And by “win” what I actually mean is “not come in last”