As you can see from our flickr photos, Mike's relay race went splendidly. He ran in a team for the Great River Ragnar Relay Race. Mike and the other 11 people on his team ran a total of 198 miles from Lacrosse, WI to St. Paul, MN in just under 34 hours. Just to give you an idea of how grueling this was, Mike ran UP A BLUFF for 7.1 miles at 2:30 AM in the DARK! Very impressive! He compared it to adventure racing and said that he had a blast doing it.

Mike isn't the only Schmitt who ran in a race last weekend. I raced in the MN State Fair Milk Run 5k race on Sunday. Fortunately it was a gorgeous day! The course was much hillier than I had anticipated, but I had an awesome time and ran a great race. My return to the racing world (the last race I ran was back in Sept 2003) has inspired me to keep running and I cannot wait for my next race!

We spent a few hours wandering around the state fair after the race was over while Benjamin was able to hang out with his Grandma and Grandpa Schmitt. Here is a classic Benjamin story: At dinner that night we were trying to teach him Grandma and Grandpa's first names. First, we told him that Grandpa's name is Bert. He said "Grandpa Bert!" just fine. Then we asked him what Grandma's name is and he responded immediately with, "GRANDMA ERNIE!" We got quite a laugh out of that one! I think that now Cindy will forever be known as Grandma Ernie to Benjamin! :-)

Speaking of Bert and Ernie...I took Benjamin to see Sesame Street Live Friday night while Mike was doing his relay race. I went down to the Civic Center to pick up tickets Friday afternoon and thanks to a cancellation, I was able to get FRONT ROW, DEAD CENTER seats for us! It was awesome!! The characters danced right in front of us and even came by and said Hi to Benjamin. He just loved it and is still talking about seeing Elmo!

Both Mike and I had the extreme pleasure of helping with the planning for a visit by Kathrine Switzer to Mayo and the Running Room this week. She came and spoke at Mayo Clinic Monday night where Mike and I helped to sell her book. Mike even was able to go to dinner with her and a few of my colleagues (I was relieving the babysitter). Then Tuesday morning Mike led a run with her from the Running Room.

If you don't know who Kathrine is, she is the first female to ever enter and run the Boston Marathon. She ran it back in 1967 before women were officially allowed to run in the race and at a time when it was believed that women were not capable of running more than 200 meters (2 laps around the track). She was also instrumental in getting the women's marathon recognized as an Olympic sport (though it took a while -- the first time women ran it was at the 1984 Olympics). Kathrine is a spitfire and was incredibly entertaining and very gracious to us for helping her out. Mike had an awesome time sharing his running story with her and just talking the talk with a fellow marathoner. It was a great experience!

Okay, its no secret that Mike and I were (are) theatre kids. So I guess it didn't come as a big surprise that Benjamin has really taken to listening to my collection of showtunes in the car. His favorite is Ragtime and he just loves the opening number. He asks to listen to it all of the time and wants it played over and over. We showed off his musical skills to Mom and Dad while driving back to Rochester from the St. Paul Irish Fest this weekend. Dad was able to capture it on film...check it out: