Cowtown Marathon 8 days....

Hopefully we will not get detoured during our first Marathon.

This is an interesting story about a 1912 Olympic Marathoner. He did go back and Finish though.

hrtbps:

The marathon runner who went missing for 50 years

Shizo Kanakuri disappeared while running the marathon in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. He was listed as a missing person in Sweden for 50 years — until a journalist found him living quietly in southern Japan.

Overcome with heat during the race, he had stopped at a garden party to drink orange juice, stayed for an hour, then took a train to a hotel and sailed home the next day, too ashamed to tell anyone he was leaving.

There’s a happy ending: In 1966 Kanakuri accepted an invitation to return to Stockholm and complete his run. His final time was 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds — surely a record that will last forever. (via)

New this week!!!

Several things new this week.

1. We are officially registered for the Cowtown Full Marathon. No backing out now, 26.2 miles here we come!!!

2. New mileage, 20 miles due on Saturday!!! We have to get an early start because we plan on also catching a movie...anyone have recommendations?

3. On Sunday it's Ginger's Birthday!!!I think running/walking gear might be in order, also maybe something else???

This might be a quick weekend. It seems as though the weekends are getting shorter... Don't they still have 48 hrs.?

New Distance Record

In the upcoming weeks we will be breaking our distance records.

Sunday we tried a new course. We explored Breckinridge Park in Richardson. We walked all the paths several times and logged 18.7 miles. We were shooting for 19 but time ran out and so did our feet! We did manage to burn 2400 calories and break our personal record distance of 15 miles.

It's only a few weeks (32 days) til Cowtown and our first Full Marathon.

Thank-You for your Support

It has been one month since our 1/2 Marathon White Rock event in Dallas. It was a cold 42* and rainey. We loved it totally. It was our first event of this kind. We did 2 other 5k's during our training but nothing like this. There were 25,000 runners/walkers. It took us 45 minutes to reach the start line. The excitement was high and those along the course cheering us were fantastic.

The money WE raised (with your help) totaled $3,010.00 for the Leukemia, Lymphoma Society to help those familes in the fight against cancer and to help with the research end in finding a cure and better treatments. You should feel amazing for being a part of this, we do.

Thank you for not only your financial participation, but your prayers as we trained and your encouragment throughout.

The day of the race Ginger got an unexpected bonus as the hours passed. She felt very close to her dad, Tom, and felt like she was doing something for him to thank him for how hard he fought in his battle to live those last 11 days. It was a time of peace and closure.

The times got hard, we began to hurt, and as we got tired, we remembered Vivian's battle she won against Lymphoma. We remembered; June's current battle and chemo treatments, little 5 year old Hikari who found out she had Leukemia only days before our race after having her tonsills out. She has since been cleared of all cancer (praise God) and has just completed her 2nd round of chemo preventative treatment.

Our involvemnt with LLS continues... We continue to go out at 6:30 am each Saturday morning to train for the next event. We won't be fundraising again until the Summer or Fall season. Hopefully you will join us again with your giving and maybe out on the course. : )

Our next event will be February 26 and will be a full marathon. Another 1/2 on March 25 and from there we arn't sure. So many to choose from.

We love and appreciate you all so much. God Bless You!!
Darrel & Ginger Brooks

If you'd like to learn more about joining Team In Training, you can visit http://www.teamintraining.org.

Something New 2012

Well we are ready for 2011 to be finished! We will be spending the last day at a race. The I am Superman 5k (http://www.superman5k.com) benefiting the Rockwall ISD Fine Arts program.

A fitting way to end 2011. The year we started endurance training, our first 5k, first half marathon, and first event with Team in Training. We gave met new friends, set and achieved new goals. We have done more than we had hoped for.

With the New Year comes new commitments, new goals and hopefully new achievements! It will take a new set of 12 months to hold all the adventures God has in store for us and you in this next year. Matthew 9:17 talks about putting new wine in a new wineskin and not in an old. The old wineskin has already achieved it's expansion and has no more room for growth. May we become a new wineskin in this new year ready for the expansion God will give us. That is my new year's resolution!!!

12/31/11 Update...
Ginger and I participated in the I Am Superman 5k in Rockwall Texas. It was a small event and very well organized. There was only one problem...


In the excitement of the start we took off like runners and ran too far. Our legs cramped up and could not walk our usual pace. I ended up finishing a minute longer than my first 5k when I was out of shape and just starting to work-out.


Lesson Learned:

Picture at the Starting Line...

Race my Pace... We are walkers IF we would have walked our pace I would have PR'd (Personal Record).

White Rock

Here it is...

We've been busy and haven't had internet at home so I was late in posting this. We finished the White Rock 1/2 Marathon! We also raised over $3,000 for the LLS and our TNT Chapter raised over $200,000.00 just from this race. As an added bonus our entry fees went to the Dallas Scottish Rite Children's Hospital. The race raised over $1,000,000 for the hospital (double last year's amount).

There were over 25,000 runners from all over the world, this was an Olympic qualifier as well as a qualifier for the Boston Marathon. It took over 34 minutes from the starting gun until we crossed the Starting Line! Our time was 3 hrs. 22 minutes and 13 seconds (3:22:13= an average of almost 4 mph). That is a fast walk and a Personal Record (PR)... actually any time would have been our record since this was our first Half Marathon.

The race was amazing, all the training paid off and we were able to not only finish but finish with a smile on our face! Thanks to Coaches David, Meg and Jessica, they were great at preparing us and keeping us from injury.

The conditions were brutal, nearly Freezing Rain the entire race, some runners reported ice crystals forming on their clothing. We weren't cold as long as we were racing but we did get extremely cold once we headed back to the hotel.

One amazing bit of marathon trivia... they have tens of thousands of bananas at the finish area and every single one of them was perfectly ripe!!!

We are continuing our training and plan to participate in the Ft. Worth, Cowtown Full Marathon on 2/25/11. That's 26.2 miles!!!  

WOW...We are endurance athletes (we even now qualify to put the 13.1 sticker on our car).

Praise God!

I received this post from Hikari's dad (Daniel Powers)... 




"Guess what?!? ALL TESTS ARE NEGATIVE!!! She will still be going through some precautionary chemotherapy, but God continues to show himself faithful. Thank you everyone for your prayers!"




I am Speechless... all I can say is, Praise God! 




She is going through precautionary chemotherapy...here's a picture of her and a friend at the hospital with a few visitors. I think her dad said she beat them at Air Hockey, I guess they're used to playing the game on ice instead of AIR.

(Hikari is in pink)