The running prom.

It might seem a bit contrary to my personality, but I have always loved proms. By "prom," I mean events where a group of people with something in common put on fancy clothes and go to a big party. In high school, it was the senior prom. In college, we had Brecon Prom (ask me about that in a less public forum...). In seminary, we had Spring Fling, aka: the Div School prom. Since my seminary graduation, I have been seriously missing an annual occasion to put on a fancy dress and tell my friends they look fabulous. Last year, my friend Jaimee came to my aid by hosting a prom to celebrate her 30th birthday:

The birthday girl and I. Note: this is my actual senior prom dress!

This year, I got to go to the running prom: the Annapolis Striders' annual awards banquet.

As a non-profit worker and perpetual student, fancy dresses and banquets are not usually within my budget. Fortunately, this event came with a perfect justification: my Ironman award! As I mentioned in my year-end wrap up (12/13/10), I completed all 8 races in the 2010 Striders' Champ Series, which earned me an Ironman award, to be presented at the annual banquet. Winning an award for running is not something I ever imagined myself doing, and I have no idea if/when it will happen again, so I was sure as heck going to pick it up!

I had planned to wear my current "weddings and fancy events" dress, pictured below, to the banquet:

I love this dress and I always happy to wear it, but Anthropologie (aka: my greatest temptation) had other plans. Back in the fall, they sent me an email with this dress in it:

As soon as I saw it, I knew we were meant for each other. Still, I resisted for several months. Finally, just a week before the banquet, my resolve cracked. I decided to "just stop in" to the Annapolis Anthro store and try the dress on. Alas, when I arrived, I could not find it. I decided it wasn't meant to be and took a couple other things into the dressing room... where I found the "last ones" rack. There, on the rack, was my dress- the last one in the store- in my size. When I picked it up, the salespeople acted like we were at the SPCA and I was adopting their favorite puppy: "You're buying that dress? We love that dress! We're so excited for you!"

So, Saturday evening, I put on my new favorite dress, went to Mom's house for a quick photo shoot, and then headed to the banquet. During the cocktail hour, everyone played a game of "try to recognize your running friends out of their running clothes," which was really fun. I found Val, and we all sat down for dinner and the awards.

Running buddies!

They announced the Ironman awards first, beginning with the person who has completed the whole Champ Series for the most consecutive years: 25! I was beyond impressed with the 25 year veteran, as well as the handful of others who have won for 15+ years. Think about it: these folks have managed to make it to 8 races, spread throughout the year, in distances ranging from 1 mile to 16.3 miles, for 15 years or more. That takes some amazing fitness and determination. In the end 50 people ran the whole Champ Series this year- the biggest group ever! Once we all had our awards, they assembled us for a group photo, which you can view here. As I walked back to my seat, Val snapped this photo:

Then, they moved on to the big end-of-year awards. At this point, I got really excited, because I knew a secret: Val was a winner! Our running coach Susan nominated her for the annual Phoenix award, which honors a runner who came back from illness or injury. Val could not be more deserving- she ran through battles with obesity and breast cancer, then came back from a major fall in September to finish MCM in October. Naturally, she won. Susan gave me and a few of Val's other running buddies the news a couple months ago, and we all launched a campaign to get her to the banquet. I thought for sure that she knew something was up, but she could not have been more surprised when Susan presented the award:

Watching that presentation was easily the highlight of the evening, and I thought the excitement was over afterward. Then, to my surprise, I got to watch another friend honored: Susan won the award for Volunteer of the Year. Again, the award was very deserved: Susan shows up on Saturdays 2/3 of the year to coach both half-marathon and marathon training, she runs the Junior Striders program, and she probably does a million other things I don't even know about. Oh- and she happens to have a family and a full-time job. I was so happy to see her get recognized for all of her hard work!

At the end of the night, I headed home to hang up my new "weddings and fancy events" dress and display my award:

All in all, the running prom was a great reward for a year of hard work. I'm already looking forward to next year!