EGG SHELL SHUFFLE: race director's recap

Running wise, I have nothing to report this week as I literally tried running once since the Race That's Good for Life (Thursday, 1200 repeats, and it failed).

...except that the Egg Shell Shuffle, the 1/2 marathon and 5k race that Ryan and I put on, was AWESOME.

I can't begin to describe the compliments that we've received so far. Normally, race directors receive emails within the next 24 hours with ways to improve the race...people just like to complain. I know this because of my race director dad. However, we have received 16 emails... all with positive comments. Crazy, right?!

We did, of course, make a list of ways to improve the race for next year. Instead of going over those in my blog, I'm going to list the small successes that we've had throughout this race.

1. WE SOLD OUT AS A SECOND YEAR RACE. Yup. You read that right. We capped our race at 800 runners, had to close online registration at 6pm on Wednesday night. We still allowed runners to register at Dick Pond Athletics in Schaumburg on Thursday and Friday and had race day registration as we had been advertising this since January, not thinking we'd sell out.

2. We had 915 runners finish the races! We had over 500 runners compete in the 5k--which DOUBLES last years total between BOTH races.

3. Our prizes for the egg hunt rocked. Correction, our prizes in general rocked.

Skechers donated shoes to the top three overall male and female winners in both the 5k and 1/2 marathon. And donated 3 free pairs of shoes to our egg hunt. We also had an egg hunt winner receive a MOTOACTV (Motorola) GPS watch. Other prizes include: signed Bears football with two jerseys, Marian Hossa autographed photo, Nick Leddy autographed photo, Dick Pond gift cards ($25-150 range), Panera dinner for two, free Potbelly sandwiches, Nike+ watch, AlterG treadmill card ($250 value), Starbucks gift baskets, Dick Pond gift baskets, Dicks gift card and iTunes gift cards.

Top three in each age group received a Saucony bag with a waterbottle and PowerBar product (1st place), Timex hat with PowerBar product (2nd place) and a PowerBar water bottle filled with PowerBar product (3rd place).

4. Did I mention that instead of giving out tshirts like most races do, our runners received RUNNING SHORTS with our logo on them? Yeah, not your typical race.

5. Our volunteers were A-MAZING. Not only did our family and friends help like they did last year, but we also had 50 Conant High School National Honors Society students help out, in addition to 6 Starbucks employees. I was getting compliments throughout the race on how great our volunteers were.

Overall, there's no way we could put on as successful of a race as we did without the incredible support of our friends and families. We are SO excited that this year was an even bigger success than last year and cannot wait to start planning next year's event!

Feel free to check out our race website (we will upload pictures soon) at www.eggshellshuffle.com

In other news, after 13 days of not running (except for trying to run twice and failing to run at the Race That's Good for Life last Sunday), I'M RUNNING AGAIN TOMORROW! :)

Hope everyone had a WONDERFUL Easter. Can't wait to see blog recaps on Boston for a lot of my friends!