The Photo Finish

Time to wrap up all this Cure JM/running/fundraising stuff with a whole mess of photos and ::cough, cough:: insightful commentary.This is the only photo I’ve seen of me during the race in which I don’t look on the verge of imminent collapse.

See what I mean? You would expect the next photo to be of me clutching my chest as I yell, “It's the Big One! You hear that Elizabeth? I'm comin' to join ya, honey!”

Instead, here’s Excitable. He copped out of doing the 5K with me weeks before and did the kids’ “Fun Run” instead. Smart boy. Gets it from his momma.

Li’l Diva burning up the Fun Run. The guy next to her? No confirmation on this but I suspect the back of his shirt didn’t read “But she treats me like #2.”

The Uncools and a bunch of our friends from the Washington, D.C., area who came up to Baltimore to support us. The kids all did the Fun Run (note the medals around their necks) but the adults, who were supposed to run the 5K with me, missed their race as they were stuck in traffic. Yeah. Right.

The exception was the guy in yellow next to me. He drove up to town early and ran the first 2 miles with me before leaving me in the dust. He was nice enough to wait for me at the finish and direct me to the Miller Lite tent.

Li’l Diva passing out medals to people who ran real races, in this case, the full marathon.

Speaking of marathons, here’s Daddy Clay (aka Clay Nichols) of DadLabs who looks surprisingly fresh for a guy who just burned through 26.2 miles in 3 hours, 33 minutes and 35 seconds.

Luckily, Clay went through the finishing chute behind me so as to avoid drinking a cup of my super-strength Gatorade.

But this event wasn’t about me. It was about the kids with juvenile myositis.

Mason and the other children listed on the back of our shirts are those we know of who died from JM or its complications in the past several years.

Several of our runners wrote the names of JM children on their arms and legs to carry them with us through the race.

I also would have done this but the markers couldn’t penetrate the jungle of hair on my legs.

This is just a portion of the Cure JM team we had in Baltimore. We had more than 200 people either running or helping out (or sometimes both) during the races, making us the largest contingent from any charity participating in the Baltimore Running Festival. Hope you can join us at the one.

Thanks to our official Cure JM photographer, Julie Caine, for capturing the day.