The Jelly Bean Virtual Run

Thanks to Team Tough Chik I came across this awesome blogger Jess.  Extra bonus, for me, she lives just 40 minutes away.  Yeah!  Not only a team mate but fellow blogger right in my neighborhood.  I follow other awesome team mates & bloggers, but they live so far away and I can only dream of some day meeting them in real life.  I plan to meet Jess for the first time this weekend.  We just happen to be running the same race on Saturday, the Lincoln Presidential Half Marathon.  So excited!

Thanks to Jess' blog I came across the Jelly Bean Virtual Run.  I had never heard of such a race before.  What does it mean virtual run?  Well, according to her blog a virtual race is running a specified distance (timed) without being present in the actual race location. This is super awesome for me because I LOVE to race, but so often than not I can't run the list of races that I drool over want to do.  You know, this life with a husband an 6 kids, kind of rules my priorities.  That can actually be a good thing. As addicted dedicated as I am to my running and it being my obsession passion I would probably race every weekend, all the time!  So this helps reign me in to reality.  Besides my husband and kids are great is supporting of when I do race.  They are wonderful!!!!  As an extra added bonus said run is FREE (yeah, speaking my language peeps) and is full of  prizes to potentially earn.  I am all over that like salsa with a bag of chips!!!!

I sent out a message to a few local peeps (sorry if I over looked anyone) to see if I could get a crew to go run with me.  Signing up for the Jelly Bean Run was optional.  So was dressing up, getting all festive, etc. etc.  Most know that I like to add flair to my fashion, but they had no idea what I had in mind & planned for this run.  As it turns out to help accommodate my group of friends I had to plan two runs.  Fine with me, the more the merrier!  We ran a 5k on Tuesday night (32:58) and a 5k on Wednesday morning (29:48).   Not everyone signed up for the Jelly Bean Run.  Thanks to those who did (Connie, Samantha & me) and thanks to those who just came out for some fun and running (Elizabeth, Marcy & Julia).

On Tuesday we had (from L to R) Elizabeth, me, Marcy & Connie!  Only Connie about died of laughter when we saw me in my "get up".  Once we got rolling no one batted at eye at what I was running in.

On Wednesday morning we had Samantha (who gets the actual credit for the costume, it's hers, she let me borrow it since it was my crazy fun idea to run in it), me and Julia.  Another great group of friends who didn't bat an eye at my costume and was such good sport about being seen with me.

We ran the same course both time.  On Wednesday morning we also had Jo, perhaps the youngest person to participate in the Jelly Bean Run. I give her mom, Julia the credit though since she did all the work.  All Jo did was ride along, sleep and drool most of the time.  We got her started young though!

Of course there were jelly beans for all of us to enjoy:

You can't see them really good, but I even wore some super cute socks that had chicks on them in honor of and to go along with my Team Tough Chik singlet.  Yep, sometimes this IS what TOUGH looks like!

My half marathon that I am running on Saturday is also being run as part of the Jelly Bean Virtual Run.  As tempting as it is to run in the bunny costume, the day before Easter, I am wearing a completely different "get up" for that race.  It's super cute and freakishly awesome.  Here is a sneak peek at that: