First off – Congrats to all of the MCM runners. For the most part it was a beautiful day in the neighborhood – if your knee didn’t get blown out, that is.

I knew I wasn’t quite done writing about Nike and then Grace posts pics that simply cannot be ignored.

First I wanted to post a couple of other impressions about the race. I did my first marathon in 1999 with Team in Training. One of the many ways they raise money is through selling corporate sponsorships that include having the sponsoring company’s logo printed on the running singlets. In 1999 the dot com companies couldn’t get enough of sponsoring races. The business was booming and what better demographic to recruit from than well educated, health minded individuals? In San Francisco the finish line party areas were just dirty with recruting tents and the backs of the singlets for TNT were covered, shot gun blast style with a thousand tiny logos. Here is mine with its 50+. Those were the days, man and I WAS THERE! I was so there.

How times have changed. The singlets I saw at Nike, even the ones from the Bay Area Chapter and from areas around Southern California had no more than 20 logos. And Western Canada? We need to have a talk. You Canadians did an excellent job with the wearing of the Maple Leaf but have you NO companies that will sponor athletes running for a cause? Your shirts are too empty.

Remember how I thanked Amy for coming in at the same time as me so I could watch as Ted proposed to her? Well here is the happy couple:

And here is me clapping for them:

As you can see I was genuinely thrilled for them and it was a great moment in race history but not quite as great as the moment I got my Nike bling from the firefighter you see on the far right in this pic