Race for a Cure

JaLeen is a runner. She likes the marathons and half marathons and treadmills at the gym. I did long distance track in high school for a year. I thought it was fun. Running a mile or two. Running 26? That's insanity. If I'm going to run I want it to have a purpose, like playing soccer or Ultimate Frisbee. So when I saw that Murphy was sponsoring a Murphy team for the Susan G. Komen 'Race for a Cure' I forwarded the e-mail on. JaLeen got us signed up to go. Why? Because for the price of a 3 mile run I can see if all this stuff she says about the thrill of having people cheering you on, and being part of something bigger than yourself and getting free T-shirts is really all its cracked up to be.

The day before THE RACE, I got an e-mail from work asking everyone to wear Pink in support of breast cancer awareness. So I dutifully put on the blindingly pink shirt Murphy had given me the day before to wear on race day.

I almost didn't wear it. JaLeen was so humored by me wearing the shirt that I knew it was too much. I got to work to find that I was the only one in the entire office wearing pink. No one, I mean not a single other person wore pink. What about the HR person who sent the wear pink email? Yeah she wore white. Apparently the women working at Murphy got special white collared shirts for a photo-op and were supposed to wear those. So I got a lot of attention for my brilliant pink shirt. I happened to run into the VP and the Production/Ops manager on Friday. They smiled and laughed at my shirt. The VP (Brett) said he wouldn't be caught dead in a pink shirt. 
  Race day came along and it involved waking up way too early for a Saturday morning and heading down to the race. We met up with the Murphy team prior to starting the race. Apart from Sandra, the HR lady, it seemed like everyone else was about the same level of alertness as I was - which is to say not at all.

So off we went. The race itself wasn't bad, but I quickly found that Murphy's shirts were like the Trix cereal box spoons - they magically change colors! That's right my shirt was magically changing colors as we ran. I wish I could have better documented the awesome color change, all I have is this photo at the end:

See the difference? Its hard to tell at this point because the shirt has completely changed color. Trix cereal spoons change color by temperature. Murphy shirts change color by moisture content. And my shirt was soaked through. Gotta love Houston humidity... until it drips into your eyes!


Oh yeah, and I got two free T-shirts and had people cheer me on and was part of an event of over 25,000 people!