3 Things Thursday: The Announcement Edition

This week's 3 Things Thursday is all about some major announcements. If you've paid attention to the blog layout you'll have noticed that I added a few things to the TO DO: List... so please settle back and prepare for an extra long, 3 Things Thursday: The Announcement Edition

1. Back around the end of July following my crazy 18 Miler, I received this email from Maddy over at Gotta Run:

Hi Morgan,

I don't know if you have thought about what's next for you after Chicago, but I was wondering if you would be interested in joining our Ragnar Relay Team on November 20 - 21. http://ragnarrelay.com/

It is usually run with a team of 12, but since a few of us have 30 miles scheduled for that weekend in preparation for Goofy, we decided to run it as an Ultra Team (Ultra teams are made up of six runners. Each member of the team will complete six legs of the Ragnar Relay Florida. Runners run two legs back to back three times (i.e. the first runner would run legs 1, 2, 13, 14, 25, 26 etc.)
To make matters more complicated, we want to run as a mixed team, which means we need 3 girls. One of my twitter friends from California - who is awesome and does crazy things like run 3 marathons in 20 days including the Boston Marathon, is pretty sure she is joining us and then there is one more open spot that I thought you might be interested in. I mean, if you're running 18 miles in the dark on a Friday night in Clermont, that I think you would definitely be up to the challenge!

Keep in mind it's not all at once, but over the course of 24 hours


Let me know what you think. It's going to be a lot of fun and the team has some pretty cool people and people I "know" but have never met. Talk about running blind date...

I hope you can join us! It'll be quite a story!

Best Regards,
Maddy

After reading the email, my stomach full of butterflies, I forwarded it to B.o.B with one sentence: "Why am I tempted?" To which she replied: "LOL! DO IT DO IT DO IT! And we can text each other along the way! SUPER CRAZIES UNITE!!!!" I was already sold before I even hit send and she knew it. I mean, how could I possibly say no?! So one month after my first marathon I will be running the RAGNAR with a crazy bunch of fools on the aptly named team: MOJO LOCO... how fitting since I have clearly lost my d@mn mind.

2. Next up on our list is the National Marathon to Fight Breast Cancer Half Marathon to benefit the Donna Foundation. I want to do this particular run because of it's personal significance to me: My Aunt & Godmother, Donna, was diagnosed, and thankfully overcame breast cancer. When I stumbled across this aptly named race and cause I knew I wanted to run it in her honor. I plan on presenting her with a shadow box of the finishers medal and letting her know how much her strength inspired me in my running journey. I was originally planning to do the full marathon but realized that it is exactly one week before the Gasparilla Marathon (more on that in a moment) and although I have clearly already lost my mind, I think I would be pushing it by doing two marathons in a row. So right about the time I settled on doing the Half, I had an exchange with Jill over at Finishing is Winning, one thing lead to another and the next thing you know I had her convinced to come to Orlando and we'd head up to J-ville to hit the Half together! I'm so excited to run this with her and finally meet her in person!!!

3. And finally one week after the Breast Cancer Half Marathon I will be running in my second marathon, the Gasparilla 2010 Marathon! As I said above, I had planned on doing the Breast Cancer marathon as my second marathon but when I found out this would be the final year Gasparilla would host a full marathon I absolutely HAD to run the Full. An added bonus is that the race is in B.o.B's back yard and we'll get to run it together!!! I had made a pact with myself that next year I would only run races that supported causes that were important to me and imagine my surprise and excitement when Danica over at ChicRunner posted about Operation Jack. After reading Sam & Jack's story I was stoked when I saw that one of the races Sam will be running will be the Gasparilla Marathon! Autism is another subject that is near and dear to my heart as I have not one, but two cousins affected by this. I left a comment to Danica thanking her for the info and moments later I had an email waiting in my inbox from Sam about Operation Jack and becoming a team member for Train 4 Autism. A few exchanges later and I was on board. I am so excited that I am able to make Gasparilla a run for a cause that is important to me and to meet Sam in person. I encourage you to take a moment and read his story and mission and then check out the schedule to see if he is running a marathon near you and JOIN A TEAM! Do you see the trend here people? Blogging + Running = Amazing New Friends and Experiences!!! I am so frigging excited about all that my running future holds and all the amazing people I am about to meet, run with and share these crazy/inspiring adventures with!!! I plan to go into more detail about the different races in future posts but I couldn't sit on them any longer without letting the blogosphere know!

What about you? What cause do you want to run for? What/Who inspires you???