Our 2nd Annual Snowshoe Race

This weekend Marcie, Katie, and I traveled to Minneapolis to visit with friends and participate in our 2nd snowshoe race. We left on Thursday night and flew back late Sunday, giving us three full days in the wonderful twin cities. Katie stayed with Pat and Jenny while Marcie and I stayed with Julie and Daniel in downtown St Paul.
Jeff and Amy also drove up from Chicago to meet us for the race so in the end we had a nice big group of friends to hang out with for the weekend.

Everyone came over to Julie’s on Friday evening for dinner and strawberry margaritas. I guess you could say that it was a pre-party for the race on Saturday morning :) We all prayed for snow when we went to sleep because there was hardly any on the ground, which would make for a not-so-fun snowshoe race. Surprisingly it did snow a little, although not a lot. In fact, when we awoke in the morning we thought for sure there would be no snowshoeing since only 2 inches of snow had fallen during the night. So sure, in fact that we left the snowshoes at home and put on our tennis shoes expecting a road race instead.

Of course, we were wrong. We arrived only to find out that the race would take place as planned, with snowshoes. Lucky for us they had a rental booth thus, despite carrying our snowshoes 2,000 miles across the country, we rented. It was a 10K and we were not planning on doing very well, none of had trained, it was just for fun. We didn’t expect however, to come in dead last! Sure enough, as Marcie and I crossed the finish line we had the luxury of telling the race crew that it was safe to pack up, we were the last ones.

Following the race, we attended the chili dinner and awards banquet. Marcie won a box of cheese for traveling the furthest distance and Jeff won one for having the closest birthday (Jeff’s big day was Sunday). As they listed the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners in each of the age categories we began to realize the at most of the participants raced the 5K, not the 10K. We began to laugh at the idea that one of us could possibly win an award by default due to the lack of racers. Sure enough, they came to the men’s 20-29 category and announced the 2nd place winner (there was no 3rd). “Will Mike Germani please come up” – Ha, we all about died laughing but immediately following that announcement was the 1st place winner, Jeff Taylor-Haas! Unbelievable! Despite Jeff and I placing last in the race, we also managed a 1st and 2nd place victory. That’s the kind of race for me :)

The irony of the weekend was still to come for as we left the race, it began to snow, hard. It kept snowing all day… and all night. It made travel difficult on Friday night but despite the mess, we all managed to meet up again at an Indian restaurant in Eagan. Afterwards, we celebrated Jeff’s birthday back at Julie’s with ice cream and an exotic shaped cake :)

Sunday morning we awoke to 9 inches of snow, at least according to the news. In actuality, the wind had blown so hard during the night that in some spots there was no snow while in others there was 2 feet or more. We ventured out again to do a little shopping and then to the airport for our flight home (we only got stuck once). It was another great weekend and with any luck, we will go back soon.