Groundhogs Love Diamonds

It's three months in to my/Rob's by association New Year's resolution to run one race a month.

January's race was the Children's Therapeutic Learning Center (TLC) Groundhog Run in Kansas City.

 Dudes, it was underground, which meant we got to wear shorts and t-shirts for our January race. You'll see why this is so darn tootin' special here in a sec. This race was a 5k, so 3.1 miles. We had the opportunity to purchase our finish line photos, but when Rob informed me that mine looked like I was making Faith's "poop face" I decided against adding it to my shopping cart.

Nicole's Finish Time: 28:51, 9:29 per mile
Rob's Finish Time: 28:08, 9:16 per mile

For those not familiar with running, those are not fast times at Ridgemont High. But we aren't doing it to break records. I am hoping to beat Rob just once this year though!

February's race was the Love 2 Run 4 miler, also in KC.

For this race, for which the start time temp was predicted to be 7, I wore 5 layers up top, three layers over my bootay, two pairs of socks and 1 pair of gloves. It was colder than a fill-in-the-blank, but my hands finally warmed up at mile two. Here's our pre-race pic. It's a ritual, but only this one meets the low standards for posting.

And the results are in. May I have the envelope please?

Team - Faith's Mom and Dad Finish Position - 12

Team Score (times): 1:13:24.3

O'all  Cum.
   Place Bib No Name                     City                Gend Place  Place      Time
      1    318  Rob Lindquist           Council Bluffs  IA     M    61     61     36:31.9      
      2    317  Nicole Lindquist        Council Bluffs  IA     F    62    123     36:52.3  

 Since this was a Valentinesy race, we competed as a couple. While we finished 12th 

out of 15 in our age group, if we were a combined two years older, we would've placed third. 

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. At least our finisher's photos were better...

 Well, it's debatable. I could be making the "poop face," but it's too hard to tell.

In other news, there were two proposals.

Don't ever propose BEFOFE the finish line. Classic rookie mistake. And now for one of my favorite pictures of all time.

Moving onto March, we ran the Dash for Diamonds 5K in downtown Omaha.  The winners got real diamonds in case you needed an excuse to train.

Since the race turned out not to be USA Track and Field Certified and therefore not an actual 5K, our outfits --not our times-- were the highlight of the day. Check it.

I won't post our times, but I did place 17 out of 80 in my age group. Rob beat me again, but only by 22 seconds this time. I'm closing on him. Literally, look at my closing the deal here :)

So that, my friends is the story of how Groundhogs came to Love Diamonds.

Coming up:
April - Novartis 10K in Lincoln
May - Mud, Sweat and Beers 7K at Quarry Oaks
June - Dam to Dam 20K in Des Moines.

As I say to Rob before every race, "May the best Lindquist win!"