Three Things Thursday , plus one...

I pushed my schedule back a day, took Tuesday as a rest day, and ran last night - was scheduled for 6, but I only left myself time for 5 before I had to meet someone for dinner. 5 miles, 54:55, 10:58 avg pace - aka, speedy fast for my slow self. I'm pleased.

1. Jill at Run with Jill organized a rad blogger gift exchange for Christmas! I love Secret Santa's. My gift arrived last week, and man... I'm a little in love.

I was seriously JUST telling the H that we needed a calendar!

Thanks, Running with Whit!!

2. Ohhhh, leukemia. You think you're sooooooo tricky. Lulling me into a false sense of security that we tricked the pukies, only to have a kid puking on my bed at 5am this morning.

That's not effing cute, leukemia.

3. Let's discuss bullies. A few weeks ago, we were at the mall, shopping in some anime store for #1. Gabby coughed. I'm not normally super concerned about a cough, but I always check with her, because (see above for reference), leukemia is shady. But it was simple, and quick, just... "Gab, you okay?". And she was. But some obnoxious girls, probably #1's age (12 (almost 13), fyi), thought it was fucking hysterical. "baby, are you okay?? COUGH COUGH". Really? Really?? That's funny? Um. Okay, then. They shut up FAST when they realized I walked up DIRECTLY behind them, and started to walk off, but not before mumbling something about the girl with little boy hair.

Admittedly, her hair is.... challenged.

But, really. How fucking lame that the best plans you have for the day are making fun of a kid undergoing chemotherapy.

And it wasn't something I was even going to blog about, but another situation with bullies caught my attention, and then I got all types of heated....

4. I'm straight lifting some of this from Sarah OUaL's post, because she said it well, and I couldn't have improved upon it.

If you don't already know, the OJ Marathon raised about $40,000 to fight autism the day after Christmas. It would have raised about $500 more if not for two Grinches residing in the Longhorn State.

On the same day as the race in Southern California, runners across the country participated in Satellite runs that contribute to the cause. From a group of girlfriends running off their Christmas cookie binge with a 10K to a hardcore athlete going out to tackle 26.2, participants completed the run at a location and time of their choice and received a bib, shirt, and medal, for their efforts.

John Strohmeyer offered to coordinate a satellite run in Houston, guessing he’d have about 10 people. With at least five starters and three finishers, it would be an official marathon according to Marathon Maniacs.

So in theory 10 people show up, run 9 laps around a three-mile loop in a park, one guy sits at a table pouring water and Gatorade and money gets raised for charity. Perfect, right? Yeah, so much so that 29 people signed up! Basically, a fun run that counted as an official race and raised more than $1,500 — everybody's happy!

Well, everybody except Michelle Wolpert and Ron Morgan of Houston Area Road Runners Association — Mrs. and Mr. Grinch.

Michelle and Ron caught wind of the charity event and got pissed. If they weren’t allowed to host a big race in the park, well damnit neither can this grassroots foundation raising money for a good cause! 30 people running laps around the park? Absolutely unacceptable. Nuh uh, not fair.

And...

They went to the park director and got the event shut down. PERFECT! Congratulations, throwing sand in the sandbox and tattling can still get you what you want as adults.

Except shutting down the event wasn’t enough. Shortly after, Ron sent out an email blast to every running club member in Houston planting seeds of doubt about all the good Operation Jack does.

John (OJ Houston) worked with the parks department and eventually did find a new location for the race. Four days before the event. A lot of runners ran at the new location, but a lot of them didn't. The debacle ended up costing the charity about $500 in refunds.

Bullies are LAME.

Michelle can be reached at michelle_wolpert@hotmail.com and Ron would love to hear from you at ronmorgan9@yahoo.com.

Sam, the founder of Operation Jack, has worked countless hours to raise funds for Autism research, in the name of his son who won't even know. Michelle and Ron there, they just reached over and took $500 straight out of the pockets of Operation Jack.

I would stab someone over $500.

Or, you know, spread their contact information all over the internets and recommend that you email them, let them know what you think. Spread the word, tweet, facebook, smoke signal, whatever.

Because bullies, they don't really like it when you call them on their crappy behavior.

In case you missed it, Michelle can be reached at michelle_wolpert@hotmail.com and Ron would love to hear from you at ronmorgan9@yahoo.com.