Pittsburgh Marathon "Cheering" Report!

This past weekend was the Pittsburgh Marathon! As many of you know I did the Marine Corps Marathon in the fall with Team in Training (http://www.teamintraining.org/) and raised money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Through TNT I made so many wonderful friends and have become very involved in their "Alumni Club". So, when it was time to get out and support the 115 Team In Training participants....my "inner cheerleader" came out in FULL FORCE!!! We had 45 people running the Full Marathon, 42 doing the 1/2, and the remainder doing the relays!!! In total they raised over $100,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society!!! Isn't that AMAZING?!?!?!

I got together with a couple other alumni that were either injured or had chosen not to run Pittsburgh but still wanted to be involved and we started planning. TNT was "assigned" to mile 11-12 which came up Carson Street in South Side and across the Birmingham Bridge and into Oakland. We decided that we needed to make a bunch of signs to spread out through the mile and then base our "camp" at the beginning of the bridge to cheer the runners on over the bridge and get them pumped up to tackle the hill that they faced after the bridge.

Friday night Erin and I met at my work (we have huge cutting tables) to make the signs. We started at 7:30pm and didn't finish until 12:45am!!!
Then on Saturday night we went to a friends house for a Pasta Dinner (they were running), Erin and I decided that we needed to carb load for the next day! LOL! After that we headed to Erin's house where we finished up the signs and went to bed around midnight. Before we knew it it was time to get up....5am and we weren't running! This was to get the signs out there before the road closures!

We did 1 sign that had all of the "Half" names on it and 1 sign with all of the "Full" names on it....they were LONG! Here we are hanging the "Half" sign on Carson Street....yes, we brought our own ladders!

Next it was onto the "heart" of South Side and taping the signs to various poles along Carson Street.

As we got closer to "our bridge" I was getting so excited! I knew that it wouldn't be long before we would start to see runners. We still had to get the signs spread out over the bridge....

Once we had the signs up it was time to sit back and wait.....

Oh, I forgot to mention, Erin brought a Megaphone/Bullhorn thing.....not that I needed it....BUT I LOVED it!!!!! I noticed a "camera guy" hanging around quite a bit, then he made his way over to us.....I ended up on the news! http://kdka.com/video/?id=56954@kdka.dayport.comDuring the "interview" one of our good friends that we did MCM with came running by, I was SOOOOO happy to see her! I never would have made it through my training for MCM if Chrisie wasn't there, as you can see....it was a little emotional (all while camera man stands there!)!

Eventually we made our way to the finish line and got to see just about all of our teammates cross the line! It was amazing!!! By then it seems like we pretty much stopped taking pictures and were totally "in the moment"....but I never stopped using by Bullhorn!

It was an amazing race and I was so happy to still get to be a part of it, even though I couldn't run. It was a little bitter sweet, it only made me realize even more how much I want to be able to really be a part of it all again. I know it's going to be a long time for me though, but until then I plan on being the best cheerleader out there! GO TEAM!!!!!!!!