Georgia on My Mind

ING Georgia Marathon • March 21, 2010
*RACE DETAILS HERE*
NF Endurance Georgia Team website
*Make sure to sign up before Jan. 1, 2010 and you can beat the price increase. Don’t forget to type in the special team code.

Meet Karen Trommer ((Enable Javascript to see the email address))

Favorite race day tradition - This race is our annual tradition. We bring the whole family and get an extended family member to come down and route for us and watch the kids. We love to have our kids routing for us on the side line and it just wouldn’t be the same without seeing Kate’s smiling face. We get a hotel room, attend the pasta dinner and make a weekend out of it. It is my favorite weekend of the year!!!
What does endurance mean to you? “I will endure what I need to endure so that my child won’t need to endure”.
Running mantra: Cure NF!
What is playing on your iPod - Well…..I don’t actually have an ipod, I use my phone. Also haven’t uploaded music in a while…………last year was “Down with the Sickness”. This year I will be listening to Jeremy Camp’s “This Man” if I can ever figure out how to download onto my new phone!!
If your shoe laces could be any color… Well, I think I would love to have bright yellow shoe laces or just go for the gusto and get bright yellow sneakers like our teammate Chad Leathers

And Angie Hallmark ((Enable Javascript to see the email address))

Angie is involved with the team because of her best friend, Erin Earle. “Without a cure Erin will not have the opportunity to continue to be the beautiful person that she is,” says Angie. Erin has NF2.

Angie likes to say that she is “running for love.” Below is what that means to her…

It means that we run with greater purpose.

It means that when we are tired, sore or busy…we run anyway.

It means that we run because we will not be helpless in Erin’s fight to survive this crippling disease.

It means that we will stand-up to those ticking time bombs in her body called tumors.

It means that we will not stop running until a cure is found, because Erin can not wait for a cure, we need a cure NOW.

We run for Erin, We run for all of those suffering with NF, We run for love, We run because finding a cure for NF is the only option!

Bob’s Life (with NF) ON THE RUN

By: Bob Skold

Over the course of 2009 I will have run 10 marathons on my way to 50.  I have run most of them with the team, but some just by myself; each way brings with it a varied experience and each event offers something new and exciting. Besides learning more about myself, which comes with the price of the entry fee, I get to tour different places at eye level (like a vacation marathon), and particularly with the team events, meet some special people with big smiles and big hearts — an attitude that inspires me and a story that moves me. This fits: sometimes I like to run alone and sometimes I like to see a lot of yellow to reaffirm that I am not alone.

My best experience with “yellow” came this year at Twin Cities Marathon. At mile 24.5 the Mighty Minnesota NF Endurance Team set-up a Cheer Zone:  a wall of yellow with big smiles and I am told a lot of noise (I run without a hearing aid; it’s quiet). The  Cheer Zone extravaganza was planned as a Minnesota Chapter event happening with: posters, noisemakers, cheers, music, and all the volunteers and families decked out in NF Endurance Team yellow race crew shirts. At around mile 21, I caught up with Murray McCartan and his friend Steve McPherson and we passed the cheer zone together. Their daughters ran out to greet us with hugs and posters for a priceless photo op. Posters, made at the pasta dinner the night before, read, “Hurray Murray” and  “Not too far.”I gave all the volunteers high-fives and headed off to the finish with a smile and tears too. Seeing a Father, along with his good friend as a running partner run for a son with NF as their so proud daughters cheer them on, is a beautiful thing …. something that lingers in the heart and mind’s eye. This image is one of the many living examples of the “be the change you wish to see in the world” idea that you may see on almost every weekend of the year with a runner wearing an NF Endurance neon yellow singlet.

The next marathon for me is in Tucson where I will make a Phoenix stopover to have a 20th birthday dinner with my own daughter, Kathleen. I’m a marathoner and an ASU Dad. I say “Go Team” and she says “Go Sundevils,” but we both say, “Life is what you make it.”

Bob works out of Denver, Colo. and works for the NF Endurance Team. He is on his way to running 50 marathons.

Weekend Pacesetter (November 13-15, 2009)

ROCK
We have more than 30 runners hitting the streets of San Antonio this weekend.  They have raised more than $18K so far. Our pasta dinner is at the Spaghetti Warehouse @ 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14th. And, on the 14th, Texas NF will host a symposium. We have several of the Texas NF staff running with us too with Susan Johnson and Cindy Hahn lacing up and wearing neon on Sunday.

MUNCH
…on your own custom granola bar. Similar to the mix your own granola we mentioned earlier, this website, called You Bar, offers one of Kevin Leachman’s (one of our team captains in San Antonio) favorite snack indulgences — custom granola bars. Great for gifts or snacks on the fly, You Bar customizes your preferences from what type of base to the sweetener used. The best part? You choose the name! We need an Endurance mix!

RIDE
Led by Anthony Gallo, 30 runners will tackle the “mountains” of Central Florida in this weekend’s Horrible Hundred event. It’s the 30th anniversary of the event in Clermont in Florida and Tracy Draper is in town to staff this biking event.