you might need Kleenex...

...or maybe it's just me.
Again, I ask you, who can handle watching this gracefully? Who could have ever asked for, received, or deserved friends who make incredible things and love me like this? It's all beyond my imagination.
As I wrote to my St. Andrew's family after we watched this:
As anyone around me in chapel today can tell you, I'm not quite sure how to respond to your outpouring of love. Really, a standing ovation was WAY more than I deserved. And the slideshow, well, it brought back so many memories of that day. And of the six months leading up to it.
And now that it's been made more public than a posting on the website, I'm afraid it's going to mean that you have to hear a chapel talk from me about it sometime this year. Not because I think you'll all want to do an Ironman someday or because you care about swimming or biking or running that many miles but because the lessons I learned along the way (not just that day but every day leading up to that day) are really lessons about life. And I figure that my sweat and sore muscles ought to be good for something other than a personal "claim to fame"!
But I will tell you now that on that day in June there were a million reasons NOT to stop swimming or biking or running and 300+ of them (that's about the size of our student body + faculty) were you. I didn't cross the finish line that day on my own...I didn't cover all of those training miles on my own. Y'all were and continue to be a HUGE source of inspiration to me. So, yes, maybe I am YOUR Ironman. I couldn't be more honored to be claimed by a community.
With love and deep, deep gratitude...

To set the stage, here's how Kimberly introduced the whole thing: "There is a sticker on a green Subaru parked in a faculty spot that simply states the numbers 140.6. Some of you know what this number means. For those of you who don't, it's the sum when adding a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride and the 26.2 miles of a marathon. This past summer on June 21st, a member of the faculty completed her first Ironman in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Her race began at 7 a.m. and she finished the marathon 14 hours later. Luckily Mr. Works and I were able to travel to Idaho to represent her fan club and watch her make her way through the city on a day that started out cold and windy and ended cold and windy and rainy. It was one of the great privileges of our lives to see her cross the finish line. In preparation, Miss Guice trained over 7 months and logged over 2,300 miles. The fact that she completed this grueling race, smiling all the way, is just one more reason to be in awe of her. She is an amazing and inspiring person. This little video, thank you Mr. Heck, is a tiny tribute to her huge accomplishment."

Enjoy...and thanks to Kimberly and Jim and Amy (and anyone else who helped pull this video together who I don't know about!) And, of course, Gordon for some of the pictures and John for being there...and Grace and Emma, the dogs...and everyone else I've thanked before who was part of my training or general upbringing. Something like this doesn't happen in isolation.
XOXO,
etg