Canta Carol Run 2012

I've been meaning to write this post for a week now.

It's just been a wonderfully busy, happy week of get togethers and parties.

But, I do want to update you on what I did last Saturday.

WSU has a summer program for our opera students called Canta in Italia.

We send students to Italy for a month to study singing, the Italian language, and perform.

As you can imagine, it's a bit pricey.

I'm on the board of directors and we are constantly trying to find ways to raise money for scholarships.

Since I began running a little over a year ago, I've participated in several races and found them to be wonderful events.

My brilliant idea was to host our own 5k.

I'm drawn to big projects. You know, like starting an opera company.

Let me tell you, planning a 5k is right up there with producing an opera.

We hired Clark Ensz, a running legend in Wichita and a 5k race guru, to help us develop the event.

He knows things like what percentage of different size shirts to order and how to make the registration process run as smoothly as possible.

We held the race on the Saturday after finals and called it the Canta Carol Run.

We had about 30 of our students caroling along the course.

Our kids can sing! 

They sounded great!

And Santa was there.

Well, "pretend Santa" according to Maia, "who gave me candy corn!"

I love a good race.

We had a small crowd, about 150 runners.

Which, I suppose is not horrible, but we were hoping for 400.

It also means that we've got 200 shirts leftover. (Let me know if you want one!)

One highlight for me was seeing a mom run with her son in his first 5k.

He must have been 8 or 9 and they were both beaming as they crossed the finish line.

Before the awards ceremony we had a rousing rendition of the "12 Days of Christmas" with some costumed runners from a local theater.

It was a fun event that went very smoothly and people seemed to enjoy themselves.

The plan is to have a second annual Canta Carol Run and hopefully word of mouth will help bump up our numbers.

If you'd like to donate towards scholarships or be a sponsor for next year's run, let me know!

And of course, we'd love to see you as a runner too.

All pictures were taken by the amazing John Ellert.